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The YOU you bring! Module 4

The three aspects of my culture/personality that I feel affect my performance in negotiations are; avoidance of confrontation, feeling the need to be agreeable, and being quiet or passive. 

My personality has always been someone who tries to avoid confrontation. I have of course encountered more and more of it as I’ve gotten further into my career, which has helped me to learn how to deal with this personality trait better, but I’m still not where I want to be. I think this avoidance of confrontation comes from my dad. He is an extremely non-confrontational person and is always well liked. I have always been very close to him, so I look up to him. This personality trait could hurt my performance in a negotiation because I become very stressed and continually doubt myself before, during, and after the negotiation. This makes me potentially concede to things I don’t really want and end up getting less than I wanted from the negotiation outcome. One way I can use this personality trait in negotiations is to be ultra prepared and utilize some of the suggestions in the “negotiating with emotion” article. I can meditate beforehand and visualize myself succeeding. I can also learn to shift conversations during negotiations away from the emotions (which are what make me most stressed) and towards focus points and issues. 

Another personality trait that I have is that I feel the need to be agreeable. What I mean by this is that I feel that I need to consistently just go with the flow and be nice and agreeable to changes. I think this stems from society. As a woman the general expectation is that you are pleasant and agreeable and you don’t “rock the boat”. I do think this can be a good trait at times in negotiations because it puts others’ at ease. It also allows me to listen more carefully and make people feel that I am effectively listening to their point of view. However, it can also be hurtful in a negotiation because I may verbally agree to something in a negotiation that I actually don’t agree with at all. I can utilize this trait by still being pleasant and agreeable in negotiations, but focusing more on my goals and the issues I am concerned with while speaking with my counterpart. This will keep me focused on what I want and help to keep me assertive in the situation. 

Lastly, a personality trait that I have is that I am a quiet person. I am not typically a talkative outgoing person but when I have something to say I will say it. I have always been this way and I think it stems from me being a twin and always having my more talkative twin to essentially talk for me. It took me a long time to be able to really speak for myself! This could both help and hurt me in a negotiation. On the one hand, it may hurt me because I am making it look like I may not care or be passionate about the situation or just don’t have anything important or intelligent to say. On the other hand, it can sometimes put people at ease by thinking that I am very much considering what they have to say and that I am more receptive than combative. But also, some personality types may be ill at ease because they don’t know what I am thinking about the situation at hand when I am being so quiet. I can utilize this personality trait in negotiations by using it as a tactic to show kindness, understanding, and mindfulness. This can show the other party that I am taking their concerns very seriously and do not want to jump to any conclusions as to how to solve our differences immediately. 

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Module 3 Negotiations Blog

The three influence tactics I can utilize in the next couple of weeks are; ingratiating, rational persuasion, and consultation. 

1. Ingratiating is when you seek to get others in a good mood or to think favorably of you before asking them to do something. This week I am having a staff meeting with my weight room employees where we will be going over the upcoming staffing and management changes as well as new policies for them. I will be bringing pizza in for them to enjoy right before we start our meeting. The purpose of this tactic for me is to alleviate some of the stress behind the upcoming changes and encourage my staff to relax and speak honestly. I chose this tactic because I think it will loosen them up off the bat which will allow for a more open conversation and open mind regarding the changes. I plan to say something like; “ I want you all to speak honestly with me about your thoughts on these upcoming changes and to let me know what professional staff can do to make this transition easier.”

2. Rational persuasion is using logical arguments and factual evidence to persuade others that a proposal or request is viable. I have to put together a proposal for my Director stating what “wish list” items I would like to propose we purchase with our remaining funds for this fiscal year. Each program area will be “competing” to get their items purchased. My goal is to persuade the Director to utilize the remaining funds to purchase additional new Weight Room equipment that our patrons have been asking for. This tactic is useful because facts are exactly what the Director is looking for when choosing how we can spend our remaining funds. I can show how these purchases can help us compete with the local fitness center market. In this proposal I can say things like; “I am looking to purchase the following new pieces for the weight room.... According to my bench marking of our local competitors, these pieces are highly utilized and will allow us to be more competitive with our fitness equipment.”

