Team Building

Before class today I did not know what to expect for sure but I was pretty certain we would be doing acitivities similar to what we did. These type of projects are helpful in teaching people how to work within a team and allow people to put leadership skills into practice. I had an interesting experience doing the blind folded activity where we had to have another person guide us on a long walk. We had an odd number of people in our group and decided to have one person guide two of us at a time. We realized quickly that we would never complete the activity if he was trying to guide both of us at the same time. So the two of us that were blind locked arms and moved together as we followed the other persons instructions. As we were coming to the very end of the exercise Shaun yelled out that nobody should be touching any body else. We had been locked together for at least 15 minutes at this point and we tried letting go and it was amazing how much less secure both of us felt when we didn't have the other one there. Although I was relying on one person to guide me because I couldn't see, I felt a strong obligation to help the other blind individual. It was my job to make sure I felt for door ways or tripping hazards first and then I would guide her through those obstacles. There was no determing factor for why I led and she followed, it just sort of happened naturally. I started out first and felt comfortable in that role and she followed and seemed to be comfortable with her role as well. It was strange how responsible I felt for her well being, even though I was unable to see myself. I enjoyed the activities as a whole and appreciate the light hearted atmosphere that the class offers.

Hiring

Going into this weeks class I had expected for some reason to learn better job interview skills from the perspective of the person being interviewed and not from the perspective of the interviewer. I expected to learn tactics for interviewing and what type of questions to expect to be asked. Instead I got a whole new outlook on how to interview for a potential job candidate. I have hired employees before but never as part of a committee and my purpose for hiring was different than it is for health care. The thought of making sure you know what your looking for in a question was a great thing for me to learn. I have often times asked a question without knowing what I was looking for and just assumed if I asked it and got the right answer I would then know that was what I wanted out of the question. If given the opportunity to work in a position where I am in charge of hiring I think this will help a lot. I thoroughly enjoyed this class and it was a fun day.

Leadership Reflective Journal Entry

Going into today's class I wasn't sure what to expect. I wasn't sure if we were going to get the boring good leaders have certain qualities speech or, this is what is expected of you in the healthcare industry as a leader speech. I was pleasantly surprised today with the information presented. I really enjoyed the discussion on leadership qualities and it was interesting to see how many people have never really been in any kind of leadership position and haven't had a chance to determine what their leadership style is. The five levels of leadership speech started to lose my interest about half way through but I found most of the information pretty interesting. I'm not convinced that the jump from level 3 to level 4 and 5 is really that big. I kind of feel like when you attain level 3 you usually are at levels 4 & 5 at the same time. The one question I had when going through this information is can this type of leadership be taught or is it just something that comes natural. I think we can learn to be better leaders but I wonder if the best leaders are the ones who have a knack for it. I feel like I am good at looking at individuals and determining what their strengths and weaknesses are but I think evaluating others and determining how they see you is a helpful skill that I could put into practice. I'm actually interested to see where this class goes, it appears to me that it is going to be more fun than I had initially anticipated.