Author Archives: nn149750

I and Faith gave a presentation on ‘Leader as a Trust Builder’. Faith started the presentation. She did a good job by outlining the key elements in the presentation. The introduction was short, to the point and appealing enough to arouse interest in the audience. Faith maintained a good eye contact with all members in the room. This is important as it makes sure you engage with all people sitting in the room. Faith covered about seven to eight slides. Then I took over the remaining part of the presentation. I think that the transition between us was very smooth and the presentation did not lose any flow or connectivity. I was well prepared about the topic and did not have any difficulty in discussing the points during my presentation. Our presentation was for approximately fifteen minutes. We had also put some interesting questions at the end for discussion with the class.

According to me, we both did a very good job as far as the oral communication is concerned. We had a nice flow and tone to our voice. We used gestures and eye contact effectively to engage the audience. The presentation was also well organized as far as the content goes. We had put only bullet points so that the audience have all their attention to what we are talking. But we also had some interesting pictures on our slides to make them interesting. There were some formatting errors on the power point slides. But these errors can be easily corrected. The next time we give any presentation, we will double check to see that the formatting is consistent through all the slides. I did use few fillers in my sentences like ‘umm’. But the count was much less than the previous presentation, so I definitely made some improvement on the use of fillers. For the next presentation, I will further try to reduce the use of unnecessary fillers and work towards improving my articulation and gestures even further.

In general, people normally look at great leaders and try to adopt their styles while leading other people. I have also observed several leaders and have a learnt a lot from them. I try to encapsulate their strategies and thinking and apply it while making any decisions. I believe that true leaders are those who can generate a feeling of trust among their team. Good leaders are well respected by others. I always try to develop a feeling of trust within my team. This helps to bring up all the issues within the team and also makes it easier to solve them. I believe that effective and straight forward communication is a must in order to gain the trust and confidence of the team. I try to keep the processes as transparent as possible to all the team members so that they are aware of what’s going on in the team. This helps to promote unity in the team. People also feel more attached to their teams which helps to improve the productivity. I believe that if you want people to do the right things, you should also behave in that way. In short, I do believe in leading by example. Especially when you are the leader, people always look up to you. So you have to make sure that you give a positive signal to others. How can expect other to be punctual when the leader is the one who always arrives late? On many occasions, as a leader, you have to represent others  or the entire team. I have represented my team in several meetings with senior executives. I normally involve all the team members whenever possible, but at times, you have to delegate. While taking any decisions, I always ask the team members about their thoughts on the concerned matter. I do take a consensus especially while deciding the schedule for team meetings or status reviews. But I take other decisions according to my judgment by taking into account the overall consensus.

There are very few challenges I have faced during team projects. One of the reasons is that I find it easy to work in teams as I can easily adjust myself per the situation. Some of the challenges which I have faced are the way in which the problem is tackled or time at which they are tackled. Everyone has their own perspectives and priorities which can lead to conflicts in the team. But we have always made sure that the team has a contract which everyone followed. Communication is really important for a team. Miss communication can have disastrous effects on the team like double work, missing deadlines or even failure of the entire project. Effective communication can make sure that everyone is aware of what each individual is working on. It also helps to avoid any miss understandings within the team and makes sure that everyone is on the same page. The best and quickest way to communicate these days is via emails. Digital communication is now the key mode of communicating within the teams. This makes sure that messages are delivered to the members even when the team member is not physically available. Teams are often spread across boundaries in today’s world. This has only been possible due to digital communication.