3. Consultation seeks others’ participation in making a decision or planning how to implement a proposed policy, strategy, or change. I will be utilizing this at my first meeting with my new fitness staff in a few weeks. I will be taking over the fitness staff, which will be new to me and to them. I want to utilize this tactic because I want to take advantage of the expertise my fitness staff have in order to create the ideal environment for my staff and our patrons. This will help to build a fitness program with longevity, consistency, and dedicated employees. By choosing this tactic the staff will feel they are involved with the change process and they are more likely to “buy-in” to the change. I can say something like; “ In order to ensure I am utilizing all of your expertise, I want to brainstorm with you some ways we can make this change successful and ways we can make positive changes with our programs. 

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Conflict & Me

1. In participating in the TKI, I learned that I have a tendency to compromise & collaborate in negotiations more so than compete, avoid, or accomodate. I wasn’t surprised by this as I usually like to make all parties as satisfied as possible in a negotiation situation. I also am very teamwork oriented (likely due to my involvement with collegiate athletics), so I am most comfortable with collaborations where the outcome is mutually beneficial. In the Texoil case, I utilized the compromise tendency to come to a mutual agreement that would be doable for both parties. However, this left me with an outcome that was still acceptable but lower than what I probably could have gotten if I would have been more aggressive. 

2. To develop my conflict resolution skills, I would like to develop my competing style of conflict resolution. I scored lowest on this in the TKI & this is due to me not being comfortable with being aggressive (similar to the “Nice Girls Don’t Ask” reading this week). I want to learn when it is appropriate to compete during a negotiation and be more aggressive when the occasion calls for it. In order to do this, I need to put myself in situations where I would need this style and ensure I am prepared with my wants and needs for the conflict to be resolved in my favor. 

3. A conflict scenario that I’ve recently dealt with in my career involved making changes to my staffing area to change the expectation of what they are doing during their shifts. My manager wanted to have them cleaning at all times and to put their more idle “watching the weight room” task on the back burner. While I did voice that I was concerned about this change, I did not compete to win this negotiation. I should have stated my “Who, What, When Where, Why, & How” to demonstrate the importance of my staff continuing to watch the weight room areas to focus on risk management and patron safety. But instead, I went with my tendency to compromise and ultimately compromised my belief that this change would result in my staff doing an incomplete job during their shifts. 

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Bias in Negotiations There are probably several bias situations I could think of now that I look back on my decision making & know what decisions biases are. The first instance that comes to mind when thinking of a situation where bias affected my decision making is when we were looking to purchase new fitness equipment at my workplace. This is something that we try to do as warranties for our equipment expire. The type of bias I experienced was confirmation bias. This is where you have a tendency to search for information that confirms your pre-existing beliefs. In this circumstance, I believed a certain brand and type of equipment was not what we wanted for our facility since I personally did not enjoy the equipment. This led to a bias as I was selecting vendors, brands, and equipment that we would purchase through our bid process. I would look for confirmation of my beliefs in each vendors’ bid so that I could justify my decision making. Unfortunately, this may have led to me purchasing pieces that our patrons may not even be interested in. In the future, I plan to make sure I have a solid idea of what our customers want by doing surveys and having open panel discussions about what type of equipment they are looking for. I can also utilize my coworkers more by getting their opinions, this would help to ensure I am not just confirming my personal beliefs while making the selection. Once the bid process starts, I can use the items our patrons wanted from the new equipment as a “must have” on the bid. This will ensure we can select equipment our patrons most desire!

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Change Reflection

1. Key Take Away’s

I have many take away’s after completing my two changes to my daily routine. One of the take away’s is that even though the changes were seemingly small (limited social media and no morning naps), they were still hard to stick with! I also learned that in order to be more successful with a change, you need to have a plan for how you can accomplish it instead of just winging it and seeing how it goes. At first, I didn’t change anything about my usual routine in the mornings to avoid morning naps. This made it hard to stick with because I had the time to take a nap. So after some thought & planning I made it to where I had too short of a time frame to take a morning nap! This goes along with my last take away of knowing that it may be necessary to make adjustments to your original change or plan of change after you try out the change for a bit. 

2. Success

Overall this “experiment” of change was only partly successful. I did learn a lot, one of those things being that I am not completely successful with every change I try to make. Because these two things are a habit of mine, it was not easy to get right every day. Therefore, I failed to comply several times but ultimately kept going! 

