Learning from the course Essay

This paper seeks to reflect on and summarize my learning from the course about my own interpersonal skills in relation to each of the course topics on motivation, understanding others and learning styles, group dynamics, teams and teamwork, conflict management, communication, leadership and power. My generalization will be supported with specific interpersonal experiences I had during the semester with my team, friends, family and co-workers. The context will provide me data to use in analyzing how effective I am in working with other people. Based on my analysis, I will be setting three (3) specific goals for improving my interpersonal skills. I would say that I really learned a lot from the course about my own interpersonal skills in relation to each of the course topics. I shall however give emphasis only from those experiences from which I believe I could attain the purpose of this paper – that is to be able to set goals for improving my interpersonal skills. On the topic motivation, I found that each person can be motivated externally or internally depending the need or want of the person. For example, I am motivated to learn many things and have high grades in school at the same time. External motivation could come from the fact that the course topics, such as what we have in this course, are to be very interesting. In a deeper sense however, I realized that the internal motivation carries more weight than the external motivation (Sternberg, 1999). Using the same experience or example, I found out that my motivation to learn more should be supported by my acquiring good grades, which would give me the deeper meaning in my life as to what I can achieve in life. I know that the school is a training ground for more and bigger responsibilities in real. Knowing that learning more and having high grades could boost my self-esteem, I have that feeling that what ever I do in studying the course increases my desire to learn. The learning thus came from my eagerness to discuss the lessons to persons I believe could help me know and learn more about the subject matter and this experience had the effect of increasing my communication skills with different kinds of people. In the process of my desire to learn motivation where I was indeed motivated, I came to realize my learning styles and those of the people that I dealt with. The learning style is just that method or style that would help in effecting the learning the easiest and the most comfortable way. As I pursued my motivation in class, I also learned the value of group dynamics, teams and teamwork together on how to handle some conflict among groups of people. I also found that one of the most critical concepts is communication, which should comprise or involve all possible human senses to be interested with people and these people will get interest on you in return. I found out than an effective communicator must be the one who could listen well before talking (Porter-O’Grady, T. and Malloch, K. 2003). Based from the analysis, I realized that I learned how effective I am in working with people and how ineffective I am as in some aspects of interpersonal skills. My three specific goals to improve my interpersonal skill include the following: (1) to be able to empathize more with people by increasing my capacity to listen to people, (2) to be able discuss issues with people in way that could benefit the participants even from a personal level and, (3) to be able build a deeper relationships with people that communicate with which would afford more meaning communication for personal learning. To conclude , I would say that learning is fun with people and better learning could come from relationships created because of better communication done in the process of dealing with them. Since the groups of people could include teams in schools, friends, family and co-workers where each group have different characteristic and relationships, it follows that there is dynamic growth in terms of relationships after each encounter or communication with each group of people. I realized as well how complex a person is in attaining happiness so that understanding the concepts and application of understanding others and learning styles, group dynamics, teams and teamwork, conflict management, communication, leadership and power are just means to attaining happiness. When I view now that these concepts in each topic are being taught to students in the context of management in an organization, it could simply be asserted that an organization is but a way to find happiness for people as each member of the organization tries to do his or her part in satisfying the needs of various stakeholders and in the process, the needs of these people providing satisfaction of needs and wants are also satisfied. As need ands wants of people get satisfied, happiness is attained and this will continue and on while humans live. References: Porter-O’Grady, T. and Malloch, K. (2003), Quantum Leadership: A Textbook of New Leadership, Jones & Bartlett Publishers Sternberg, R. (1999), Handbook of creativity, Cambridge University Press