My_Leadership_Journey

Entry 1: Leadership as part of the CMU varsity football team Dear Journal, As a part of the Carnegie Mellon University varsity football team I was put in a position to develop my leadership skills as a part of the offense and running back core. I had always considered myself a good leader throughout high school; being elected as a captain for my baseball, football and basketball teams in high school and serving as a class representative and varsity club representative for most of my high school career. Upon arriving at CMU I knew eventually I would have the same leadership opportunities as I did in high school if I maintained the character and personality strengths I possessed in my high school years. Eventually, my junior year of college, I had developed into a strong leader of the running back core and was able to gain the respect of my fellow backs as well as the coaching staff for my work ethic and dedication to the team on and off the field. Back then I thought I had leadership techniques all figured out and considered myself a very strong leader. I quickly realized, however, that I still have a lot to learn when it comes to being as effective as possible when it comes to leadership and communication techniques. The techniques and leadership strategies I have learned and developed this fall as part of QMM 891 and the MMM program in general have helped me develop even more and become a much more effective communicator and leader, as highlighted in the following entries. I am excited to fill you in on some of my other notable leadership and communication experiences this past fall and look forward to many more notable experiences in the spring. Entry 2: Team building activities at Krislund Dear Journal, We went to Krislund at the beginning of the semester to take part in some team building and communication exercises to get more familiar with our team members and classmates. The experience was a great time and really worked as a good ice breaker, getting everyone in the program much more comfortable with each other and helped us learn a little about one another. My favorite part of the trip to Krislund was the team building exercises on the low ropes course. The activities were challenging and required a lot of teamwork and communication between team members to successfully complete the activities. These activities were very beneficial because they did a great job of engaging everyone and helped all of us understand each other’s communication techniques and strategies. I think the Krislund team building activities were so fun and effective because everyone was interested and engaged and that made for an effective development period for all of us. Entry 3: Being elected as Corporate Relations Chair for the QMM program Dear Journal, At the beginning of the semester we elected student representatives for our QMM class. I was nominated for Vice President, Social Chair and Corporate Relations Chair. I chose to run for the corporate relations chair because I thought it would be a valuable experience being able to be the individual in the program who gets the opportunity to interact with and present guest speakers and visitors from the professional world to the QMM class. I ended up winning the election by a slim margin but decided that it would be good if Mohit and myself acted as co-corporate relation chairs since we both ran and the election was very close. I think being elected as the corporate relations chair shows that my peers in the QMM program think I am an effective leader and communicator and thought I would represent the program well when it comes to interacting with corporate individuals as the “first point of contact,” per say, from the QMM program. I think allowing Mohit to act as co-chair with me also shows that I am willing to share the workload and responsibility of the position and am thankful for the willingness of Mohit to help; a character trait that is good to see in any effective leader. Entry 4: PSU Career Days at BJC and Business Building events Dear Journal, The campus recruiting week up here at PSU where companies come and talk to students about prospective job opportunities is called “Career Days.” This year the Career Days activates I attended were the recruiting fair at the BJC and the supply chain fair in the business building. A main part of the QMM 891 course prior to Career Days was revamping our resumes to show the opportunities we were getting in the MMM program and repositioning myself as “a supply chain guy with a finance background,” as Ron put it. We also worked on our “individual commercials” to use on recruiters to offer a bit about our background, the MMM program, and what we were looking to do after school. Those classes really helped me reposition myself and gave me a lot of confidence when it came to talking to company recruiters. The Career Days were a huge success for me and led to a lot of good interviewing opportunities and eventually a job offer. The communication techniques I was able to develop in QMM 891 along with the work experiences and educational background I have really helped me stand out allowed to me to have many very valuable opportunities with many successful, interesting companies. Entry 5: IBM information session Dear Journal, Coming from the Career Days was an opportunity to interview with IBM for a position in public sector consulting. IBM is a great company and, coming into this program, consulting was a career path that I thought would be very interesting and rewarding. I liked that consulting careers allowed individuals to experience many different jobs in one career. I attended an information session for IBM during career days to talk to some recruiters and employees and try to get an interview when they came back in a few weeks. I went to the information session with some questions prepared about the company and individual experiences like we discussed in QMM 891 class. The IBM recruiters gave everyone a presentation about IBM, who they were looking for and what a career at IBM offers. After the presentation was a short cocktail hour used for networking. I was able to get to know the head recruiter and was able to give him my commercial that I developed as part of QMM 891 and got to hear about his experience with IBM. At the end of the information session and cocktail hour he told me I was a lock for an interview and he really liked what I had to say about the MMM program and my background. The commercial I developed and my ability to interact and talk intelligently about the MMM program and my future interests helped me lock up an incredible interviewing opportunity with a great company in IBM. Entry 6: IBM interviews Dear Journal, As noted in the prior entry, from the information session success with IBM I was able to line up a series of interviews with IBM on campus. The interview set up for IBM was a set of 3 half-hour behavioral interviews with 3 different level employees in the public sector consulting group. Going into the interview I brought my revamped resume that we put together in QMM 891 as well as copies of my team charter and lean and green plant audit forms (as discussed in QMM 891 as well). Again, to open discussions I was able to use my commercial developed in QMM 891 to offer a little background on myself to the interviewers and allow them to develop some questions for me. Overall, the interviews went well and I was able to use the STAR story strategy of answering questions with personal examples to make situations “real” for the recruiters. All of the recruiters made a