Today we got to listen to guest speaker Jeff Kudisch from the Smith school’s career development department. He was an extremely engaging speaker and very effective at keeping the crowd’s attention. Sometimes he would randomly volunteer people and have them stand up and introduce themselves before answering a question. Having them stand up or come to the front of the class and introduce themselves forced people into a situation where all eyes were on them and took many people out of their comfort zone, but as I have learned, to grow in character and confidence, you must leave your comfort zone to expand it.
He talked to us a lot about how to interview, which I found to be the most important part of the talk. We learned little life hacks to help seem like a more qualified candidate for the job. The first of which is to talk about the person who is interviewing you. They have a lot of power to give you the job or give you a good recommendation to the ultimate person making the decision, so if you make a strong first impression by seeming like a nice human, they are much more likely to give you a job. We also took a look at a TV show who took someone who had an awful interview and turned them into someone who is worth hiring. Being able to see how awkward other people were and learning from their mistakes will help me when it is time for me to be in an interview. Looking at it from the outside, I can see the most important thing is to just be natural and confident.
Finally, the last thing we learned for interviewing is the STAR method. When people interview you, they want a situation, an action, and a result, so it is important to remember to answer in that order. Giving that order will make the job of the interviewer really easy, which will make them like you more. Also, when they go back to look at the notes from your interview, there will be a clear order and an answer for every column. Answers should just be a brief 2-3 minute story, so they can gather enough information while staying on a schedule.
The talk was very helpful and engaging, and I feel I picked up a lot of little things that will add up to make a difference in my interviews and career search. Seeing the way he gave a talk also gave me ideas on how to be engaging to a crowd. His pace and humor were all good and having the crowd interactions were also engaging. I think I will be able to learn from this talk and imitate some of his strong points when I have to give my own speeches or go to interviews.
He talked to us a lot about how to interview, which I found to be the most important part of the talk. We learned little life hacks to help seem like a more qualified candidate for the job. The first of which is to talk about the person who is interviewing you. They have a lot of power to give you the job or give you a good recommendation to the ultimate person making the decision, so if you make a strong first impression by seeming like a nice human, they are much more likely to give you a job. We also took a look at a TV show who took someone who had an awful interview and turned them into someone who is worth hiring. Being able to see how awkward other people were and learning from their mistakes will help me when it is time for me to be in an interview. Looking at it from the outside, I can see the most important thing is to just be natural and confident.
Finally, the last thing we learned for interviewing is the STAR method. When people interview you, they want a situation, an action, and a result, so it is important to remember to answer in that order. Giving that order will make the job of the interviewer really easy, which will make them like you more. Also, when they go back to look at the notes from your interview, there will be a clear order and an answer for every column. Answers should just be a brief 2-3 minute story, so they can gather enough information while staying on a schedule.
The talk was very helpful and engaging, and I feel I picked up a lot of little things that will add up to make a difference in my interviews and career search. Seeing the way he gave a talk also gave me ideas on how to be engaging to a crowd. His pace and humor were all good and having the crowd interactions were also engaging. I think I will be able to learn from this talk and imitate some of his strong points when I have to give my own speeches or go to interviews.
Dan Parsons
Dan Parsons came on one fine Thursday evening to give us a more in depth presentation about the Dale Carnegie program. Because we changed what the layout of the class was going to be into more action oriented learning, we ended up hearing many of the same things that we had learned in class to this point. He was a very good presenter giving us the same information with a new perspective on it. I feel as though I did get some value out of his presentation, and the repetition of what we learned in class was actually pretty helpful for remembering material as well.
What three things does it take to be successful in a presentation? The obvious answer is knowledge on the topic. How can one present on something they don’t know a whole lot about? Well Mr. Obvious, you are partially right; knowledge is important. It is one of the three things you need, but it is the least important of the three. What good is the knowledge you’re sharing if you can’t display it in a way that anyone wants to pay attention to? The Carnegie program estimates it takes up about 15%, while the other 85% is shared between skill and attitude. |
The skill of presenting is one of the biggest things. You would never expect to go out and perform a song on stage without having extensive practice playing an instrument or singing, and it is the same thing with presenting. Presenting is a skill, and you have to have purposeful practice if you ever want to be successful at it. Big time corporate leaders or bosses get up behind a podium and point to and read from PowerPoints in meaningless manners, and it is because they have never learned to successfully give a presentation.
