3B. Assignments

9/21/2015 – Evening Session – Dale Carnegie Training

The same day as Dr. Kudisch came to speak to us, we also had an evening session guest speaker, Dan Parsons. Mr. Parsons came to give us advice on presentation skills as well as how to communicate professionally and confidently in different business situations. The session was centered on Dale Carnegie’s bestselling book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. This infamous book has set the standard for effective interpersonal interactions. At the beginning, we all received the book as well as a packet that Mr. Parson’s presentation was based on. The packet was entitled “Dale Carnegie Effective Presentations Skills Workshop,” and we went over Effective Presentation Skills as well as the Triangle of Success for Presentations: Skill, Knowledge, and Attitude.

He also showed us a Ted Talk by Will Stephen in which the speaker talked about absolutely nothing, but did so in a way that was captivating and sounded as if he was giving a very important speech. He accomplished this through his hand gestures, a personal anecdote at the beginning, slowing and speeding up, as well as skillfully changing his voice to be louder and quieter to attract his audience’s attention.    

Mr. Parsons then discussed the basic structure of an impactful speech, starting from the opening, which is meant to favorably attract interest from the audience. Some good options for openings are to use an analogy, a surprising fact, a question, or a story about an incident that happened to you. Next, the bulk of your presentation, or the message, begins to focus attention on the subject. The purpose of the message is to guide the development of the presentation and keep it from straying away from the purpose of the talk. Finally, the closing of a presentation is extremely critical because often it is what the audience remembers and the lasting impression of your speech. Some tips for a successful conclusion are to conclude in a few words, dramatize, speak on a personal level, use a quotation, and to tie the closing back to your beginning points. If your purpose is to persuade, then it is also a good idea to give a final recommendation and appeal to a nobler motive in getting your advice across.

Finally, Mr. Parsons introduce the “Magic Formula”, a time-tested method that provides the structure to maintain the audience’s attention and increase the persuasive ability of the speech. The Magic Formula consists of describing an incident, calling up the audience to take a single, specific action, and giving them the benefit of that action. Keys to an effective magic formula include establishing who, what, when, where, and why, including animation and vocal variety, and narrowing the action and broadening the benefit. We all then created our own version of the Magic Formula and presented our story with our lesson.

Key Takeaways:

I thoroughly enjoyed this evening session because I thought Dan Parsons was an extremely fun and engaging speaker who knew exactly how to keep his audience captivated. In my opinion, the entire class was much more attentive than we usually are for such long evening sessions.

I thought Mr. Parsons was a fantastic public speaker himself because of his passion and knowledge on the subject he was speaking about, as well as his engaging body language. There were many adjectives the class could’ve used to describe him, but I am sure boring was not one of them. He jumped into his talk with a fire in his eyes and a clear organization and understanding of everything he was going to talk about for the whole session. I thought his use of demonstrative videos was a clear, direct, and engaging method to show us proper use of body language and nonverbal cues, because we got a direct visual of what to do and what not to do.

Additionally, Mr. Parsons clearly understood and empathized with his audience: college students. He tailored his speech so that it would be exciting to us because he understood that we got restless and stopped paying attention when we were forced to sit still in one place for very long, so he purposely threw in some tasteful jokes geared to appeal to our age group. He clearly did his research on whom he would be presenting to and tried his best to put himself in our shoes and be an engaging speaker. I appreciated his understanding of our attitude and experience as college students and I thought that this understanding greatly helped his message to get across to us and make his overall presentation much more effective than usual boring lectures that we receive from adults on a daily basis.

Furthermore, I agreed wholeheartedly with his motto of diving directly into giving a presentation instead of using lackluster phrases such as “Now let me tell you a story” or “Let me ask you a question.” Mr. Parsons told us directly to never use such an unnecessary phrase because it is totally extraneous to inform your audience of something you’re going to do before you do it; it is much more effective to simply dive right in and say what you mean to say. Phrases like that are simply to buy time and should be eliminated altogether. It is interesting because in so many talks that I’ve heard the speakers use those kinds of phrases and never thought twice about it, but now that Mr. Parsons pointed out the uselessness of the phrase, I will make a conscious effort not to do it in my speeches.

