To tell my leadership, I want to share a true story with you. A group work that changed my leadership style, and made me more confident to be a leader.
It was the beginning of last semester, and with uncertainty, I took the course named Business Intelligence.
This was a data analysis class, and we needed to use some software and have some
data analysis background. As a marketing student, I never learned how to
analyze data. I was concerned about whether I could handle this class. I also
concerned about my group, which include two Indians, one American and me. I was
so nervous because I never met a group which all group members had different
culture background and language with me. What’s more, I never talked with any
of them before this class. We just had 2 IT students who have data analysis background
and other two, including me, were totally new to this area.
At the beginning, things went
smoothly and similarly to other group works. However, as time went on, group
work became tougher than we thought. The problem was, nobody wanted to be the
leader and arrange an after class meeting. “Unfortunately”, I was the one who
first sent emails to everyone, and then, automatically, I was the “unofficial
leader” of this wracking group. Since we had totally different culture, education
(two IT, one marketing, one MBA), and work experience background, leading this
cross-culture group seemed more difficult and meant more efforts and
responsibilities for me.
I was so anxious when I realized
that I should organize the whole plan for this group. Although I have been a
leader before, I didn’t take the whole leader’s responsibility. In some groups,
I was able to rely on someone who can control the whole situation, like in my
OBC500 group. In some groups, group members were eager to discuss difficulties
we faced and made decisions together. But, in this group, there was nobody I
could depend on. Actually, I was so diffident to be a leader, especially in
such a group----everyone was older and had more experience than me. I was so
afraid to make a decision and so afraid that group members would judge me if I
did something wrong because I didn’t familiar with English language and the
course material. Most of time, I just listened and practiced my sentences in my
mind several times before I spoke out loud. This time, I realized that I need
to change myself and make my own decisions, which was something I never had to
do before.
We faced a lot of problems on the
first project. I hardly got all the group members together on time although we
only had four people. I was the only one who appeared at the right time and the
right place. My group members were often over 20 minutes late or even did not
show up. I could understand if it happened once or twice, but it happened every
meeting. I was the only one who arrived on time. I complained, and I thought
they didn’t take the project seriously. However,
I never told them how I felt, since I didn’t want to be a “mean” person. After
all, nobody “selected” me to be the leader, and all I did was assume the
responsibilities. Since we hardly got all people together, we could hardly
build a structure of our project. People who missed one meeting misunderstood
what we discussed at that meeting and even disagreed with the decisions we
made. Then we had to explain and change our structure again and again. It was
so low efficient and we all worried about finishing this project on time.
However, we didn’t make any improvement. With the deadline coming, our group
was full of anxiety. Group members started to blame each other, including me.
All I thought was why they couldn’t show up on time, why they couldn’t do more
for our group instead of waiting to be told what to do, and why I needed to
write another part after I finished my own part. One of my group members even copied
a whole paragraph from an article for his part. Things became more and more uncontrollable.
The final report was so uncompleted.
I felt so frustrated thinking about how to solve these problems. At the same
time, I felt upset. I didn’t ask to be the leader, and I had little experience
compared to them. Why did I have to be the leader and do more than they do? I
was really confused. I complained to every friend about this group. I felt
comforted when they expressed their disbelief. They said: “how can you survive
in such a group?” Until one day, one of my friends looked at me seriously, and
said: “Actually, you are the same as your group members. Even you, as a leader,
don’t want to do more, how could your group members want to?”
I was shocked. I never thought
about myself. Why did I never use my positive attitude and personality to
influence others? Why didn’t I begin to improve instead of complaining? I
thought of other leaders in a successful group. They really showed a positive attitude
to group members and they always were the first one to make a contribution. I
should lead this team just like them---showing a positive way not the negative.
After realizing that, the block in my heart just broke down. I was full of energy,
and prepared for my next project---a presentation. I arranged another meeting.
The same result, just one person had time that day. We didn’t have time to
wait. We needed to meet as soon as possible, even though just the two of us,
who could only work on the business part due to the background limitation.
Before meeting, I made an outline
of our presentation and sent it to everyone. I took preparing so seriously. I
tried to think of it as my individual project with no body to depend on. I read
the outline again and again until I felt it made sense and covered all the
important points. Surprisingly, they all agreed on my idea. After my outline
was approved, I felt more confident to explain my ideas, and after I spoke out
once, the rest of explanation would be easier. The other group member and I
tried our best to do whatever we could, and we finished 2 out of 3 questions,
which was much more than I thought. We also found that after we began to work
on the right route, we did it at really high efficiency. After I stop complaining
and tried to get some feedback from them, I found they didn’t really want to be
late. The bad traffic was the big problem. And also, they started to show
eagerness to give more ideas and put more effort into our group work. Everything
became more positive.
I started to put myself in their
position. Maybe they had the same thought as me. They didn’t refuse to contribute.
Maybe they just didn’t know how to start, just like me. I suspected that
everybody wanted to avoid the work, and that was the reason why I saw everyone seemed
so uninvolved. But once I put myself in their shoes, everything became better
because I understood why they behaved the way they did.
For me, I can’t tell that I became
a good leader after that group study. But now I have the confidence to be a
real leader, and I can put my best effort into group work. Sometimes influence
is not comes on purpose. If I do my best, I can influence to other people. And
the group would be more positive because of me. I still tend to be a listener,
and I still need to think twice before speaking, however, as long as I have the
confidence and try to do whatever I can for our group, I can make an
improvement and be a real good leader.
