The Final Push

This weeks post is close is an attempt to get all of the extra credit that is available, for this reason I have created a survey that everyone can take about MCom and our semester together. Here is a link to the survey that I created; https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/D3GZS7Q.

I hope that everyone enjoys the survey, in addition i have uploaded a video that I made while I was on my mission in Mozambique, I hope that you all enjoy watching it. It is a video of a drunk Mozambican trying to read English and I swear that I have felt as if I sound that way sometimes when I wake up in the morning.

On a more serious not MCom has been a good class for me,I have learned a lot of things that will cary over to my career as I continue to communicate with the people around me. I feel that I have improved greatly int he area of presentations where at the beginning of the semester it seemed like something that would be insurmountable and when it came down to it I am not a terrible presenter like I thought I was.

I will for sure need to continue to practice both written and spoken communication so that I can be a pro, but more importantly so that I can communicate in a way that I am understood and not misunderstood.

Keeping Email Organized

This week we had day one of the MCOM mini conference there were a lot of interesting presentations that I was able to watch. I had the pleasure of watching instead of presenting, but i will be on the other end of things on Tuesday.

One of the presentations that particularly stuck out to me was about keeping your inbox for emails empty. I thought that I did a pretty decent job at keeping my email organized, but I learned that I have actually been off the mark the whole time.

Keeping your inbox clean will help in other aspects of your professional life as well such as being sure to get back to people who communicate with you in a timely fashion. One way that this can be done is to have separate folders can be created to keep track of where unread emails are and what sort of subject they have, whether it be school, work, networking, or some other subject that you can think of for emails could be appropriate.

The most important thing that I took away was that it really doesn't matter what you do to clean up your email inbox, what really matters is that you have a system that you are able to stay organized and on top of your emails. Additionally, as a result of hearing this presentation I am actually going to make these new folders and actually use them in a systematic way so that I will be able to organize my email and by extension organize my life.

As a reference this is a link to VoNique's blog, she is the one that made the presentation.

Teamwork.... Oh Teamwork

In the first chapter of our book it talks about the stages that a team goes through until they start to meld together ad work well. We learned that the steps are: forming, storming, norming and performing. Throughout the semester I have seen my group go through all of these steps, and it wasn't until recently that our group went through the process.

At first we didn't really know each other, we were obviously in the forming stage. We worked for quite a while in the forming stage, I would even say for a majority of the semester. It was tough to try to get the group together because there was a serious lack of effort from multiple members of the team, in honesty I feel that all of us were guilty of this.

This lack of effort is what made us pull ourselves through the storming stage and into the norming and performing stages. The consulting project really made us get together and produce results in order to get the assignment on time.

I feel that this experience in groups has taught me how to deal with others who are assigned to a project even when times get tough. I feel like this is how the real world is, not everyone has the same level of priority on something as the others in a group do and frankly that is expected. What I have taken away is that problem resolution is an important skill to develop, and I will continue to work on how well I work with others in a group setting.

Team Video Conference Call

Video conference calls are a useful thing that we are able to utilize now that we have the technology. They allow for meetings to happen without actually meeting in person, which is a great way of cutting costs. In our video conference we were able to coordinate who was taking care of which aspect of the report. We were able to get organized in an efficient way so that all the aspects of the presentation are handled.

One of the downsides of doing internet meetings is that you are in essence dependent on how the connection is. In our case we had a hard time getting connected through Google hangouts because we had a weak connection. So while a remote meeting is useful, it is not as reliable as an in person meeting. All in all however I would say that the remote meeting was a good experience and will be something that I can see becoming the most common ways to conduct meetings in the future.

Making a Mark With Short Presentations

This week we talked about how to effectively use a flip-chart while presenting. presenting this way is a whole different ball game because not while things are planned out and prepared before hand there is possibility of writing on the flip-chart while presenting.

With flip-chart presentations it can be harder to keep an audiences attention because you may be writing on the chart or the colors or words could start to blend together. A way to keep contrast with in the text is to mix up the colors that you are using, it is a great idea either to alternate colors or highlight certain words so that they stand out.

In our class we will have to present an assigned topic in a few weeks using flips-charts and I think that it will be an interesting experience. yesterday in class Pro. Middleton introduced how to use a chart like this and she gave some helpful insight. The thing that stuck out to me most was writing while talking and writing big enough, I feel that it would be a waste of time to prepare for a presentation and then write too small which makes it difficult for the audience to see what you have written. Letters should be at least two inches and should be in all caps so that the words are easy to read.

Personally I am not god at writing in all caps so that will be something that I need to work on in order to prepare for my presentation that I will have to give with a flip-chart.

Online Interview

The online interview was interesting for me, as far as the interview went, I would say it is more like a normal interview. The questions were thought provoking, I made sure I was using PAR stories to answer questions and I did what I could to bring the questions back to my resume.

The things that were interesting or almost weird to me were the things that weren't in the dialogue. In the room that I did the interview in there was a light with a ceiling fan, the light was behind me and as such it made it look like the top of my head was shining, if I have to do an interview over Skype I wish make sure the room is well lit and that the light is in front of me. I will probably sit in front of a blank wall so that the things that are in the room don't end up distracting from the interview.

I also noticed the there is not as much room for hand gestures, where if I want to gesture I need to bring my hands up near my face and I feel that if I do that then I will be distracting from the interview. In order to preserve the same level of interest I found that I would use more facial expressions. Yukio, the person I was paired with, noticed something that I do that I want to change, the problem that was identified was that when I think of how to answer and when I start answering a question I tend to look off screen or away from the person. I will be sure to work on this so that I can have the most successful interviews that I can./

Spreading Your Word

This week we talked about business letters for when written communication is sent between you and someone else. The main point that stuck out to me was about using appropriate voice. We know about both active and passive voices so I won't spend time going through those, but rather I will try to answer my own question which is when is it appropriate to use passive voice in a persuasive letter?

I know that many times when trying to persuade someone we use the direct approach to writing which is to draw them in with facts about what you are trying to do or something and then putting an agenda in the letter so they know what is about to come at them. Active voice is used in persuasive letters in, what seems to be, a majority of situations.

I think that passive voice would be used if someone is trying to get someone else to do something that they don't really want to do or don't feel they need. In these cases passive voice could be used to draw the reader in and get them to feel good and then deliver the bad news of what you want them to do.

Knowing the differences about when to use which kind of voice is important because it will make your writing more effective. To overcome my problem of not knowing when to use passive voice I will go back to the book and try to find out because I know that it is something important and something that I should know.