The other attribute is a strong attitude. When you are presenting, you must have a presence if you want anyone to listen to what you have to say. In Parson’s words, you must “own the room.” It doesn’t matter who is in the room when you are presenting. When you are giving the presentation, you must be the most important person in the room at that time. Attitude also means being passionate about what you are saying. You can’t be speaking lethargically or unconfidently and expect anyone to listen, so you must have a presence and be passionate.
During the presentation, we also spoke a lot about body language in the presentation and workplace. Body language is one of the most important things to recognize and think about when going throughout your business advice. You want to avoid incongruences in your speaking, which means you want your body language to match the words that you say. People are more likely to watch what you do rather than what you say. Your body language and tone of voice makes up more half of the overall received message. This means that you want to show confidence by standing front and center stage and providing hand motions that can illustrate exactly what you’re saying. By giving congruent vocal inflections and body movements to your presentation, it strengthens your overall message.
It is really easy to get the jitters before presenting, but in reality, you need to get over yourself. People don’t think of you nearly as much as you picture them doing. All it takes to give a sick presentation is a little bit of preparation and a lot of confidence. I recently just started putting this into motion in my own life. I have always wanted to start a YouTube channel vlogging my life, but I had never had the confidence to do so because I knew people would heckle me about it. Although I am getting some negative comments from people, getting over myself and just making the videos has provided a lot of support from friends so far. I believe the confidence and tips on natural presentations and postures from this seminar will really help my vlogs turn out well.
The other attribute is a strong attitude. When you are presenting, you must have a presence if you want anyone to listen to what you have to say. In Parson’s words, you must “own the room.” It doesn’t matter who is in the room when you are presenting. When you are giving the presentation, you must be the most important person in the room at that time. Attitude also means being passionate about what you are saying. You can’t be speaking lethargically or unconfidently and expect anyone to listen, so you must have a presence and be passionate.
During the presentation, we also spoke a lot about body language in the presentation and workplace. Body language is one of the most important things to recognize and think about when going throughout your business advice. You want to avoid incongruences in your speaking, which means you want your body language to match the words that you say. People are more likely to watch what you do rather than what you say. Your body language and tone of voice makes up more half of the overall received message. This means that you want to show confidence by standing front and center stage and providing hand motions that can illustrate exactly what you’re saying. By giving congruent vocal inflections and body movements to your presentation, it strengthens your overall message.
It is really easy to get the jitters before presenting, but in reality, you need to get over yourself. People don’t think of you nearly as much as you picture them doing. All it takes to give a sick presentation is a little bit of preparation and a lot of confidence. I recently just started putting this into motion in my own life. I have always wanted to start a YouTube channel vlogging my life, but I had never had the confidence to do so because I knew people would heckle me about it. Although I am getting some negative comments from people, getting over myself and just making the videos has provided a lot of support from friends so far. I believe the confidence and tips on natural presentations and postures from this seminar will really help my vlogs turn out well.
Iliad
So I guess this is a preliminary Iliad review of myself because I do not have my scores back yet; however, I feel a little self-reflection before seeing my actual scores will be good. One of my biggest weak points last year was not finishing all of my emails. I can honestly say that I think I doubled my inbox score. I finished everything with about an hour to spare, and I feel that I had good responses to every email I wrote. I worked extremely diligently and efficiently.
My other weak point was in giving my speech, and this year, it did not go that much better. I had a mental plan of talking points, but when I got up there I totally blanked. This is typically not like me because I usually have no trouble presenting. I think the issue was that I did not write down what I wanted to say, so I didn’t completely remember the points and facts. If I would’ve bulleted a couple talking points, I think I would have done immensely better. If I got the chance to do it again, I believe I would do much better.
The final part of the Iliad is two meetings which I will combine into one section because they go very similarly. The first time I completed the Iliad, I killed the meetings. This time, I still killed it. Not much difference to be honest. We had some good give and take discussions and came to a final consensus that seemed reasonable for all of the tasks.
I eagerly await my results to see how I have improved since last year. I think I scored in the top percentile for almost everything this year other than the speech, but at least I know what I have to work on in the future.
My other weak point was in giving my speech, and this year, it did not go that much better. I had a mental plan of talking points, but when I got up there I totally blanked. This is typically not like me because I usually have no trouble presenting. I think the issue was that I did not write down what I wanted to say, so I didn’t completely remember the points and facts. If I would’ve bulleted a couple talking points, I think I would have done immensely better. If I got the chance to do it again, I believe I would do much better.
