Leadership skills
Leadership means inspiring and helping others reach their full potential. A leader is not someone who commands and controls others to get them to do what is expected. A leader should be open to other ideas and must recognize and respect different perspectives. Having the leader of the team allocating tasks randomly to the members didn’t help the team progress and it only generated conflicts within the group because it felt that the members’ opinions are of no importance and they are only expected to follow orders. It is only when members started to speak up to address problems and the leader started to pay attention to their concerns that the work became clearer.
Teamwork and collaboration skills
The success of the event depended on members working together. Tasks cannot be carried out by a single person. Every member is expected to help with the work and it is only when everyone synthesizes their varied skills, that better results are to be seen. During the first weeks of the booth, progress was slow. The event did not gather much interest from students and the team only managed to get few signups. It is only when all members came together to work in the booth and sell food for additional fundraising that better results were to be seen. Not only did that make the work enjoyable but we raised a considerable amount of money despite the short period of time we had.
Skills that can be applied in the future career
Adaptability and flexibility skills
Today’s workplace environment is fluid and is changing. Consequently, a person should be able to adapt and to perform tasks beyond one’s expertise. Learning something unfamiliar can be intimidating because it is about stepping outside of your comfort zone, embracing change shows a person’s potential of growing. I was in the marketing team for the event but that did not mean that I was expected to help only with advertising the event. In fact, I found myself carrying out other tasks as well such as allocating tasks to members during the event and explaining the event flow to the host because I felt that actions should be taken to improve some aspects of the work.
Problem solving skills
Nothing is a given, things do not always work out as planned and unexpected problems can arise at any time. So, team members should know how to be flexible and how to find solutions not just sit idle without taking actions. While the group’s goal was to get at least 100 audience members, only around 60 members registered and with only 3 days left till the event, it was essential to find a way to get more audience members to register within the short time span instead of staying idle and complaining about things not working out. That is where the idea to count audience votes came out and we reached our goal of having more than 100 audience members.
