Student Engineering Leadership Program

SEL Program:

The Student Engineering Leadership Program was a 3 day long program that gave me the opportunity to learn more about myself, my leadership style, my strengths and areas for improvements. I had the chance to improve my self-awareness and my ability to reflect on and learn from my experiences.

The first assessment I took was the leadership assessment that helped me better understand what type of leader I was. I had the chance to see when I was both an effective leader and follower. The assessment results showed me that I was a Doer and a Feeler. A Doer is a person who needs concrete experience and active experimentation, while a Feeler is a person who has abstract conceptualization and active experimentation.

In this conference they also defined Leadership as the followings: Leadership is a mutual influence relationship focused on accomplishing purposeful results. To me this means that I have to set clear goals and inform others how these will get done. However, it also means that I have to take time out and see things from others perspectives, ask them what they are thinking and getting everyone’s input before beginning a task. During the conference we also had the chance to learn about different listening styles and the importance of being an empathetic listener and asking about others feelings and being observant of emotions around your environment. I came up with an easy way to remember how to communicate with others: Emotion, Repeat, Set Goals.

During the conference we went through multiple different activities to discover different team-building skills, behavioral styles, and ways to influence others. The most important lesson I learned from these activities was that being a director is telling others about what I think and how they would do the task at hand if in your situation. My view on leadership as being a strong leader who delegates others efficiently had slightly changed because I learned the importance of asking others their opinion and offering to help them reach their goals. However, as a leader I have to make sure others understand what I like and don’t like. The most surprising lesson I learned was the importance of body language and how important it is that I learn how to communicate efficiently without many words or without being able to see (phone) or talk efficiently (foreign language) to others.

The last day of the conference was dedicated to reflecting and receiving feedback from others. It was very hard to not only give honest feedback to our group but also receive feedback in front of multiple other people. However, by the end of the day it became easier to do this and it is a skill that I have used as often as possible and has really helped me in my internship, personal relationship, and my classes. The trick is to give good critical feedback, meaning that you give feedback that is useful and teach them how to fix it. One must give them a good feedback first then tell them one place they can work on. A few feedback cards that were read by other students to me have been provided below. At the end of the conference I decided that I have to become more decisive and delegate work more quickly so that I am not perceived as being frazzled. I also learned about the importance of empathy and showing emotion while conversing. To add to this, in communication one must not forget to actually ask for input directly and not expect others to just offer their opinions if they are not asked.