The final part of the Iliad is two meetings which I will combine into one section because they go very similarly. The first time I completed the Iliad, I killed the meetings. This time, I still killed it. Not much difference to be honest. We had some good give and take discussions and came to a final consensus that seemed reasonable for all of the tasks.
I eagerly await my results to see how I have improved since last year. I think I scored in the top percentile for almost everything this year other than the speech, but at least I know what I have to work on in the future.
TED Talk
The TED talk was a pretty long process, and to be honest, I didn’t even realize what we were doing in class for so long pertained to the TED Talk. For a long time before we actually had to make the talk, we were practicing storytelling and how to make a story interesting. I thought that was its own assignment, but when it came time for the TED Talk, we needed a story. The story for the assignment was about the importance of talking to strangers because you never know what they are going to be in your life. It was a true story about how I met my best friend in elementary school by randomly talking to him even though it was awkward; however, my TED Talk ended up being about the subconscious influence of color in peoples’ lives. Obviously the story could not carry over, so I had to come up with something new.
I ended up telling a story about how my mom took over a year to pick a color to paint my basement, since I really wanted to talk about color in my TED talk. I personally thought that the story went extremely well in presentation. I started out with a brief few sentence opener to introduce my topic, but the story ended up being my main introduction. It gave people a funny little reason to pay attention to what I was saying. The point of the story was that I thought it was ridiculous that my mom took a year to pick the color of walls, but in the end, I was proven wrong. Even though the situation seems like hyperbole because she took so long, she made me eat my words, which really gets the audience to listen in. The audience probably sided with me in thinking my mom was crazy, but when I ended up being in the wrong, it makes listeners curious as to the reality of the situation.
I then talk about how marketing agencies and companies use the influence of color to make people remember their ads or logos better. I showed an image of McDonald’s colors and showed people that even though there is no image there, they can still tell some companies solely by color. I followed up by showing that they can use color in a similar way to make people remember or recognize important parts in presentations.
The next section of my presentation introduced the importance of color in what people wear. When giving speeches or going to job interviews, the colors you wear can give certain impressions to people, and I drew attention to this and gave people tips on how to use it to their advantage. I followed this up with a brief conclusion and summary of why color is so important.
This TED talk is probably one of my favorite assignments I have ever had in any class. This was the best way to give real world presentation skills, and it was extremely effective. In order to improve at something, you just have to do it. We have been watching TED talks all year and learning things about them, so to finally get the chance to do one ourselves was invaluable experience. In the future for the class, I would not be opposed to making students give two different TED talks, maybe one towards the middle of the semester and one towards the end.
Giving the talk forces you to become comfortable on stage. When you have to continue talking for 5 minutes straight about a topic, it really forces you to make sure you know your talk. There is no way to “BS” the assignment. Besides presentation skills themselves, I feel I have gained some other important experience. Practicing has never really been my strong suit; I am more of a get up there and wing it kind of guy. I find that I have enough charisma to get me by on most things. Having a pretty strict 5 minute time zone presentation made me have to practice enough to get my talk consistent. I had to learn to deal with time, and although I did not practice quite as much as I should have, I feel forcing me to practice some is a good habit. In the end I thought I did very well, and I am pleased with the outcome and the experience I gained.
I ended up telling a story about how my mom took over a year to pick a color to paint my basement, since I really wanted to talk about color in my TED talk. I personally thought that the story went extremely well in presentation. I started out with a brief few sentence opener to introduce my topic, but the story ended up being my main introduction. It gave people a funny little reason to pay attention to what I was saying. The point of the story was that I thought it was ridiculous that my mom took a year to pick the color of walls, but in the end, I was proven wrong. Even though the situation seems like hyperbole because she took so long, she made me eat my words, which really gets the audience to listen in. The audience probably sided with me in thinking my mom was crazy, but when I ended up being in the wrong, it makes listeners curious as to the reality of the situation.
I then talk about how marketing agencies and companies use the influence of color to make people remember their ads or logos better. I showed an image of McDonald’s colors and showed people that even though there is no image there, they can still tell some companies solely by color. I followed up by showing that they can use color in a similar way to make people remember or recognize important parts in presentations.
The next section of my presentation introduced the importance of color in what people wear. When giving speeches or going to job interviews, the colors you wear can give certain impressions to people, and I drew attention to this and gave people tips on how to use it to their advantage. I followed this up with a brief conclusion and summary of why color is so important.
