Gender Biases at Work

In one of my classes we had the Dean of Paul college at UNH Deborah Merrill-Sands speak with us about her life and her leadership style. She is a very successful and passionate person who has had an interesting life consistently dealing with conflict from others in her own field. The most addressed topic she spoke to our class about was the bias that consistently flooded her way as a women leader. She spoke about two case studies where the only difference in the two were the names of the manager in it one was Dan and the other was Danielle. The overwhelming majority of the cases with Danielle had very negative attitudes and responses about her leadership style and the case with Dan like his leadership style. The most shocking part is that it was both women and men who have this natural bias towards women leadership in the study. These natural biases are awful in the business world. People must do there hardest to see things with an open mind and leave any prejudice out. My teacher also spoke about this topic when dean Merrill-Sands was in and said that "most people have this natural bias but its about ignoring it and being open minded towards it" He also talked about a college who was said to be the least bias leader they know and his response was "I am extremely bias I have just learned how to control it and be open better then most people. Overall if we can erase or ignore our personal biases the workforce can be much more diverse creating a better environment overall. 

Brainstorming Constraints

Throughout my classes in the Paul college we have focus heavily on innovation and idea generating. With my major focus being in Management, this has lead me to some very interesting entrepreneurship classes which heavily really on solving issues in today's world. Innovation and problem solving are the keys to not only successful business but lasting business's. A key part to innovation used to be brainstorming. Brainstorming definition from Websters dictionary is when people "produce an idea or way of solving a problem by holding a spontaneous group discussion." This may have seemed to be very effective years ago but in today's business world  we have a much more diverse workplace and this is in the form of gender, race, ethnicity, and even extrovert and introverts. This is because managers know that diversity of all kinds leads to a company that is well rounded. When it comes to brainstorming introverts have a hard time contributing. From personal experiences of being an introvert, I need time to fully think about what I am going to say, but with to much time I always shut down most ideas I have in my head before ever saying them out loud. This is generally true for most other introverts as well. For this reason brainstorming is something that had become horribly ineffective and stereo-typically gets dominated by the extroverts who with no filter. They may be generating some great ideas but it isolates the introverts. This is why modern day businesses must adapt. Organizations need make it so everyone's voice is getting heard and brainstorming is not the way to do this. The time constraint rushes ideas and people are worried about what others will think about their ideas. This limits people to recommend ideas that are safe and do not innovate in anyway. In order to innovate and be creative its important to have some bad ideas at first but if your to worried about others opinions this will never happen. Also with the diverse workplace peoples opinions might be drastically different and even if there is a good idea other people may shut it down there on the spot. Organizations are better of have their employees take time to sit alone and write down their top 10 ideas and then bringing then all together on a later date.

Leadership in a Crisis Situation

In today's class we spoke about leadership in a crisis situations. A crisis is "a time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger." They described 3 types of crisis's which are Business/Professional, Public Relations, and Personal. Each one of these can drastically effect an organization. They also spoke about the steps to managing crisis which are below.

Steps to Managing Crisis
1.Internal communications
2.Understand the potential impact
3.Position yourself
4.Create a means for monitoring
5.Learn from lessons

Ideally managers hope these type of crisis situations do not happen but they eventually will in some way or another for all organizations. I do believe the steps are set up in a good order and cover most of the details but I believe there is a crucial step that comes much before all of this. All organizations need to be proactive. All modern day organizations have to best guess what crisis could happen long before they might and have a set plan and steps to take in case it does happen. Obviously certain crisis's are unavoidable but its necessary to plan for events that are foreseeable. The more proactive an organization is, the easier it will be to solve and combat the issues at hand. By taking the time to create a proactive risk management plan organizations will be much better prepared.

Professional Development

It is crazy to think that just two years ago the only jobs I had on my resume were sandwich artist at subway and pest control technician. In the start of my junior year I was starting to become terrified of what I was going to do with my life. Many of my friends have already started internships at this point in their lives and it made me feel like I was far behind in where I should be. Its amazing to think that after just two years I have a job in the industry I am passionate about and it will turn into my full time position once I graduate in less then a month. I now look at my friends who are stressing about what they will do after graduation and I am just glad I have this figured out.

The road to get here was a lot of work but it seemed easier then it looks. I applied to about 25-30 places and got about 20 interviews my junior year and got only 2 offers. One offer was from a company I did not ethically want to work for because it was a lot of cold calling and another from a local company I have never heard of before but seemed nice in my interview. I ended up taking this position and quickly became an important contributor to this smaller operation. After the summer there and the fall semester of my senior year I found out about a job position in a hospital and I took a risk of leaving my current job and went for it. I got luckily and got it because my previous job had made me very qualified for.

This shows how quickly you can get into the career you want if you just put in the effort. I want people reading this to know that if you are stressing about your future its important to turn that stress into motivation to succeed. I personally was somewhat scared that I would not ever get an internship while in school and that I would be terrified to graduate with out a plan, but it is possible to quickly change this.

