Self-Journal Essay

Submitted By sivanfong
Words: 1056
Pages: 5

OBC 500 Journal Entry Two
After reading the chapter and doing the quiz, I learned how people in the office should use their power in an appropriate way. From the content I can see that the book was designed for those people who are already the leaders in companies, showing them how to become an empowering leader. However, for me, I only have one year official working experience and some other internship experience during my undergraduate. So from my angle, by knowing how leaders’ using their power, I learned how to follow leaders and do the things on the right track. For example, during the time they want to show coercive power, it’s bad time to work against them. And sometimes, the leaders use the referent power to make employees feel valued, important, it’s not always positive. Maybe they really want to inspire the staffs, or maybe it’s just the way they make people work for them. The most useful things that I learned from this chapter, it will be easier to cooperate to the supervisors if I can think one step advance about what they want.
About the first quiz, I did that based on my latest supervisor. She got 85; I gave her nearly full marks in reward, legitimate, expert and referent parts. For example, she introduced her own clients to me, trusted me and asked me to solve the clients’ problems independently. I considerate that as valuable benefits for a new-entry in the marketing department. The company I worked for sell movie lights. As a sales person, I met lots and lots different clients every day. And I knew that it’s not every new-entry can get the chance to meet with the client along and introduce the products. After doing the quiz, I realized that that is exactly she used referent power. Because what she did really made me feel valued, made me feel she trusts me. I gave her the least points in coercive power. I did sometimes feel she gave me some undesirable job assignments, like ask me to do the delivery things, or asked me to do some other irrelevant assignments. But the fact was she can always convince me to do it. By that I mean she always let me know what the point of doing such assignment is. Now, after learning the interpersonal skills and leadership, I can say she is really good at doing this.
From my angle, the leaders may use different leadership to inspire people, or use different powers to lead people. They will think in the employees’ side to find out the best way to lead them. And the employees should also find out and think about what the leaders think. By knowing what styles they are going to use, it’ll be more saver to live in the office situation.
In the quiz two, because I have never been a management level before, I have to do that based on my previous supervisor. I find out she already has most of these attitudes. I also find out most of these attitudes are based on the trust of team members. One thing I think about is the empowering attitude or behavior is not just single side from the manager, it should be interactive. Other words, even the managers have these attitude, they still need other members’ cooperation. For example, the manager wants to share information with team members; however, some of them might not be willing to share the same information with the manager.
As a new-entry staff, I leaned that I can use this quiz to judge whether my supervisor is good or not, and that means a lot in the career life. A good supervisor knows how to lead people, has these good attitude to build a team, which means this supervisor could have more chances to success. On the contract, a bad one may have more chances to lose. For example, like No.8, offer team members alternative ways of doing things. I think that’s a way to cultivate new-entry people.
Though I have never been a management