The first months of business school are loaded with stress. One is in an unfamiliar environment, surrounded by people one does not know. Moreover, I am expected to produce more work faster than I ever have before. In addition, I am competing with people of a high caliber than I have ever encountered before. This, combined with my high expectations for my performance can generate tremendous pressure. However, for me, this pressure motivated me to work hard in a focused fashion. In a project, I was in a situation where we were asked to collaborate and do Marketing strategies for a firm that we were assigned to look into.
There were challenges I encountered along the way. Resistance came as we buckled down to work. I had to facilitate several groups that had different viewpoints. They insisted that their decision was the right one. I had to let each group voice out their own opinions and then I had to remain unbiased amidst the dissenting opinions. I emphasized to the group that to perform well, they must know more than simply what is expected of them. They must know how to do their assigned tasks. That means, they must have the competencies to perform. In the process, I had to consider whether additional training is needed for the group members to remain competent in the context of the project on hand. The norms of attitude, values, and beliefs of the people within the group differed greatly and it remained a challenge until the end.
Some of the things I would do differently would be to manage my time well. Business schools deliberately give me more work to do than any human could manage to complete. They will want to force one to do two things. First, they will want me to seek out help from other students generally through study groups. This sort of team formation is exactly what businesses expect of their better employees, so it is appropriate for business schools to try to generate it as well. Second, I will learn how to prioritize my assignments. Some readings are critical and I should do them thoroughly and well. I need to know which part of our project needs to be skimmed for their main points. Just as in any leadership position, the potential work that7 faced me then greatly exceeded my time availability to do it. Thus, I must learn what is important for each course and focus on precisely that doing additional work only as time allows.
I learned that to rely on teamwork, some of these forms of power are more useful than others. Collaboration starts as a mutual agreement of varying levels and purposes between groups, organizations, companies, and governments. There is no single or simple answer to which style of leadership works best. Currently, the transformational model has many supporters, reflecting the efforts of many leaders to transform outdated forms of organizations into more competitive ones.
From this group effort, I learned that some skills beyond those taught in the core courses will be vital to my career progress. The softer skills include negotiation ability, which I was able to maximize during the group work, oral and written communication prowess, and the ability to influence different types of people in a range of situations. Harder skills include the ability to price money, analyze currency risk, put together worldwide cash flow models for large corporations, or build econometric models of factors influencing demand for complementary products across various markets. Indeed, my primary reason for being at business school is to propel my career forward. The group activity was a meaningful exercise in how to handle work more effectively and productively.