MGT 3302 Interactive Skills Workshop for Business – S02
Name: LIU Ling Chun
SID: 52572903
Action Plan 1. Self-awareness
First of all, I would like to increase my self-awareness. In order to achieve this, I plan to actively participate in more extra-curricular activities. I expect myself to join at least five activities before my graduation from university. Meanwhile, I would like to nurture a new habit which is writing self-reflection after participating in each activity. The content of the self-reflection will focus on my performance during the activity, such as whether I did well and if there were any rooms that I could improve. An action plan for each reflection will also be developed so that I can make improvement immediately.
Also, I will take the initiative to ask different people to provide feedback after the activity. It is important to get feedback from others because it enables me to know where I am in terms of quality performance.
Besides, I will try to have self-disclosure to the people that I trust. I will start with my best friends first by chatting with them during social gathering. In the meanwhile, I plan to spend more time with my friend from the university before my graduation. At least I will stay with them when I am in the campus. Therefore, our relationship should be enhanced and I can know more about myself from them. Most importantly, I can use the self-disclosure with them later on. 2. Listening skills
By becoming a better listener, it will improve my productivity, as well as my ability to influence, persuade and negotiate. In order to make myself be more competent in listening and become a good listener, I plan to take the initiative to talk with people actively. I expect myself to talk with at least ten people per day, and each conversation should last for at least 10 minutes. Meanwhile, I would like to correct my bad habits as sometimes I may interrupt while another person is speaking. I will make myself to listen to the entire message from others before evaluating their saying. Also, I will try to read the non-verbal messages such as body language and other cues while listening to other.
Furthermore, after listening to other’s message, I will give them my feedback so as to check accuracy immediately. It will start from the interaction with my project teammates and the interaction with my friends.

3. Team building skills
In order to become a successful team leader in the future, I plan to memorize all the techniques of building high performance team and then apply those techniques in order to facilitate the team effectiveness in the future. Besides, I plan to remember those potential problems associate with team and the related solution of the problems on the textbook. Once I encounter those problems, I will adopt the solution immediately. I will start with my project team in this semester first. Also, I would like to apply the techniques in the project team of subsequent semesters and the team in the extra-curricular activities that I join in my remaining university life. Therefore, I would like to take the initiative to become a team leader in order to adopt those techniques.

4. Persuasive skills
To be an effective manager, the one must be an able persuader. In order to become an effective manager who can influence others effectively in the future, I will first make myself familiar with both soft and hard tactics for influencing others. In addition, I will practice the persuasive skills on a weekly basis. I plan to make use of different tactics to persuade different people to adopt healthy life style through different means, for example, to eat healthily, do more exercises and sleep early.
Also, I would like to sharpen my presentation skills so that it can make my saying be more persuasive. I will make myself familiar with those techniques for effective presentation. In addition to it, I plan to take the initiative to do the presenter in different courses. If it is possible, I will do proper preparation to facilitate my presentation as well. It will start with the coming presentation in this semester. Besides, I plan to attend some workshops and talks related to improve my presentation skills.

Appendix
Reflection log 1:
After the lecture of self-awareness, I have thought about what I am really good at. Actually, I have never thought about this question thoroughly. Worse still, I realize that I don’t really understand myself well. In the past, I used not to care about it. Also, I seldom asked other to give any feedback to me. However, when I become older, I do really want to understand myself more because I know that I am going to get into the society soon. Therefore, I am concerned for my career.
To certain extent, if I don’t know my strengths and weaknesses, it probably will affect my chance of getting a good job. It is because I will not be able to get approval from other without confidence in my strengths. Even though I can get a decent job, I will not be able to perform it as good as I can because I may have unrealistic notions of my competencies and therefore affect my career path. In the worst-case situation, I will choose a wrong career path and my golden age is wasted.
Apart from my career, I am concerned for my friendship as well. Actually, I do really want to develop a tremendous friendship in my university life. Since I used not to care about how others view me, I may not be able to understand myself from others’ perspectives; hence, I don’t know how I can improve myself and become more and more popular. Therefore, I must enhance my self-awareness first in order to make improvement.

Reflection log 2:
After the lecture of sharpen listening skills & read non-verbal cues, I understand that active listening is very essential for two-way communication. Sometimes, when I discuss project with my teammate, I may misunderstand the saying of my teammate because of some biases and barriers. For example, I will put too focus on the issue that I am interested in. Therefore, my mind is being occupied and then can’t keep listening on the subsequent issues. Also, I will have the selective expectation that can’t be objective enough. Therefore, I may miss some valuable insight of my teammate. Besides, I often put very little focus on the non-verbal messages when I talk with other. However, I know that when someone is talking, the true meaning of his or her saying is often reflected by those non-verbal messages. It is essential for me to improve my listening skills so that I can understand other well in the future.

Reflection log 3:
After the lecture of building high performance teams, I realized that it is very difficult to maintain a high performance team. It is unavoidably that individuals in a team will have different characteristics and expectation. Sometimes, when I work as a team, I found that it is not easy for the whole team to be productive. Therefore, I will prefer to take more responsibility in the team project in order to ease the problem and raise the productivity of the whole team. However, I know that the result will not be as satisfactory as effective teamwork. Furthermore, it is unwise that when I can work in a team without utilizing the resources that I have (e.g. the manpower of my teammates). Therefore, I would like to know more about working in team. I do hope that I can apply the techniques in building high performance team in order to achieve a better result in future.

Reflection log 4:
After the lecture of persuading others, I am quite interested in whether I can become an effective persuader or not. In the past, I didn’t want to influence other too much because I thought that I should respect the right of free will. However, after a thorough thinking, I have thought that there is no contradiction between it. It is because the final right of choice is still in that person who being persuaded.
Besides, I understand that why somebody can be very influential. It is because they realize their given position. Therefore, they know what tactic is suitable. Also, they know how can make their saying more persuasive. The people like me, they are very ambitious. Therefore, I do really want to increase the chance to be supported by others because it is an important indicator to determine a people success or not.