Learning Journal for the Leadership project

Paul Hofer
Barcelona
December 15, 2019
Leadership Project – Learning Journal
Communicating effectively and in an authentic and convincing way is a core part of every
successful student’s toolbox. In our everyday life we come across situations where everything
depends on the right choice of a few words, gestures or signals. During interviews for our
future careers, recruiter test us on the ability to analyse data in a structured way and provide
a clear recommendation. However, oftentimes the content of what is presented is far less
important than the way it is presented. The best way to improve that ability, is by continuous
practice and a deep dive in the existing literature, that helps to prepare for those situations.
At the same time, it is necessary to collect feedback to get a holistic view of ones’ own
capabilities to detect room for improvement and learning. The leadership project provided
me with that learning opportunity, as it gave me the necessary tools to assess myself and get
feedback from my peers, while allowing me to apply what I learnt during class in a real-world
case. In the following paper, I will reflect on the theory I found most compelling during the
class, the lead assessment and the workshop we held.

Readings for the class

The pre-readings for the session during class covered mainly the theoretical concept of how
professional speeches are built up. Even if the readings had a lot of already familiar content,
such as the importance of speaking from the heart, realizing that your speech is for the
audience rather than for you and developing a roadmap of your speech instead of memorizing
the exact words, it still felt like a useful repetition. This was especially the case since explaining
the different parts to your peers or getting them explained helped me memorize them even
more. The moment I am able to teach a concept to another person, I realize where I am sure
about the content and where I missed knowledge. Some of the concepts, such as the
importance of a kinesthetic connections felt very theoretical at the beginning. However,
keeping the main ideas in the back of the head when preparing for speeches helped to
improve on how I connect with the people I was speaking to. For example, one reading
stressed the importance of eye contact during a presentation, something that I never put that
much thought to before.
Since the greater goal of the readings in class was the preparation for the workshop and to
make us feel comfortable enough to present in front of a bigger group, I felt that the “more
applicable” content parts where the most interesting. Although it might be helpful to know
more about the neural networks that play the most important role while holding a speech
and reading about how our brain is wired, I preferred hands-on approaches, such as showing
the audience immediately “what’s in it for me” while presenting. Making sure that the
audience is addressed properly was a key takeaway from the classes and I felt that it would
be the most useful for the final workshop. A second important takeaway for the workshop
that I took from the readings was the differences in learning styles. Even though I was familiar
with the theory around it, as I tested a few different learning styles during my undergraduate
degree to optimize the outcome, I didn’t think about it for the workshop presentation.
Consequently, we made sure that we had a good mixture of visual, interactive and audio
content in the workshop.

In class activities
The activities that we did during class helped to connect some of the theoretical concepts into
a more applicable environment. There were two exercises that stuck the most with me. First,
the active vs passive listening. In the provided reading I felt it an unnecessary point to make,
as it seemed obvious to me that paying attention to the opposite is important while having a
conversation. But during the exercise I really felt the difference that I makes and I since then
I oftentimes focus on paying more attention when having a conversation. Massimiliano told
me a very personal story about his family while I was the active listening part and we even
continued the conversation later outside of the class. Until that moment we were simply
classmates with no real connection apart from being in a group together. After that day we
were friends. Seeing him opening up and paying a 100% focus and attention to what he
wanted to tell me made all the difference. I think this is even more important in times of
smartphones, screens and other distractions all around you. I know that I get easily distracted
by those things and being more aware of it and proactively trying to cut them out of my
thought when I am interacting helped me to improve as a person.
The second exercise that stuck with me was the facial recognition test by Paul Ekman.
Understanding the emotions of people around me has always been a great interest of mine,
since I struggled with it for a long part of my life. After the class I did some follow up research
on his publications and felt very inspired by his academic and personal life story. We included
the game later during our workshop as we considered it a good exercise to learn “reading the
room”, which is an essential tool to have as a good presenter.
The lead project
The lead project was a cornerstone of the class. The online platform helped and forced me to
define a clearer picture of myself. Although sometimes I felt that the exercises didn’t feel right
for my way of learning and structuring, such as drawing a picture of the most influential
people in your life, I still valued the reflection that I went through. The biggest challenge was
the 360-degree self-assessment in combination with sending out the assessment to peers to
get a full picture of one’s own strengths and weaknesses. While I didn’t hesitate to be honest
with myself while writing about my personal areas of improvement and the things that I
consider as the most blocking in my future career, I struggled with selecting the right peers
for my evaluation. On the one hand, I wanted them to be from diverse areas of my life, such
as studying, working, private, family. On the other hand, I felt that the people I was closest
too during my recent studies would have the best knowledge about my presentation and
persuasion skills and could therefore offer me the biggest opportunity for improvement. In
the end I decided to send it out to a mixture of people. Comparing how I scored myself on
certain criteria with how others see me helped me to reflect on my self-awareness and my
own perception of strength and weaknesses. I consider that as an important step as it helps
me to become more self-confident. Most of the times I find myself underestimating my own
capabilities to hold a presentation, and seeing others telling you that you are doing a good
job definitely bolstered my self-esteem. However, some of the exercises that were demanded
in the lead project led to intense conflict of interest. Creating a clear picture of what I want
my future to look like is something I struggle with since that question was raised in first grade.
Consequently, I wasn’t surprised finding myself pondering over the question for quite a while
before writing about it. As many major events in my life were more opportunity driven and
didn’t fit in any long-term vision I laid out before, I stopped planning any further than the next
year a while ago.