point to tell me that they really enjoyed the discussion and thought I had some great experience that I was able to articulate well throughout the interviews. Although I did not get a job with IBM I think the interview was a great opportunity to develop my interviewing skills and make things real using the STAR method of presenting stories. Entry 7: P&G super-day interviews Dear Journal, As a result of my success in the first round of on-campus interviews with P&G as well as my success on the reasoning test they require I had the opportunity to attend an on-site super day of interviews with P&G at their headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio. The opportunity was really amazing, starting with dinner at the office Thursday night and followed by the interviews, reasoning test and Supply Network Operations program discussion on Friday. At dinner I was able to meet and talk to a few high level executives in the supply chain group of P&G. I used my communication abilities and my commercial developed in QMM 891 to introduce myself and give them a little background about me. I was able to get them to talk a lot about their experiences with P&G and learn a lot about what it takes to be successful with a company like P&G. During the interviews I was able to use my STAR story telling skills and work experiences to make my stories real for the interviewers. I also had a lot of good questions ready to keep the interview going and show my interest in the company and program, like we discussed in QMM 891. Overall, the entire 2-day visit was a great experience and offered a lot of new experience I had never been a part of before. The super day ended up being a great success and resulted in a job offer with P&G in the Supply Network Operations program. Entry 8: Advanced Manufacturing Forum Dear Journal, The MMM program hosted an Advanced Manufacturing Forum which focused on sustainability in corporations. The speakers for this years Forum were E-Z-GO, Frito-Lays, Eaton Corporation and Phillips Respironics. The Forum gave us the opportunity to interact with high level executives from large, successful companies as well as meet many of the individuals that make up the QMM board of directors. I was able to volunteer as one of the individuals who checks in all of the speakers and individuals attending the Forum. The forum and the check-in job gave me the opportunity to communicate with and get to know many successful individuals and network with some prospective employers. Per the QMM 891 course work we had learned I was able to hold meaningful, targeted discussions with these individuals and learn a lot about corporate sustainability efforts. The knowledge I was able to gain regarding corporate sustainability helped me develop stories for future interviews and has been valuable information to have as part of this MMM program since corporate sustainability has become such a big deal in business these days. Entry 9: Accepting my P&G offer Dear Journal, As a result of my P&G super day I received an offer from them to work full time next year as a part of the Supply Network Operations team. Receiving an awesome offer from such a large, successful company as P&G just showed how effective and valuable the leadership and communication skills I have developed over this semester as a part of QMM 891 have been. I used the skills I learned in being an effective communicator and story teller during interviews to impress the interviewers and get them to offer me a full time position with their company. This is the first job offer I have ever received and accepted so, taken the communication skills via email and telephone that we have talked about briefly in this program I was able to thankfully accept my offer with P&G and begin the process of full time employment. I will be working in Cincinnati, Ohio at P&G’s headquarters as a part of the Supply Network Operations team. I start next June 24th and am extremely excited about this opportunity with P&G. Entry 10: Acting as Project Leader for 871 new product development project Dear Journal, As part of QMM 891 we developed leadership journals at the beginning of the semester to ensure that we had a baseline of responsibility and metrics to measure team success prior to embarking on the journey that has been this semester. As part of our team charter I volunteered to be the project leader for or QMM 871New Product Development project. As team leader of the new product development project it has been my job to keep up-to-date on all due dates and presentation times regarding the project, set up team meetings to discuss upcoming deliverables and gate requirements, and run design and presentation preparation meetings. I have really enjoyed being the team leader of the new product development project because I have some valuable background experience with new product development from my summer internship at MEDRAD and from my undergraduate days at CMU. The communication and leadership skills I possessed, as well as those developed in this program have helped me be a strong leader in this projects and has directly resulted in high marks for our new product development reports and presentations and high team morale regarding compatibility and work ethic of everyone on the team. Entry 11: 891 presentations Dear Journal, As part of our QMM 891 course we were given the task of providing 2 main presentations, 1 on a public policy issue and one as a recruiter for a large Fortune 500 company. I chose to do my presentations on illegal immigration and IBM recruiting. Using the communication skills I learned in QMM 891, as well as the tactics to keep the audience involved that we discussed in 891 I was able to give 2 effective, functional presentations that kept everyone interacting in the presentation and involved. My favorite part of the 891 presentations was the self-critiquing aspect involved in the evaluation of the presentations. I enjoyed this because it allowed me to see my presentation from the point of view of a viewer instead of from the presenting point of view. This self-critiquing allowed me effectively take a look at what I did well in my presentations and where I could use some work to allow me to become a more effective speaker in the future. Entry 12: Communicating across cultural differences Dear Journal, As part of the MMM program we have been put in groups to do projects throughout the semester. Also, being part of the QMM program means being almost part of the minority as an American student since 50% of the program is international and 50% are US born students. My team for the QMM fall semester is myself, 2 other American students (Allen and Dennis), 1 student from Thailand (Ti), 1 student from India (Mohit) and 1 student from Kenya (Willis). Being able to communicate across cultures has been a very valuable skill that I have been able to develop as part of the MMM program. These skills will surely benefit me in the future since the world is becoming a very global workplace (as discussed in QMM 891 and other MMM courses). I am very happy with how effective I have become at communicating across different cultures since becoming part of this program and I look forward to getting to know a new group of individuals as well as I know my current teammates next semester when we get new teams. The communication skills we have all developed have been very beneficial in helping our entire class grow close as a group and we have all become very good friends throughout these past few months together, it’s been an incredibly fun and valuable experience!