My favorite activity of the night was the concluding activity in which each student rose and told a story and concluded with a lesson he/she learned from the experience as well as advice for the audience. Instead of presenting in front of the whole class, we only had to present to our row so it was much less intimidating. The best speaker from each row went up in front of the whole class and competed by telling their story. I loved this activity because it gave me a chance to practice my public speaking skills in a low risk environment and in front of an audience I knew very well, my classmates. Also it was a great opportunity to get to know my peers better by hearing a bit more of their lives. I thought it was a smart closing activity since by then it was almost 10 pm and all of us were getting tired, so this interactive activity was the perfect way to pull us all back into the moment and grab our attention.

Similarly, the only concern I had about this session is how long it lasted. It is very difficult to maintain concentration and stay in class for four hours when the longest we usually might have class is two hours. I think the long duration of the workshop took away from its significant impact on the students. In the future, I think the workshop should be cut down to maybe two hours so we can still maintain a decent amount of focus that the speaker deserves.

The two biggest takeaways I took away from this evening session was to be confident, because you are strong and you own the room by standing up there and speaking, and to make sure that you are congruent, meaning that it is crucial to make sure your body language and words match up. It is confusing to the audience if you say you are super excited to talk to them while saying this in a monotone voice. Both of these important points for public speaking take practice because when I get up in front of a large crowd, my face immediately turns bright red and my teeth start chattering, which in turn causes my voice to shake and me to come off as unconfident. I know there is no solution to this problem other than repeated practice of speaking in a stressful environment and instead of shying away from such opportunities like I used to, I will seize those opportunities and try to improve upon my weaknesses.

9/23- Assessment Center: Illiad Assessment

Summary:

This was the second year I went in to complete the Illiad Assessment, a test that is designed to measure your aptitude to perform under pressure. Additionally, the test is meant to demonstrate self-awareness by accurately describing your strengths and development needs. The idea is that the feedback you receive on your behavior during the assessment will give you valuable information about your individual abilities, including skills such as presentation ability, persuasion, listening and teamwork skills, decision making, organization, and leadership. The procedure was pretty much the same as last year, with a couple components revised. Firstly, we all went into the testing room at 5:00, set our timepieces to 12:00 noon, and began the “day” as a Vice President of the Illiad Company. However, this year, instead of having to create a business idea for the section of the company we were assigned, we had a meeting on choosing the next business initiatives with the extra money we had. The other two meetings we had were the same as last year, presenting a plan for expansion into our specific global market and choosing the new CEO to lead the company. As usual, there were an abundance of memos we had to deal with, much more than was physically possible in the allotted time period we were given. After about 20 or so minutes of prioritizing which memos I was going to address, I prepped for my first meeting, the expansion presentation, and headed into the room. After my presentation, we had two more consecutive meetings in different rooms, first the CEO selection, and then the selecting the business initiatives we wanted to implement. All the rooms were on the fourth floor of Van Munching. After the meetings, the time was pretty much up, so we organized our memos in the correct order for grading and then turned them in.

Key Takeaways:

Overall, I think the Illiad was much more successful the second time around compared to my experience last year. This improvement was due to a multitude of factors. Firstly, much of my stress from last year’s assessment was alleviated when the business pitch component was eliminated. The business pitch was stressful last year because the instructions were vague and thus I was confused as to what exactly I was supposed to present and also it was another individual presentation during which I had to stand in front of all my peers and deliver a concise and well-planned 3-minute speech. This year, instead, I was able to participate in an additional team exercise, which was an easier experience for me because I work better in teams than just giving an individual speech.

Moreover, I think I improved a lot in terms of confidence and preparation as well as knowing what to expect going in because I felt blindsided freshman year. I had no idea what the assessment would be like and I didn’t read the critical preparation material before the assessment. I ended up scoring very poorly, especially on my confidence level. On the other hand, this year I was extremely enthusiastic with my business expansion idea and talked louder, as well as tried to be more confident by being assertive. I realized, after all, that I am a Vice President of the company and what I have to say should purportedly be valuable.