3. Managing Personal and Organizational Change in the Future

For future personal change, I think being more invested in the change would help with success. With the morning nap change, I kind of enjoy that, so I wasn’t as invested there. But with the social media change, I really hate that I spend so much time on it and I know I don’t need it, so I did better with finding alternate things to do. For organization change, I learned that when making a sudden change, you shouldn’t expect perfection. You need to give your employees time to make adjustments of their own and come to terms with the change before you expect success. I also learned that you need to make a well thought out plan of implementing the change and knowing how it will affect all aspects of the organization (or for your personal life) before determining what the change is and how you will go about it. 

4. Lessons For Leading Organizational Change

Overall my biggest lessons I learned from this exercise were that even small changes can be hard to implement, create buy-in for, and be successful with. I also learned that some changes may not be meant to be. I think this would be very beneficial for organizations because I have experienced in the workplace changes that we originally thought would work great and when they were put into action, they just weren’t practical. Realizing that change is constant and that your changes may need to be changed is imperative to not only being a successful leader, but also ensuring that your change initiatives are valid and beneficial to your organization! 

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Key Points on Leading Change

but When reading the “Leading Organizational Change” article by Ryan L. Raffaelli, I can honestly say that all of it resonated with me in some way and actually related to recent organizational changes within my workplace. But today I will just talk about three of those points that best resonate with me. 

1. Opportunity Gaps, which are potential future problems the organization may encounter if they do not make changes. Opportunity gaps can also be made apparent when a leader is comparing their organization to their competitors. This is meaningful to me because my department is currently undergoing a lot of changes with our professional staff and our student employee staffing patterns & the whole organization of our department. The reason that this point really applies to this situation is because I think that opportunity gaps are what brought this on. Our director and other colleagues went to two different conferences with local and regional recreation centers to get to know how everyone is doing things. This brought to attention that most places do not have a separate weight room and facility staff like we currently do. If we would combine the staff we could likely save money as a lot of facilities focus on. Our director saw this opportunity for our department. 

2. The second point that resonates with me is incremental change; meaning making small adjustments to organizational policies, procedures, etc.  This type of change indicates that the current system is not entirely broken, but could benefit from fine-tuning. This is meaningful to me because I think this type of approach to change shows that the leader is assessing the current state first before he/she makes large changes. It also gives staff time to get used to small changes leading up to bigger changes, which is easier to swallow and manage. With our current staffing pattern changes we are combining two area staff which will not only be hard on our student employees, but professional staff in those areas to make that change within 1 semester. It would have been more ideal to make small incremental changes throughout this semester and next to gradually lead us into Fall 2019 larger changes. 

3. The last point that resonates with me is localized change; meaning the change is rolled out slowly and makes changes in specific units of the organization at a time. This is meaningful to me because I think this is a great way to approach large organizational changes. This compliments incremental changes in that you are focusing on just one area making changes at a time. For our current situation, we could have the facility staff start to make changes first by taking on some additional or new duties. Then the next semester my weight room staff could start to learn and take on some facility duties. Then finally we could meld them together and it would make a lot more sense to all and be more manageable. 

Raffaelli, Ryan L. (March 21, 2017). Leading Organizational Change. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved December 6, 2018. Retrieved from; 

https://hbsp.harvard.edu/download?url=%2Fcourses%2F432186%2Fitems%2F8324-PDF-ENG%2Fcontent&metadata=e30%3D

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Developing My Network

Career Goals: 

1. Change career field into a business management/ leadership position

2. Work for a large company in a supervisory role

3. Achieve a comfortable salary sufficient for my position and expertise

4. Have a career that is both enjoyable and challenging

5. Be able to mentor young professionals

Now that you know what my career goals are, let’s talk about my current network and how it supports these goals. For changing my career field I am tied to a few people who are in different fields, but a lot of my contacts are in my current field (recreation and education). I need to branch out to a more corporate or even non-profit networking group. I have a connection to a large company through my father, but I need to get to know others within that company and specifically within HR. This will help me learn more about the company and the skills, knowledge, and characteristics they value in their employees. I think my current network has a good balance of strong and weak ties, butI could use more contacts all together to expand my network. My current network provides good leverage to know my transferable skills that would bode well for my future career aspirations. However, I need more ties that can increase my leverage specifically in the business or non-profit fields. Lastly, in most of my network areas I have good diversity, but I need to increase my diversity with ties of different race and ethnicity than me. 

