Finding Your Passion Outside of Work

In many of my Business Management classes there is always talk about finding a career that you are passionate about and one that relates to your purpose in life. I understand that this will make your work-life balance much easier but at the same time I think this can cause you neglect things externally from work if you do truly love what you do. I personally have always looked at a job as a way to get money which then allows me to do the things I love with the people in my life that mean the most to me. This is most likely a very biased response based of where I am in my life being a senior in collage but I do not see this view changing anytime soon. I personally don't think your job should be your purpose or passion because then it becomes your whole life and the last thing I would want is for my job to takeover the things I really do enjoy. I ideally want to work in the healthcare industry because I enjoy the thought of helping others even though I am not on the clinical side of the operations. I also want to be in management for this same reasons to help people below me, and to also lead others to a common goal. This sounds like something I would enjoy but by no means is this a passion or my purpose. I believe my purpose in life comes externally to a job, and is more family and relationship oriented. This is why i think life is more important to find things outside of work that truly let you enjoy your life. For me I have always been competitive and loved sports and I plan on playing sports until I physically can not. Specifically Ultimate Frisbee has a community which is a ton of fun and I have played against people in their 60's. Frisbee it self is not my passion but just being competitive with a team while also having fun.

Team Contracts and Group Projects

A Team Contract is a "document prepared by each team prior to starting work on group projects. Students should be held accountable and responsible for their own actions. Students will develop their. own "rules of engagement" through development of a Team Contract." (gatech, 2017) In a few of my classes we have had to do these and it was a waste of time for these classes. As a group we came up with this contract which took about 3 hours total for one of the classes and it basically had generic stuff that we had to do as individuals in the group. In theory this sounds good like everyone should do this but in actuality nothing would have been different if we did not do them. All our assignments still would have gotten done at the same level of performance that we did them with the contract. This is because of a few reasons. The first reason was because there was an evaluation at the end of the class for your peers so if someone did not keep up with what they should have been we would have went to town on them in the performance eval at the end of the semester. The other reason is specifically related to our group. We were all pretty good students who genuinely would feel bad if we were not contributing equally to a project as everyone else. This has been the theme for almost all my group projects and in the Paul college almost every class is made up of group projects. When it comes t group projects I have never been a fan of them. I personally like things done a specific way unless its a boss telling me they would like it a different way. This has always made it hard for me to be supportive about other members ideas and decisions. In some group projects I have found myself doing more work then I should only because I know that the stuff I might produce would be better quality then my group members. This is not always the case but it has happened quite often where group members just do not know how to do something so I take it over out of the fear that they might not do as well. Overall I understand that group projects are meant to represent the real world and that most organizations require groups for projects. This being said once its your job it makes it much easier because most the people there are competent and have proved worthy of receiving the position the are in.

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