final paper5

Running head: LEARNING ACTIVE LISTENING

Learning Active Listening Robin Teegarden PURDUE UNIVERSITY

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In this class focused on learning about active listening, I gained many skills that will be useful for my career to become a more effective leader and team member. In this class, topics that were discussed included collaborative leadership, oral communication, motivational cues, understanding social and environmental context, all of which are important to improving active listening skills. I have been applying active listening for several years, but have not been able to fully describe or articulate the skills I have been using. ow I understand that I have been employing many useful skills, but I also reali!ed that I have used some techni"ues that would more likely stop people from talking with me than encouraging them. #ecause of this class, I have been able to recogni!e some of the practices that I have employed that will interfere with or prevent having the most effective conversations I can with people, both in my personal and professional life. In addition, I had the opportunity to participate in role play exercises which helped me understand my strengths and weaknesses as an active listener. I also know now how to improve on these skills, drawing out more information from those to whom I am speaking and having more meaningful and effective conversations. This Leadership$ Active Listening class has helped me become a better listener, and given me more skills to help others, which is important in my career because I hope to lead teams of designers, artists, programmers and entrepreneurs to create games. %ollaborative leadership is when people in lead positions take time to work with their teams, working not only to craft a good work environment, but also to improve the work of the team and themselves. I learned about collaborative leadership for the first time in this class. I plan to improve my skills in this area in the future by working in teams and to applying the skills we learned about in class& all of which inform collaborative leadership. It is important to work with your team to learn about them,

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their strengths and weaknesses, and how everyone can bring the whole pro'ect to a new level. (orking to create a good work environment makes you more approachable so that team members will come to you if problems or conflicts arise, or if they feel that you have been disrespectful. If you address all these situations calmly and thank them for bringing it up to you, you will gain the respect of those people which will help in professional situations to improve the work and pro'ect results of a team. If someone has a problem with an action that offends them, if the environment allows them to feel comfortable enough to bring it up for discussion, this can help resolve issues and improve the ability of the team to work. If issues about you are brought to your attention and you work to change your behavior, you will earn the respect and trust of the team. I think that it is important for me to improve my skills as a collaborative leader because I plan to lead teams in the future to develop games. )y strengths and areas of growth are discussed below as each of these topics are important in being an effective collaborative leader. I think that leading a team can be as educational as it can be satisfying and rewarding because you can learn even more about and improve yourself through leading *+hankman, Allen,  -aber%urran, /0123. Interpersonal skills are very important for leading, such as being able to talk to others and relate to their experiences. This is the area where I had the greatest growth during this class. I learned many skills related to this topic, particularly in the role play exercises. The skills I learned and better developed during this class in the area of interpersonal skills were validating the experiences of others, summari!ing or paraphrasing what they said, minimal encouragers, greater eye contact and asking open ended "uestion to bring out more information. ow that I am aware of these skills, I plan to work to continue to improve these specific skills by practicing them in all my

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interpersonal interactions, including in teams. #eing able to relate to others allows me to have better, more meaningful, relationships and to better understand others. These interpersonal skills also helps with resolving conflicts and understanding others which contributes to effective leadership *ichols, /0043. 5ral communication is also very important for effective leadership. Talking with others allows one to build relationships in professional situations. 5ral communication is also very important in communicating ideas and concepts to others, such as in my professional field of game design. I have ade"uate oral communication skills, but there are some areas in which I need to improve. (hen giving presentations and during discussions, I now am aware that I use many 6filler7 words, and am working to reduce them. (ithin the game design field, one must be aware of and understand the terminology of several disparate fields, which is another element of oral communication skills. 8nowledge in these disparate fields will give me the ability to communicate across these fields, thus helping me to create a better game with a team, and I still have much to improve on in terms of learning key words in different fields in game. Thus, in this class I learned new elements that are important to oral communication skills in teams or  for leaders, and have identified specific skills I will work to include in my future team interactions *ichols, /004& +hankman et al., /0123. Leaders need to be aware of the social context and environment within which they working. #y being aware of the social context, a leader can make informed decisions when presented with information, and be able to handle the information appropriately, such as being aware that someone wants to remain anonymous. #y paying attention to the social environment in a team, a leader knows when a conflict is

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taking place, and can properly handle the situation. )y peers have told me in this class that one of my strengths is being aware of social and environmental contexts. 9sing awareness of the social context and environment allows a leader to know better how to handle situations *+hankman et al., /0123.  Another important skill for a leader is to recogni!e internal and external motivational cues and be able to utili!e them to encourage peers to work effectively. )otivation is what drives one to complete tasks and accomplish goals. :xternal motivation is when something re"uires you to complete a task, and this is usually accompanied by a deadline. Internal motivation is when you are working to accomplish something for yourself to gain a sense of satisfaction. I now understand what internal and external motivation is, and an area of growth is that I need to work more to identify what internally motivates team members with whom I am working. I think that a leader needs to recogni!e what drives a person both internally and externally. If a leader can harness someone7s internal motivation, they can encourage them to work much harder than forcing them to work only through external motivation *ichols, /0043.  An important skill for a leader is to be able to effectively build relationships. 5ne factor is that developing a set of shared values in a team or group helps build relationships. I think that building relationships is one of my strengths because I can craft a set of shared values effectively. #y creating a shared set of values, you create a shared set of ethics, which better helps define the actions of the team, and this contributes to building better relationships in the team *+hankman et al., /0123. :mpathy is working to understand what others are feeling, and understanding why they are feeling this way. I think that empathy is very important, and I think that

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being empathetic is one of my strengths. There are many reasons empathy is good to use, especially when talking with others. ;or example, empathy allows one to avoid interpersonal reactivity, or a negative reaction to something that one might say. Interpersonal reactivity happens when someone reacts to feeling attacked or discredited. :mpathy also allows you to celebrate with your team members their accomplishments *ichols, /004& +hankman et al., /0123. To be an effective leader, you need to know yourself. #y knowing yourself, you can recogni!e your limitations and places that you need help to accomplish a task. This allows you to improve, and allowing a better product to be created by a team. Although I think I am somewhat in tune with myself, this is an area I can improve on to be a better leader. To lead others effectively, knowing your limitations and where the team can cover those limitations is key. #ecause members of the team can work in areas that you cannot, and you recogni!e this, the team can create a better pro'ect *+hankman et al., /0123.