My personal network is pretty strong, I have family who are more experienced and in different industries and then I have peers who are in different industries than myself. I also feel I have a good working network with coworkers and management that I’ve worked under over the last 7 years. What I think would better support my goals is to have a more diverse network of people outside of the education and recreation fields. I need to have a network of people from GE, P& G. Coca Cola, City Government, City Parks and Recreation, and other large companies within the Cincinnati & NKY areas. These are the types of organizations I would like to eventually work for, so I need to “get my foot in the door” through contacts. Also, as mentioned before, I need to diversify my network regarding ties with different ethnicity and race than myself. Businesses look for individuals who are experienced with working in a diverse workplace and working with a diverse population. Having diverse ties would prove that I have that experience. 

My plan for how I will develop my network to better support my own professional and personal goals will include the following; 

1. Finally beef up my Linked In account and actually look for ties within the Cincinnati and NKY business world. I can reach out to them to ask about their companies and the types of qualifications/ personalities they desire. 

2. Get connected with my fellow MBA students by reaching out to them to get a conversation started. Maybe ask them some advice regarding my career change and get to know what they do in their current positions. This would allow me to have diverse contacts and to aide me in figuring out what area of business would be best for me. 

3. Reach out to past managers to ask their advice on developing transferable skills. This will not only keep our relationship going, but also keep me at the front of their minds. 

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Module 2 Emotional and Social Intelligence Competencies

The three competencies I feel confident in are adaptability, coach & mentor, and emotional self control. Within my current position I have a lot of opportunities to utilize these competencies. An example of my adaptability competency is with some recent changes in my responsibilities that will not be taking full effect until summer 2019. But I have to start preparing for both my current responsibilities and future ones now. The difficult part is that I have not been given much direction for my new responsibilities and expectations, but I have to be adaptable and ready for any curve balls. For my second competency, coach & mentor, the situation I am reminded of is regarding my coaching position. This season I had a cheerleader who was struggling with finances, home life, and grades. Her grades really began to slip due to the extra stresses in her life and I wanted to be able to help a bit with that. I went grocery shopping for her one week and dropped it off to her dorm. This showed my student athlete that being a coach isn’t just about barking orders or ensuring everyone is getting things done at practice, it is about empathy and being a positive role model. My last competency is emotional self control. An example of this recently is when a coworker and myself were working on a large project for equipment replacement at the recreation center. We had to come up with pricing information and warranty details to present to our director who would then work with us to make a decision on what items to purchase. Throughout this process my coworker and I disagreed on many things regarding equipment to purchase and vendors to go with. But I was able to keep my emotions in check and forget about what I preferred as a user and focus solely on what our patrons desired, cost of equipment, and repair efficiencies. 

The three competencies that I need improvement on are; conflict management, positive outlook, and influence. For conflict management, I want to improve on this as I am meeting with my staff for their annual evaluations in March. This is a great time to give them constructive feedback. To keep it at the top of my mind I will begin to take weekly or bi-weekly notes on employee performance so that when we get to the eval I can recall particular situations. To develop this area I need to be more aware of issues and instances where my staff are doing well and where they need improvement. For this to happen I need to observe my staff’s performance frequently and speak with their coworkers often. The second competency I need to work on is positive outlook. I can improve on this when it comes to my thoughts and feelings towards my organization as a whole. I often catch myself feeling angry towards my organization due to financial constraints for our department or hardships for employees. To keep this at the top of my mind I can write down positive things about my job and organization and keep it by my desk. This will remind me why I enjoy working for this organization and keep me positive. In order to develop this area I can read up on the details of the financial struggles the organization is having and how they are managing that. If I am better informed I might see a more positive side to my organization and all of the efforts they are taking to handle tough financial situations. My last competency to improve on is influence. I plan to use this competency at our spring training for all NKU Campus Recreation student employees. I am planning this event along with coworkers and can ensure that what we review is inspirational and influential to our student staff. I would like to include a section on leadership development that could be influential to our students both in their current positions and their future careers. To keep this at the top of my mind I plan to meet with my planning committee several times leading up to the training to ensure we are all on the same page and that we review the plans often to develop the best possible influential presentations. Some behaviors to develop this area could include getting to know more of the rec student staff. At this time I know my weight room and personal training staff really well, but I don’t know the other area students well. By getting to know them I am more likely to have influence over them and to be inspiring. 

