Business Communication II – BUS 9553 S1BA Summer

I like to think that my leadership style encompasses many of the characteristics of community builders, navigators and renewal champions. However, generally,  I would describe my style as a direction setter. I believe that I have a knack for getting and keeping people’s attention, persuading people to act and building awareness and understanding.

Do I lead by example? Do I delegate? Do I rule by consensus? Yes, yes and yes. I know from experience that it’s hard to get people to listen to you and believe you if you do not practice what your preach. So, I always do my best to lead by example.

In terms of delegating, I find that it is a very important task that should not be taken lightly. I’ve had apprehensions in the past about assigning tasked. I must admit that I was one of those people who felt that the best way to get something done right was to do it myself. Unfortunately, time does not permit one to hold that view and run a business effectively. Therefore, I had to learn how to delegate.

When working in a team I believe that consensus plays a crucial role in the team dynamics. In order for every member to feel respected and like a contributing memeber I think it is important to incorporate a consensus into the functioning strategy.

Just recently I was placed in a team of 6 people with one very difficult team member. This teammate is very controlling and generally objects to most suggestions made by other teammates. He is not open to ideas that are not his own and focuses too much on trying to control everything.

Communication in general and digital communication plays a very important role in how this team functions effectively. Work is divided amongst the team equally and in order to minimize dissent we collaborate via google docs. This enables everyone to see in real time where each person stands on completing their portion of work and limits face to face contact. In this particular situation this is an effective strategy.

Working in teams are never easy but it is important to remember to be open to ideas, communicate in a manner that is honest and open to be effective. Also, work by consensus. This allows everyone to feel valued.

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.

One of our assignments in Business Communication-2 involved presenting our views on different leadership styles followed by leaders in the industry. Me along with my team partner Vaibhavi presented on Leadership style involving building trust. After viewing the presentation on VOCAT, I was quite satisfied with the content of the presentation, however there are a few points on which I would definitely like to work upon.

While presenting, I noticed that I use fillers extensively ( a fact I was not unaware about). In the future, I would definitely like to see myself not using fillers when I am trying to complete a sentence or thinking for a better word to describe something. The other thing which lacked in our presentation was the fact that although the slides conveyed our point of view, they appeared to be quite wordy. For a diverse audience, this might cause people to not pay attention to what we were communicating as they would be busy reading out of the slides. Some of our slides also had minor spelling errors which again might cause distraction (or change the meaning of an entire sentence!!). Apart from all this the transition of content from my part of the presentation to Vaibhavi’s also could have been a little more smooth.

In order to improve my presentation skills, I need to stop using (so many!!) fillers and may be just stop when I am thinking of a better word or feel the urge to umm!! Apart from this getting a third person to review the slides before final presentation can also be helpful as it would bring out the errors which I would have easily overlooked.

Overall, I think we gave the class some real good food for thought.

We both looked comfortable and did a good job at body language and eye contact.  I have tried to work on ‘scanning’ the room in the past and can tell the difference in my application depending on how nervous I am.  The transition from Carla to me was good, but my transition back to her could have been more logical.  I also think some media (a 30 second clip of some kind) would have been a nice addition to the presentation.  This might have drawn in listeners and possibly added a little humor with the right clip.

It’s nice to have so few people in our class to get more ‘air time’ presenting and more time to focus on our own presentation vices.  For example, I have trouble with pause, which is apparent in the speed at which I present and the amount of fillers I use.  I need to work on using pause to engage listeners.  It will allow the audience to digest what I’m saying and allow me to collect my thoughts and ensure I’m on the right track.  I am working on speaking slower, which is apparent in this video.  However, when I speak slower, I also have a tendency to lose my emotion or energy for the particular topic.

There were also a few items that I had intended to speak about in the presentation but I forgot and never looked at my note cards to trigger the thoughts.  I believe Carla mentioned this as something she needs to work on as well.  My hand gestures are also a nuisance.  I use them too often and for no reason; they are a distraction.  Lastly, we both could have moved around a little more to engage the audience but we both recognized the constraint of the camera for this strategy.

Overall, I think that Carla and I gave a solid presentation.  The structure of the presentation flowed nicely; we had a clear introduction, section breakdown and conclusion/wrap up.  This made it easy to follow by repeating the main points multiple times in different ways.  It is advantageous that both of us have had experience with meaning maker leaders.  We were able to draw from our own experiences and relate them to the book’s definitions and anecdotes.  I believe the examples we used and the questions we asked to the audience were relevant and thought provoking.