An additional reason this year’s assessment flowed more smoothly was because it was much easier to find the assigned meeting rooms this time around because I had a much better understanding of Van Munching as a building. Last year, because I didn’t have any classes in Van Munching and I was a freshman, it was incredibly tricky navigating the twisting hallways and offices of the upper levels and caused me to almost be late to my meetings. But this year I not only gave myself sufficient time to take the elevator and walk to the rooms, but I had a much clearer understanding of where the rooms were located, so the punctuality piece of the assessment did not stress me out as much as it did previously.

In general, from last year to this year, I acquired more public speaking experience and this time around, I was much less nervous when I had to stand up and give my presentation. Because I was better able to calm my nerves this year I actually remembered to ask for questions at the end and sound genuinely enthusiastic during my expansion presentation. I am actually quite proud of my progress this year because it shows I developed personally as well as professionally and that BSE has contributed to that growth.


11/2 – Everest Simulation

Summary: During this very interesting assignment intended to build teamwork, we were assigned to five person teams and given the task of climbing Mount Everest. Prior to the class session, we were given our teams and team roles. My team was Gerardo Espinosa, Ji Hwang, Jake Kram, Patrick Findle, and I. I was assigned the role of team leader, which I was excited to take on because normally I never assume leadership roles in group work. When we arrived in class we watched several video tutorials on how the online simulation worked and an expert talk about the real physical and mental difficulties of climbing Everest. These videos were designed to give us background information, which would be useful when actually completing the simulation. After we had an introduction, the five of us officially began the simulation. The simulation had six rounds, each round simulating another day and the opportunity to reach a checkpoint. There were five checkpoints so there was leeway for one day of rest. Each of us had different objectives as leader, photographer, environmentalist, medical provider, and marathoner. That was the whole idea of the simulation – how do you work cohesively as a unit when each of you have distinct goals as individuals but at the same time must work together toward one team objective? During each round, we would have Ji, the marathoner, predict the weather for the next day’s hike and decided whether or not to continue onward depending on each person’s health conditions and the next day’s weather. For example, on one day it was predicted to be negative degrees and there was a strong wind chill the next day, so some of us with weak health decided to stay behind and rest a day so we could recover our health and not have to be rescued because of critical health. Around the fourth checkpoint, we had to distribute oxygen tanks to team members in a way that everyone could reach the end. Finally, the simulation ended at the sixth round and everyone found out their individual score based on the objectives they accomplished and a collective team score all of us shared.

Key takeaways:

I ended up achieving 75% of my individual goals and 83% of team goals, which I thought was pretty good for my first try and figuring it out as I went along. However, others managed to score much higher because they had more streamlined goals and many less possible points to score out of. Since I was leader, I thought the simulation was more challenging because I had many more objectives to fulfill, such as making sure no one got rescued and ensuring as many people as possible made it to the top. It was incredibly difficult when everyone had different goals that did not align with mine and they would keep it secret so I wouldn’t know everything they knew; the information asymmetry made me distrust them more. Not everyone could win in a situation, so there had to be a give and take between all of us.

One of the biggest challenges for our team was figuring out what treatments different ailments required. Since none of us had experience climbing, we didn’t know which kind of medication to use on certain illnesses and Gerardo accidentally gave Patrick an unnecessary body bag when he was having trouble breathing. It didn’t end up helping and we wasted our only body bag. It was definitely difficult having a limited amount of resources available, only 4 treatments for 6 days and 5 people to share. Many of us kept experiencing weak health, so it was difficult to prioritize who needed which treatments when all of us had trouble breathing or weak mental acuity.

Another challenge was that we had to pool together information because each of us received different information depending on the day so there had to be clear and open communication in order to succeed. We didn’t realize that someone people had more information, such as weather and temperatures, than others and that we were supposed to share information until probably Round 3. The distrust generated from not sharing each others’ individual objectives and intentions probably caused a rift between us and in turn we were reluctant to reveal too much information on our personal screens to each other, which was detrimental to our group performance.

Overall, I enjoyed the simulation because it revealed many real life conflicts people experience, such as having different individual objectives but still having to collaborate together to accomplish a team goal. It was fun and interactive method to illustrate collaboration and was a good experience for me to be the leader so I could experience managing people. Sometimes successfully completing a team goal can become so challenging it is almost comparable to mentally trying to climb Mount Everest.