Meetings are Terrible but Necessary

The article below focuses on the negative side of meetings and from personal experience I do have to agree with a lot of the things said, but I do however believe meetings are necessary to have and give people a clearer picture of a plan that would not be possible to display over email. The article speaks about meetings as if there is some other way to get the information across but does not bring any alternatives to the table. To sum the article up they say the following: Meetings are distractions, Meetings wander off topic, Meetings have unnecessary people, Meetings multiply time spent, Meetings aren't work, and there is a The time cost of meetings. To me all of these things are in some way true to happen in meetings, but if you are focused on the correct goal some of these can easily be avoided. I know at my organization meetings do not go off topic because we are all busy enough and do not have time get off topic. At my last organization this was very true though. Meetings would end up as different discussions and this was because my boss had a laid back personality, and also goes on accidental tangents. To me its up to the leader to stay focused and they guide how the meeting goes. In my current organization if you are at a meeting it is because they expect you to either have to gain some knowledge from this for your own project or contribute your knowledge to some else. I personally leave every meeting with knowledge that benefits me, and the other people have contributed to my role and position. Some employees may feel that they did not have to be there because they got nothing new out of it but in actuality they had information for others. The article says that meetings multiple time spent which in my organization is not true. My meetings are for important projects and reports and having a 30 minute meeting with crucial people saves me a lot of time rather then emailing or calling these people and waiting for a response that may or may not answer my questions. In a meeting I ensure the people I need to be there are and can efficiently answer my questions that I need to know which saves me a lot of time. The article says meetings are not work which is true and goes into detail about why this is bad. I completely disagree with most of this. Yes this is not work, but its the time to display the work that one person has been doing to management so they understand, or its where management is explaining steps for projects or goals of the organization. This is indeed not work but a crucial part to any organization and would cause chaos with out these. To me meetings are crucial and necessary to any organization and I believe that the author of this article has had unfocused management which has stemmed the views they have about meetings.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244499

Sub-cultures

In any organization they always try to show how important their culture and values are. If you go to any website of a business you will see somewhere the mission, values, and vision statement. Companies are trying to hire new employees based on how their values match the organizations. In my experience with my internship and my current job they both have these on their website but I never felt that when working at both that they truly displayed the values they said they did. In my current role as a Revenue Analyst at a hospital it is hard to encompass the core values of the hospital in this position. In general hospitals have pretty similar mission, vision and values and they are usual more related to the clinical side of things. Working in the Revenue Department we have a completely different mind set and tend to see patients more as statistics, data, and money. This causes a huge disconnect from the hospitals mission of "We partner with individuals and families to attain their highest level of health." In our organization and many like ours there are multiple sub-cultures underneath the overall org culture. There is nothing wrong with this as long as all the departments and sub-cultures are cohesive and working together. It is when there is a conflicting culture that this becomes and issue to organization,

Boss Gives to Much Work?

In the article I posted below it talks about how to approach your boss or colleagues if you have to much on your workload. They brought up some pretty obvious points but I believe they ignored that for some employees this is not much of an option. In my position at the hospital I have a relatively small workload being new and part time currently so I do not face this issue, but the two other full-time Analysts have way to much on their schedule and are being asked for more everyday. In their case they usually go into a meeting with our boss and have no choice and get assigned a new project on top of their immense list of tasks. If it is a little project asked to do they usually have no issues taking it on, but if it is a continuous weekly or monthly report it really bogs down their work process and schedule. In the article they talk about turning down the request and how this is a good thing. They say "you’re not being lazy, and it does not reflect badly on you.” In fact, she adds, saying no from time to time increases your credibility. Bosses want their employees to speak up if there is anything that’s keeping them from performing at peak levels.” I personally would try to avoid this at all costs. Being new to the organization I am trying to do all I can to help out and be utilized so I have been taking on as much as I can. Currently it has been okay but eventually there will be a point where this is not going to be possible anymore. I will need to effectively utilize some of the strategies in the article in order to stay organized and not have to much of a work load that I can handle.

https://hbr.org/2017/01/how-to-tell-your-boss-you-have-too-much-work

Listening as a Leader

Today's class spoke about the topic of listening. This is one of the most over looked qualities of a manger that is absolutely necessary to be a good manager or leader. They mentioned active listening which is a communication technique which requires the listener to fully concentrate, understand, respond and then remember what is being said. Ideally this is something all managers should be doing when dealing with employees and vice versa. Many managers however do not have the time or focus to actively listen which causes them to have to selectively listen. Selective listening is a listening technique that filters and summarizes to achieve comprehension. With this people focus their attention on only specific aspects of what the person will be saying. If done effectively this can be a very useful tool for managers to use when dealing with their employees and also their bosses.

In an article I have posted below it mentions three levels of listening that people tend to do.
Internal Listening: Which focuses on your own thoughts, worries and priorities even when your pretending to focus on the other person.
Focused Listening: This method is where you are listening to the speaker but not connecting to them in anyway, missing small nuances of the conversation.
360 Listening: In this method you are listening to what they are saying, and how they are saying it and are able to ask questions.

Out of the three above I notice myself doing the first one the most. This is not because I am uninterested with what people say but instead when people say stuff it causes me to think about certain things in my life and my mind tends to get side tracked with other stuff, I have worked towards becoming a better 360 listener but it has been challenging. Working towards  my professional career has helped a lot since it is necessary that I listen in order to keep my job.
In my opinion managers who have started low in a company tend to be very good listeners because in the lower positions you have to be a good listener to succeed. Entrepreneurs might be a good leader but struggle with listening because they have never have taken orders or directions from other people therefor not being able to practice the necessary listening strategies you get over time.

https://hbr.org/2016/05/listening-is-an-overlooked-leadership-tool