Can you believe it? We have come to the
end of the semester...finally!
I hope you have learned a few things about leadership and public speaking! :-)
Let me share with you a few observations as a tutor watching you guys work together:
(1) Choose your team members carefully: A number of students approached me at the end of the Spies R Us presentation and said that they would be unhappy if everyone in the group had the same grade for the research and presentation. This was because a member of the group did not put in any or much effort and hardly contributed to the project in any significant way. What can you learn from this? You need to choose your team members very carefully! The friends you hang around with may not be the people to work with! They may be enjoyable to have fun with, but when it comes to work, they may just want a free ride! Do you know of friends who are real nice guys but make terrible team members?
(2) Leaders must lead: I never asked the groups to officially nominate a leader. This was purposefully done because I wanted to see how you guys would react and work on the project. Would you adopt a laissez faire attitude? Or would someone stand up and lead since there is a leadership vacuum? May I suggest that you take the initiative and lead? Don't wait for someone else to take the lead. You will waste a lot of time if you don't get a leader.
(3) Leaders do not need to have all the answers: Isn't that great? A leader doesn't need to have all the answers! A leader helps the group pull together and work towards a common goal--completing your Spies R Us on time and delivering an excellent presentation! As a leader, rally your team members together. When you meet to select a hypothesis, involve everyone. Ask for their opinions. Ask the introverts what they think and keep the extroverts in check if they run wild! Keep the group focused on the goal! If your goal is to select the hypothesis by the end of the meeting, then be sure you accomplish that by the end of the meeting. Make sure everyone knows the time frame. Make sure everyone's role is clarified. Make sure expectations and responsibilities are clear. Also, stress consequences! This means, if anyone in the group does not play his or her part, then the whole group suffers. Get the group to apply pressure on the non-performing member. If that doesn't work, then do what you have to do--approach your tutor--me--and let me know
early in the process, not at the last day after your presentation!
(4) Leaders must be encouraging. Believe you me, everyone wants a pat on the back...especially in a pressure-cooker situation like Singapore! We tend to manage people with the stick...and there's a place for that! But, we need to also be encouraging, paying a compliment for a task well done or for initiative taken by your group members. Find ways and means of catching your team members doing the right thing! We are so good in finding faults and blind to people's good points.
(5) Leaders are open to feedback. I have been telling you guys to work on your Spies R Us stuff in MeL. I have also told you to email me if you have questions. I also said I would be available from noon to 2pm on the days I am on campus. Make use of these opportunities to get feedback on your project, your progress in IAC, and if you like, in some personal issues. Tutors and lecturers are here to help you develop, not just academically, but also as a whole being. Make use of these opportunties!
(6) Leaders continuously work to improve themselves. Phew! All your student assessments are over! You can kiss IAC goodbye forever!!! But, have you forgotten question 7 in Student Assessment 1? Huh? What's the question? Ha! I knew you're going to ask that! :-) In what areas would you like to develop during your time in NP? Remember what you wrote down? If you don't, then take some time to work through that question and then come up with 2 or 3 things you want to work at during the remaining 2 years at NP. If you have remembered what you wrote down, what are your action steps? If you don't work on these things, you will be exactly where you are right now two years down the road! And that is very sad!
(7) Leaders delegate! Some Spies R Us leaders, in their eagerness to do an excellent job, try to plug all the gaps themselves. This means that whenever anything is left undone or not done sufficiently well, the leader dives in to make sure it is done well. Wah...very
siong for the leader! Delegate the work. Make sure the expectations are clear. Get feedback. Keep everyone on track in terms of the time line and the project's progress.
(8) Leaders are transparent. Leaders are vulnerable. They allow others to see themselves, warts and all! From your student assessments, I have learned a lot about you guys. A number of you have an ITE background and you shared you don't feel good about that. Hey, nothing can change the fact that you were from ITE. But, you can change your life from this point on! It is not a shame to be an ITE graduate. If other people look down on you, do you know what? It's not your problem. It's their problem! Make use of every opportunity to develop yourself. Some of you shared about your coming from broken homes. Nothing can change what has happened. Just don't allow the past to rob you of your future. You have your whole life ahead of you. You have only one life to live, don't waste it! It is said, when life hads you a lemon, make lemonade! Don't allow the negative things in life to sour up the rest of your life. You are too intelligent and gifted to throw your life away! As you are transparent, the real you comes across. People want to be led by real, vulnerable people, not phonies.