Reflection on my own weaknesses and areas of improvement

One key lesson I took away from this class is that preparation is key. Even though the class
exercises had only smaller presentation parts, the readings and my experience from other
classes always stressed that aspect. During the first day of classes, we learned theories about
the importance of a speaker’s body language, grabbing the audience’s attention, audience is
king, speech structure, etc. But, as I learned during one of my first speeches, none of these
theories can be applied if one doesn’t know what to say. While this sounds pretty logical, I
found it to be an important lesson to learn. In a recent presentation for Social Entrepreneurship
I put in a lot effort to become very well acquainted with the content we were presenting, so I
didn’t have to think actively what exactly I was going to say and put a lot of effort in the how
part. That way I was appealing to their emotions while the solid foundation of my preparation
provided me with the logical reasoning and the credibility. In that way, I was using all three of
Aristotle’s logos, ethos and pathos.
A second major weakness that I discovered both, during the feedback in the lead project and
the feedback I received over the workshop, is that I have to focus more on details. I tend to
think very broad and in different directions, therefore my ideas are all over the place. In
situations where I didn’t think exactly what I want to tell my audience and just have a rough
draft of the story, I sometimes drift away and start trying to bring too many ideas into the
presentation. As a result, the audience feels disconnected as there are too many loose ends and
a coherent storyline is missing. The feedback I received from Carlos after the workshop was
similar, he stated that I have the ability to be close and empathize with the audience, which
makes me a good seller. Very active and dynamic, but sometimes it may be convenient to calm
the speech to make it clearer. I have experienced the same issue in a variety of situations and
interviews as well, especially in moments where I tend to be nervous, I try to just say
everything instead of focusing on one idea and elaborate on it properly. So, as a big takeaway
for myself, I will actively try to limit and slow down what and when I am talking to give the
audience a better understanding of what the message is about that I am trying to convene.

The workshop & feedback

A smile goes a long way. Although I knew that my team and I were well prepared for the
workshop, I tried to connect with every participant. Before the start I tried to talk with as
many of them as possible to exchange a few friendly words and build some goodwill – or
captacio benevolente how the Greeks would call it. Luckily, all of them were very friendly and
interested in the workshop, so we immediately got along very well. The overarching topic of
the workshop was how to improve on presentations. Luckily, this was very well aligned to
what we learned during the classes, so a good part of the first session was recycling the most
relevant and interesting material that we studied in class. Since we did a lot of interactive
games in between, the vibe stayed good during the whole workshop and when we finished
all of them seemed to have enjoyed the first session. On a personal level, I enjoyed the
workshop a lot, as I never had the opportunity to do something similar. Even though I was
very nervous in the previous few days and constantly working on the content and how we
would provide it, once everyone arrived and we managed to have a clearly positive and
friendly atmosphere, I loved doing it. Carlotta and Massimiliano were great entertainers and
moderators as well and afterwards we were pretty proud of the high level of engagement and
the seamless flow of the workshop that we achieved. The second day of the workshop was
already way more relaxing, mainly for two reasons. First, the biggest block during that day
was letting the participants present their prepared presentation and giving them feedback on
it, and second, the nervousness of the first session had gone. By now, I knew that all the
participants were friendly, motivated and positive towards us, so I was actually looking
forward to it. A great learning that I had in the second session was providing valuable
feedback. From the readings I knew that it is very important to frame the feedback in a
positive way and focus clearly on the positives, so after every presentation I focused on
making supportive statements. On a personal note, I found myself in a completely new
situation, as I never had to provide feedback in a professional way. Even though I received
feedback oftentimes during my professional career as well as in university, I felt that providing
useful feedback to “strangers” a quite difficult task. As I didn’t know how each of them would
react to different levels of criticism, I tried to form those statements that showed areas of
improvement with the greatest care. Overall, I enjoyed the part, as it also gave me confidence
in the knowledge that I have. Seeing the participants actively listening and taking notes on my
feedback was a great acknowledgement that we delivered the workshop in a professional and
effective manner.

Summing up
The leadership project course provided me with a lot of interesting insights. On a personal
level, I narrowed down on a few areas of improvement in my communication. Working on
those will definitely help me in a variety of ways, as it clearly improves my chances to convince
any audience of myself. At the same time, I got to use and see a variety of handy tools to
become more authentic, charismatic and engaging in my presentations. Even though I was
already very familiar with some of the content, I enjoyed rehearsing them and seeing my
peers and myself grow from class to class. On a professional level, I had the unique
opportunity to lead a workshop with an external partner. The trust that those companies give
to ESADE made me proud to be a student at this institution and it filled me with pride to
deliver to the high standards that this university stands for.

Thank you Steven for your ongoing support and your open and inviting way of lecturing! I
took a lot out of this class and will definitely recommend it to future CEMSIES.