Pearl Diving

Ryan Mahoney

ENCE424

October 26, 2019

 Being a project manager involves a wide variety of traits. However, in the end, your
ability to react to certain situations and influence others is the most important aspect of being
a good project manager. Practicing reacting to certain situations will help you react more
correctly and quickly when a situation arises. Being influential is crucial as a leader as if you
can not influence people to do their work to the best of their abilities, the quality of work as a
team will be lackluster. The aspect learned in the readings and in-class will help me lead as a
project manager one day

Letter to Team

Dear Team,

We will soon be approaching our deadline for our upcoming project. It’s been a long
couple of weeks, and we have done some really good work. However, we need to step it up in
the next couple of weeks. I have lead several other teams before, and I can say with certainty
that our team has the greatest potential I have seen. As the team leader, I have to not only
push everyone to do better, but I need to be honest with everyone when the work being done
does not meet what is needed. The work we are currently doing has the potential to
revolutionize the space travel industry. We need to do our part in rocket propulsion so that we
will be able to launch this upcoming spring. If we do not meet the deadline, we will have to
wait another year before we can launch. Missing the launch this spring will cause
shareholders and investors to be hesitant, thus limiting our funding. Currently, we are in really
good standings with the media and investors allowing us to have all the funding we need. If
that changes, we can’t be sure how funding will change. I know everyone is working hard on
their parts. Our jobs are strenuous with long hours of overtime. We have the potential to make
our families and our country proud. ​We just need to put forth our best efforts and work to our
full potential.​ I hope everyone enjoys their weekend and ​I look forward to working with all of
you in this final stretch.

Sincerely,

Team leader

Important Concept

One important concept that I learned in class this week was there is a wide variety of
aspects that go into influence. Everything from the way you treat people to your ranking in
the hierarchy affects your influence on people. I used to not understand what made people
influential over others. I was often a lot bigger than my peers, but I was always lacking
influence. Most people wouldn’t listen to me during group projects in high school. I used to
be more of a shy and reserved person. Toward the end of high school, I started to be less
reserved and people would listen to me more. There are so many aspects that go into how
influential a person is, but what I learned was that it comes down to how you are perceived by
the people who are listening to you. A book I have been reading in my pastime, ​The Wise
Man’s Fear, r​ eally exemplified this for me. The main character was able to talk his way past
several guards and make them carry his bags so he could talk to the king. He was basically a
nobody, but by acting like such high nobility, everyone was afraid to question him. It didn’t
matter who he actually was, for his influence was purely based on how the people listening
saw him. A few of the aspects of influence that stood out to me were likeability, social
proofing, and authority. Being liked in life can be very beneficial in general. The more people
like you, the more they will be willing to do, to personally help you. Being likable can help
with getting connections, interviews, and so much more. Social proof is another important
part of influence. A good majority of people are not natural leaders, and are more likely to
follow others. If you are able to lead and gain a few followers, people will be more likely to
follow. The final aspect that stood out to me was authority. People who are in higher positions
of power are more likely to be listened to. People are likely to listen to police officers as they
are in a position of power. This whole discussion on influence relates back to something I
read in ​The Wise’s Man Fear​. There was a part where they discussed the difference between
intrinsic power and given power. They talked about how one person can become very
powerful themselves, but everyone’s intrinsic power is limited. People are limited by their
DNA and other aspects of how powerful they are. Given power, power given to you by
others, is unlimited. This given power is directly related to influence. People who are very
influential are able to gain a vast amount of given power. One example of this would be Hitler
in World War II. He was very influential, and because everyone listened to him, he was able
to take over a large portion of Europe. Hitler had little intrinsic power, but he did have
tremendous given power.

Dealing With The Boss

If I was called an idiot in front of the entire team, the first thing I would want to do is
speak up in a respectful way. The last thing I want to do is let the outburst go as it will leave a
precedent on how I will be treated in the future. In crucial conversations, it talks about how
you should not let a comment go if a person becomes angry and insubordinate and I believe
that can also be applied here (Patterson 209). My wording would be, “excuse me, If you have
an issue with me or my performance could we talk about it in private”. This will deescalate
the situation without letting the comment get by. Hopefully, we could then take a moment to
talk and find the real issue without the conversation being in front of the team. There is also
another section in Crucial Conversations about dealing with people who are not treating you
nicely. It says that the best way to deal with it is to discuss the issues at length in a private
setting(Patterson 195). Asking to discuss the conversation allows it to be a more calm
conversation and will give my team leader a little time to cool down before discussing it.
During the actual discussion, I am going to focus on how the outburst is not productive. If he
wants better work from me, talking with me about my current work and about what I can do
to improve is a lot more productive. I will then go into how it made me feel. I will discuss
how outbursts such as that are not only unfair to me, but unfair to the rest of the team.
 Big Five Personality Assesment

My two main traits were Openness and Neuroticism. I would say that I agree with my
results. In regards to openness, I would definitely agree with that. I tend to think that I am a
very creative person. In my ENES 100 group, I solved many of our objectives by coming up
with ideas for our design. Our specialty objective was counting and putting out a number of
candles. The usual way this was solved was by using fans and heat sensors. I came up with
the idea of using a fire blanket and using thermistors to count the number of flames. This
method was a lot more effective especially when there were multiple candles near each other.
The flame sensors could not count how many flames there were, but the thermistors could.
The other main trait that I had was Neuroticism. I agree with this as I do tend to feel negative
emotions stronger than other people. I can occasionally have strong moments of social
anxiety. It is mostly pre-performance anxiety. Once I start talking in a conversation, it starts
to go away. Other negative emotions, I sometimes feel such as guilt or fear seem more intense
than other people’s experiences, but are not felt often. I do think my score for Neuroticism
was a bit high. I don’t think it should have been my strongest trait. I would definitely agree
with the Analytical Thinker core pattern result. I am a very logical thinker and often look at
data when solving problems. I often use complex analysis when solving problems. I am also a
very innovative person as described in the core pattern. I think my Big Five Personality Trait
scores were very similar to my JUNG but different from DISC assessment results. On my
DISC assessment, it said that I was mainly a Dominant person. I feel as if Dominance and
Neuroticism contradict each other. Dominance goes with confidence and Neuroticism goes
against confidence. On my JUNG assessment, it said that I was an introvert. I feel like
Introvert goes with Neuroticism. Having negative thoughts can often cause someone to keep
to themselves more. Personalities are very complex and there are so many different aspects to
each person’s personality. Doing multiple tests helps to look into different parts of a person’s
personality. You can see this as the tests ask very different questions to narrow into one
aspect of a person’s personality.

Conclusion

This week I felt as if we really started to focus on how to communicate effectively.

We have practiced writing letters and working out examples that might happen in the
workplace. I feel like I am learning a lot of skills I will use not only in my work but also in
life. Things such as how to influence people are life skills that I will use throughout my life. I
have already started using some of the techniques when trying to get people to listen to me in
Rugby. I look forward to improving these skills I have been learning as I know I will use
them throughout my life.
 Reference Page

“The Big Five Personality Test.” ​Truity,​

Patterson, Kerry. ​Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High.​
McGraw-Hill, 2012.

Rothfuss, Patrick. ​The Wise Man's Fear​. Gollancz, 2018.