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Personal Change

What I am choosing to give up for two weeks is actually two things; One is that I have gotten into this habit of waking up early, eating my breakfast and drinking one cup of coffee and then just taking a morning nap. I never get a good quality extra 30-40 minutes in so it is really pointless. Therefore for two weeks I am going to not take my morning nap and do my daily yoga or read instead :) This will be hard for me because I’ve been in this habit for a while and I am always pretty angrily tired in the mornings. But I know that I would feel much more ready for the day if I spend this time doing yoga or reading! This may seem like a small thing so I decided to do something else as well. I will also be refraining from being on my phone looking at social media pretty much constantly each evening after work. I will bring this down to a 30 minute time frame each evening and the rest is for hanging out with my family, reading, and doing some more yoga! This is difficult for me because I use social media scrolling as a technique to zone out. But I want to find other ways to zone out and also be more in tune with enjoying my husbands company. 

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VIA Strengths Activation Worksheet - Emily Jackson

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Love Strength

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Honesty Strength

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Spirituality Strength

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Discipline Strength

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Love of Learning Strength

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My Top Leadership Strengths

My very top strength is “Love of Learning”, which means I like to master new skills and continue to develop myself. I definitely see this as a strength of mine because I try to never settle for mediocre in my career and in my hobbies. I feel that when you become complacent and comfortable with where you are, your talents and abilities will suffer and this can effect your happiness. But if you are continually improving and challenging yourself, then you will never get complacent and bored with how your life is going. 

My second strength is “Self-Regulation”, which is about regulating what you feel and being a disciplined person. I am an extremely disciplined person and really succeed through discipline. I enjoy being organized and knowing what my plan for each day is. I also take pride and comfort in being disciplined, as I understand this can be very difficult for many people. I think this goes along with my love of learning strength because it takes discipline to not be complacent. 

My third strength is “Spirituality”, which means I am consistently aware of the higher purpose and meaning of life that provide me with comfort and means to persevere. This is really important to my life because I always grew up learning about what it means to be a follower of God and I try to apply those concepts in everything I do and every interaction I have with others. Also, my faith provides me with comfort in knowing that on matter what happens in life, I can trust that there is a purpose for everything. 

My fourth strength is “Honesty”, meaning that I present myself in a genuine way and take responsibility for my feelings and actions. I do strive to do this on a daily basis, but I can’t say I always succeed. I do highly value this strength because if you are not able to take responsibility for your feelings and actions, you will not be able to overcome your weaknesses or shortcomings and improve yourself (going along again with love of learning). 

My fifth strength is “Love”, meaning I value close relations with others and like when sharing and caring are reciprocated. This was interesting to me because I am not one to value having friends necessarily, I typically just like to lean on my family. However, this made me think about how much I value my relationships with coworkers and the importance of those relationships. Without that type of work environment, I don’t believe I would be very happy both inside of work and outside. 

My top 3 insights into how I could use my strengths relate to love of learning, self-regulation, and honesty. For love of learning I could use this strength daily if I set out to learn a new fitness or training topic each day, maybe brush up on what is new in fitness equipment or programming. This would allow me to consistently bring new ideas to the table and not just be comfortable with where our current programs are. For self-regulation I could use this strength at work by regulating any negative attitude I may have towards the day. Sometimes my day is just not going really well and I tend to brood on that fact which effects other things I am doing that day. If I can continually self-regulate my feelings and attitude at work, I would likely get a lot more done and feel better about the day. Lastly, with honesty I could use this strength by getting to know some of my coworkers a little better. Coworkers that I’ve worked with for a long time I know pretty well, but any more recent ones I really haven’t tried to get to know them. By building this relationship I could ensure a more collaborative and team oriented environment.