The leadership style which I like to follow is that of a Trust Builder. “The leader as a Communicator book” subscribed to us in the course on Leadership style details down various Leadership style as is followed by different industry leaders, and this is one of them.  When leading people in a team, I like to keep everyone at the same level. To me, for a team to actually work successfully (with everyone content), I like to foster a healthy environment and be very approachable.

To have a difficult, unapproachable and not supportive person as a leader of a team can be very demotivating. It could not only make working in a team difficult but also restrain individual growth. A leader is supposed to lead his team, and not hamper growth. By being understanding and approachable, a leader can motivate his/her team members to come up to him/her with any problem professional and even sometimes personal (only if they come in the way of professional growth).  It will encourage team members to speak their mind, participate freely in group discussions and be open to criticism. In some sense, being a trust builder also helps a leader. It helps him put things as they are in front of his/her team members, if conditions are bad, he/she can paint the correct picture more precisely for the team.

A team is comprised of people coming from different sill sets, different backgrounds and, in today’s fast shrinking world, of different cultures. In such a scenario understanding cultural differences, working styles and other differences becomes all the more important for a leader. By understanding these small differences and acting precisely on them he can bring the team even more together and hence gain trust of his/her team member for leading them in the right direction.

From all the facets of “Leader as a trust builder”, I am not a big fan of being informal. In my last company, I was supposed to lead a group of 4-5 individuals and things got pretty bad. The problem was most of 3 of these people used to be my friends from my last job and when I changed jobs to join a start-up, I got promoted and these guys followed me to join the company with me as their leader. The first few months went  quite smoothly as we all knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses. However, as time passed, situations/scenarios expected me to be strong handed with 1-2 of them occasionally. My team mates (being also my friends) did not take things as seriously as they were supposed to, ending in creating more problems than solutions. There were frequent heated discussions and arguments which really spoiled the working environment and made it toxic. Eventually I had to put my foot down and roll over as the manager of his group.  The learning I got from this experience was never treat your team members as your friends. One should be informal to an extent, but never ever try to be friends with people who he/she will eventually be leading.

My leadership style is very similar to that of a Trust Builder, as described in ‘The Leader as a Communicator’ book.  I prefer to be on the same level as people and tend to believe that people on the bottom of a businesses hierarchy have just as good of ideas, if not better ideas, than those at the top.  They are the ones responsible for the day-to-day operations and have a better understanding of things that are and are not working effectively.   If leaders don’t address colleagues as equals, an atmosphere of fear will be created and those with ideas will be hesitant to share them.  I have worked in environments like this; they are truly toxic as they stifle people’s confidence, job satisfaction, and productivity.

I also want to work in an environment that fosters constructive feedback.  The above atmosphere does not allow for constructive criticism.  People tend to understand if a supervisor they like and respect criticizes their work (they feel their must be a logical reason) but feel angry if somebody criticizes their work that they view as an opponent.  Personally, I like getting constructive feedback and intend to give it as well.  Simple and direct honesty is a corporate culture I would promote.

I also prefer informality in the office, why should people pretend to be somebody their not just because they’re at work?  I believe this is inhibitive.  However, if people want to dress up to express themselves, of course this would be acceptable and of course there are times when wearing a suit will be required.

I will also lead by example.  My father owned furniture stores while I was growing up and always admired the fact that he worked longer hours than his employees.  He showed commitment and integrity and, because of this, his employees were extremely loyal to him and worked harder because of it.  I will be the same.  If there is a tight deadline and my team is staying late to finish it, I will stay with them and be visible and available.  This also created a sense of community, much like a meaning maker strives to achieve.

Working in teams is always an excellent challenge.  Everybody has diverse styles of working and you have to determine, sometimes by trial and error, which working styles are the most effective for each particular team/teammate.  Strong communication is essential on school and work teams.  I’ve learned that the critical first step for all group projects is an introductory meeting.  The meeting basically sets ground rules, determines/delegates specific tasks and deadlines, and sets the next meeting time.  Digital communication is a blessing and curse.  It can lead to misunderstandings but it also increases efficiency.  There must be a balance between emails and phone/in-person discussions because in-person communication tends to cultivate ideas and reduce redundancies/miscommunications.

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