(9) Translate enthusiasm into interest. This is something I found out about myself from the feedback from 4 tutorial groups through the Student Evaluation on Teaching. The 4 groups rated me very high on enthusiasm for the subject matter but not very high in eliciting interest from the students. This means that just because I am enthusiastic about a subject does not automatically mean students will be interested too! I need to find ways and means to catch the attention of students. Hmmm! How about inviting Maia Lee to speak to the tutorial groups for 15 mins? A nubmer of Spies R Us groups chose tatooing as their research topic! Or, invite a former prison inmate? Some groups chose the integration of former convicts into society as their research project. Hey, how about getting a cosplayer to come? What's that? Ah...I won't tell you! That's my strategy to get you interested! Enough about me! As a leader who is interested in a subject, you have to make sure your team members are also keen about the subject. It is very difficult to motivate a person to work on something that he or she has no interest in!
OK, enough about leadership. Let's turn to public speaking now. Here's what I observed from your Spies R Us presentations:
(1) It's a presentation! So look at the people you are presenting to! Don't face the screen and read your powerpoint slides. We all can read the slides for ourselves. You need to connect with your audience. You have something worthwhile to tell them. So look at them. If you were a car salesman and you never looked into the eyes of your potential customer, wouldn't that be strange? You already did the research. You did the powerpoint slides. You already know your subject matter. Now look at the audience and sell them your message. You have a
message2tell people. So, tell them!
(2) Give people a road map! It is good to have the first presenter lay out the road map of where you want to take the class to. Introduce your team members and then tell us what each person will be presenting. When you do that, we get the big idea of where we will be heading with the presentation. The last speaker then recaps by telling us where we have been and where we have ended up. A number of groups did that, but most didn't! :-(
(3) Reherse your presentation! Don't waste your research, time, and efforts! You may have put in tons of hours into your project and then throw all of this away by making a lousy presentation. When doctoral (PhD) students complete their dissertations, they are required to face a panel of experts who will question the poor students about their dissertations. These students have put in hundreds of hours researching whatever they are researching. All of this will go to waste if they give lousy presentations.
(4) Don't rush or be deliberately slow! You have an allocated amount of time. Pace yourselves!
(5) Use cue cards. if you're too nervous and your mind tends to go blank, then use cue cards to help you remember the points. But, don't read from the cards!
(6) Ensure that your presentation is readable! Some of you had small fonts and I had to squint to read what you were projecting. Don't write out sentences. A presentation only requires the main points. And now a word about colors...Please use dark colors. I'm partially color blind! So, if you use yellow, orange, red, etc., I will have great trouble reading what you are presenting.
OK, I'll stop at this point!
I hope you have enjoyed IAC as much as I enjoyed my time with you. It is a pity we only meet once every other week! Like they say, "Parting is such sweet sorrow!" But, I'll see you around campus. Please stop me and reintroduce yourself to me if I just walk past you! I have 12 classes this semester, so that is a lot of students! :-)
(4) Leaders must be encouraging. Believe you me, everyone wants a pat on the back...especially in a pressure-cooker situation like Singapore! We tend to manage people with the stick...and there's a place for that! But, we need to also be encouraging, paying a compliment for a task well done or for initiative taken by your group members. Find ways and means of catching your team members doing the right thing! We are so good in finding faults and blind to people's good points.
(2) Give people a road map! It is good to have the first presenter lay out the road map of where you want to take the class to. Introduce your team members and then tell us what each person will be presenting. When you do that, we get the big idea of where we will be heading with the presentation. The last speaker then recaps by telling us where we have been and where we have ended up. A number of groups did that, but most didn't! :-(
(3) Reherse your presentation! Don't waste your research, time, and efforts! You may have put in tons of hours into your project and then throw all of this away by making a lousy presentation. When doctoral (PhD) students complete their dissertations, they are required to face a panel of experts who will question the poor students about their dissertations. These students have put in hundreds of hours researching whatever they are researching. All of this will go to waste if they give lousy presentations.
