Tomorrow's Leaders

The most interesting game to me is the recruiting negotiation. When playing the game, my partner and I just focused on getting the maximum personal benefits. We did not understand that compromise would bring higher score for two people as a whole. From the game, I learn that hiring managers should not try to give recruitees as fewer benefits as they can because this will lower new workers' motivation. Then firms will bear loss because of lower labor productivity.

The book Social Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion is my favorite in this class. The influence tactics it describes are really useful for building leadership. So far, I often it hard to influence people, especially someone in higher positions, and I can use these tactics in the future.

BUS262 Team6: Final Blog Topic

While I really enjoyed all of the topics and activities, my favorite topic was conflict and negotiations. The reason why I enjoyed this topic the most is because I learned greatly about how to handle uncomfortable situations through negotiation and collaboration. I also really enjoyed the activity as I negotiated my new job benefits with my future boss. Before this lecture, my method of handling uncomfortable situations was to simply say “yes” to the other person. Through this topic, I learned how to negotiate more effectively by having options and by understanding my bottom line.

I really liked all of the books. My favorite one was Predictably Irrational because it was an eye-opening experience learning how we can be irrational individuals even when we think we are not. It’s important to understand people’s behaviors and their motives and influences.

I don’t have a specific book to recommend however I would like to learn more about how to increase my leadership confidence.

Tomorrow's Leaders

Of all the class activities, I really liked the one where we were trying to figure out which day of the made-up week that the Atlanteans finished building their obelisk. Although each person had a small amount of information, it gave us the opportunity to exercise our leadership skills and collect all the information that each person had and figure out the answer.

Of all the books (other than our own), I really liked Predictably Irrational, because people are irrational creatures and thus it is important to find out what makes each of us tick and how to lead different people who perceive things differently.

I don't really have a book to recommend, but a suggestion is to implement how to lead cross-culturally with the course. The book we focused on (Geography of Thought) did focus somewhat on the Chinese and Western dynamic, but something a little bit more culturally diverse would be extremely useful. The world is getting a lot smaller and having that multi-cultural aspect in the leadership program would ultimately benefit the leaders of tomorrow who most likely have to lead a culturally diverse team.

Final Blog Topic

Out of all the class activities I really enjoyed the survival one. Picking items by yourself then with a group showed me that if you want your opinions to be considered you need to speak up and have some valid reasoning to back them up. If you have sound logic your initial advice can actually put you in a credible leadership potion. Even though this assignment was small I feel that it actually had the biggest impact on me. I also felt it was one of the more fun projects.

Out of all the books I liked Drive the most. This was purely on the reason that there were two groups. I felt that being able to contrast between two different approaches on the same topic allowed me to see more into what the book was trying to say. It also created a bit of competition and possibly more out of the box thinking to top the other group.

Final Blog Topic

We've reached the end of this part of your leadership journey - and hopefully you are ready to continue on your own! In this posting, please write about what activity, topic, or reading you found the most interesting and useful. It may be interesting to see how others saw the class and what they found of value.

Also, please briefly describe which book - other than your own - you think was most useful to learn about and if you know of other books that you think would be useful for a future class, please provide the title!