I have never found it very hard to connect with others, make friends, give speeches, or feel influential. I feel I have a natural talent for those skills, but I also believe there is always room for improvement. The best way to practice anything is just to do it. One thing I do have trouble with is remembering people’s names, so in order to practice remembering names and honing my communication skills, I plan to try to meet a random new person every day. I will do this by finding someone who is sitting alone in the diner and asking to eat with them. I will try to remember their name, and I will try to get acquainted. Although it will probably be extremely awkward to start, I believe it will get easier with time and teach me important skills about how to make it feel natural.
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I also work as a challenge course facilitator at Eppley where I met hundreds of people. Participants feel like I care more when I remember their name from the crowd, so my goal is to try to learn ¾ of the names of all of my groups that attend the course. Although it might not do much for me to remember their name long term, practicing remembering names will be extremely beneficial to me.
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As for my looking back at my reflect assessment scores, I am pretty surprised by them. I scored low in the self-awareness category, which I feel is very wrong; however, in order to improve on the skill, I will make sure to ask for feedback in my work and from teammates in group projects. Judging their ideas of me versus my own should give me an indication of how well I know myself. Another thing I would like to be able to do is improve my ability to deliver tough messages which is a portion of interpersonal intuition. In order to do that, I will have to focus on giving honest feedback to others when they ask for it without being too harsh. The third thing I would like to do is move my operational thinking bar to the left. Currently I am too bound by rules and directions, and I would like to be more okay with change. In order to do this, I would like to recognize opportunities of change in my life and accept them as they come. This will make me stay constantly on my toes to ensure that I can be comfortable with being uncomfortable.