This TED talk is probably one of my favorite assignments I have ever had in any class. This was the best way to give real world presentation skills, and it was extremely effective. In order to improve at something, you just have to do it. We have been watching TED talks all year and learning things about them, so to finally get the chance to do one ourselves was invaluable experience. In the future for the class, I would not be opposed to making students give two different TED talks, maybe one towards the middle of the semester and one towards the end.
Giving the talk forces you to become comfortable on stage. When you have to continue talking for 5 minutes straight about a topic, it really forces you to make sure you know your talk. There is no way to “BS” the assignment. Besides presentation skills themselves, I feel I have gained some other important experience. Practicing has never really been my strong suit; I am more of a get up there and wing it kind of guy. I find that I have enough charisma to get me by on most things. Having a pretty strict 5 minute time zone presentation made me have to practice enough to get my talk consistent. I had to learn to deal with time, and although I did not practice quite as much as I should have, I feel forcing me to practice some is a good habit. In the end I thought I did very well, and I am pleased with the outcome and the experience I gained.
Everest Simulation
Yet another one of my favorite assignments I have ever completed. I love a good challenge, and I love a good simulation. The Everest simulation combines groups of 5 people with different role playing positions and unique tasks in order to try to climb the highest mountain in the world. Throughout the challenge, you have to monitor everything from peoples’ abilities to walk, avoid frostbite, eat, have enough oxygen, avoid illness, and much more. On top of this, there are multiple goals that everyone in the group has to try to reach for themselves.
One of the hardest things in the simulation is to differentiate the team’s goals versus the individual goals. It is physically impossible to reach each individual person’s goal because some goals are conflicting. For instance, you have 6 days to make it through 5 camps to the top of the mountain. The photographer has a goal to stay an extra night at the first two camps, which would make it impossible for him or her to reach the summit. It is possible to leave them behind so the rest of the group can reach the summit, but that conflicts with the group leader’s goal of keeping the whole group together. That is just one of many examples of how goals among the group can differ, which means one of the most important tasks the group has to focus on is prioritization. We asked ourselves, “How can we get the most goals of everyone while still reaching our team goal of climbing the mountain?” There were times when our group had a lot of friction deciding, but ultimately, I believe we did a pretty good job of prioritizing our tasks. Our total group score came out to be a 72%, which seems like a C, but compared to most groups, it is actually a very good score. |
Our score would’ve been even higher if we hadn’t run into another big problem: time management. We were often very thorough in figuring out our team challenges, which meant it took up a lot of time. The challenges that we spent a deal of time discussing were all answered correctly; however, when we were on the final stretch, class was coming to an end. We didn’t have the time to discuss what everyone should do, which resulted in our environmentalist making the climb to the peak of the mountain when she really didn’t need to. She ended up dying, but if we had the time to evaluate our goal and see that she didn’t even need to go, we would have scored much better as well as solved the problem with allocating our oxygen tank supply. The point is, if we had a bit more time or more effectively shared info with each other, we could’ve gotten a score around 80.
I continue to mention sharing info, which is another point of taking the assessment. Each person in the group gets their own unique information told to them on their screen, and challenges involve a mixture of information from everyone. This info that we have to share is called unique info because it is info that is known by only one member of the group. In normal group, members tend to discuss shared info, info that everyone already knows, which is not helpful to advancing the group. In order to succeed in the challenges, it was imperative that each group member figures out what knowledge was specific to them in order to get the highest group knowledge.
The Everest simulation was a great tool to simulate how groups should work together to beat challenges. The group has to prioritize, share unique info, and manage time to make decisions that get the group to their final goal. My group and I did extremely well for our first time with a team score of 72 and a personal score of 90. I believe my work at the gym’s challenge course helped me in being a successful team member, and I am very confident in my teamwork ability.
I continue to mention sharing info, which is another point of taking the assessment. Each person in the group gets their own unique information told to them on their screen, and challenges involve a mixture of information from everyone. This info that we have to share is called unique info because it is info that is known by only one member of the group. In normal group, members tend to discuss shared info, info that everyone already knows, which is not helpful to advancing the group. In order to succeed in the challenges, it was imperative that each group member figures out what knowledge was specific to them in order to get the highest group knowledge.
The Everest simulation was a great tool to simulate how groups should work together to beat challenges. The group has to prioritize, share unique info, and manage time to make decisions that get the group to their final goal. My group and I did extremely well for our first time with a team score of 72 and a personal score of 90. I believe my work at the gym’s challenge course helped me in being a successful team member, and I am very confident in my teamwork ability.