Archives for the Month of November 2006 on Christopher Mazzola's Online Journal
Summer Internship
Of the most interesting topics of Management 250 lectures has been the one about summer internships. A representative from the career center provided a power point presentation about the different internship opportunities the career center can help provide for the summer. Several people, including myself, asked questions about this process, and her responses shed a lot of light on what I should do for the summer. After the presentation, I strongly considered using the career center as a source for getting a summer internship this summer in Cleveland. Initially, I wanted to work in New York City for the summer, but the presenter made me realize how many possibilities are waiting here in Cleveland.
Peer editing
In our last Management 250 class, we reviewed the second parts of our learning plans. With our prepared rough draft of the learning plan, we had to travel around the classroom and peer edit each other’s papers. The interactions I had with other students were positive ones. No one was overly critical of my work and each person offered me great advice of how to improve my paper. I found it interesting to read my classmates learning plans because it gave me a good look into their lives and what their goals for the future are. I had a very good discussion with one particular classmate who had similar career goals as me. After peer editing each other’s papers, we talked about our majors and how the classes we were taking would be very useful for the future. After returning to my seat, I looked at my paper and realized how valuable peer editing can actually be.
Feedback and Coaching
The topic for this past Thursday's Management 250 lecture was feedback and coaching. The class was shown several PowerPoint slides as to the significance of feedback in the workplace and how it is considered a negative thing to most people. Instructions were given to break into small discussion groups, and each group was given a vignette describing an incident. My group received a vignette describing a person's concern about a misunderstanding in the workplace, and he wanted to know how to approach his boss. We referred to the slides and agreed that the best approach for the person would be to use SAFE. SAFE is an acronym that stands for S-ummarize, A-sk, F-ormulate a plan, and E-xpress. Using this approach the person would successful in showing his concern about the issue while maintaining a professional attitude.
Catch Your Dreams
The other day in class, we participated in the Catch Your Dreams exercise. The instructions were to write down seventeen goals that you plan on achieving in your lifetime, each on a separate post-it note. After completing this, the next objective was to categorize each goal into different cluster groups. My first cluster group was "things I will most likely achieve." One of the goals in this cluster was becoming a father and raising a family because it is an important goal for me and something that I feel is highly attainable. The second cluster group was things I might achieve. For this, one of my goals was owning a ski house in Utah. Things I will most likely not achieve was the third cluster group. Riding in a barrel over Niagara Falls and boxing a kangaroo were some of the goals in this group because, although I thought they would be fun and interesting to do, I had doubts whether I would ever complete them in my lifetime.
This exercise was very interesting because it made me consider some of my aspirations in life and it also tapped into my imagination. Some of the things I put down made me consider whether the goals I have set for myself are worth pursuing or not. The next step in my life is to consider which of these goals are priorities.
HR Simulation
This week, my HR simulation group met for approximately one hour and everything went smoothly. We had recently completed the fourth quarter of our first year, and now we are currently working in the first quarter of our second year. We had some money left over in our budget, so we decided to add yearly bonuses to employees. Hopefully, this will increase morale as well as productivity in the workplace. Our company, Motel 6, is working on completing a mission statement so potential shareholders will have a better understanding of the direction of our company. By following this mission statement, we hope to improve our company's results in the second year.
Jonah Creighton Case
It is unfortunate that racial discrimination exists in the workplace. In an ideal world, equally qualified people would have equal opportunities. However, it is something that our culture is faced with on a daily basis.
Although racial discrimination is widespread and exists at many companies, the Jonah Creighton case put into perspective what happens when someone actually takes a stand against such an injustice. Most people who are unaffected by this sort of issue remain apathetic. Jonah Creighton was a man who risked his job and friendships to pursue a matter he felt very strongly about.
I felt that this was a very important matter to discuss in class. Even though I drew my own conclusions about the case, listening to what others thought helped me see the issue from other points of view.