The only thing you get to change is yourself, and in the prerequisites to this course we’ve given you real tools to do that. Now, use those tools to influence the course of your future, your team's future, and your organization's future. Make a plan for yourself that will help you help others, and learn skills to make it happen.
Listening and being sure of your values underpins everything that comes with professional influencer and leadership soft skills. We’ll go on to look at self-assessment and leadership planning, negotiation, addressing and resolving conflict, and successfully identifying and promoting circumstances you want.
After this course, you will be able to:
- state your own mission and plan with confidence
- negotiate and persuade
- deal with difficult people
- contribute to crafting a working environment you want to work in
The prerequisites for this course are Courses One and Two of the Specialization "Professional IQ: Preventing and Solving Problems at Work".
From the lesson
Week 4: It’s Your Life - Live it Well
Pull together skills and knowledge from throughout the courses while examining the importance of your alignment and fit in an organization. Reflect on the importance of learning as a leader and plan for what happens next in your professional career.
Director of the National Center for Professional and Research Ethics (NCPRE), Professor Emerita of Business, and Research Professor at the Coordinated Science Laboratory
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As you think about mind your own business and the dilemma it represents, factor
that into who you are, who you want to be, and most particularly, fit your actions
to the leader you want to be and want to be seen as, as you grow on this journey.
We're going to let our experts have almost the last word on this one.
Let's hear what some of them have to say.
>> Some people ask where the line is between minding your own business and
helping to maintain an appropriate and ethical culture within an organization.
As a leader in the organization,
you do have responsibilities to the organization as a whole.
While some people might choose to say that you shouldn't pay attention
to what you see, or you should turn a blind eye to some sort of misconduct,
that kind of behavior demonstrates to everyone who works with you what kind of
behavior is appropriate and/or expected of a leader in that particular organization.
>> It sounds easy to go along, it takes courage.
It takes fortitude and is why, in the decision making formula, we say the last
step is to select the outcome, the option that is fair,
and just to have the courage to resolve the problem.
You have to be able to speak up and to speak out.
There are no perfect employers, there are no perfect bosses,
there are no perfect companies.
But, if each of us takes a step to act consistently with our shared values,
so many problems in the business world will disappear.
When they disappear, look how much more time we'll have to spend to further
the goals of the business.
>> Well it's interesting, in college athletics that happens all the time.
We have a 500-page rulebook that we are committed to enforcing, and
the NCAA, despite their best efforts, cannot police all of our institutions,
they expect us to self-police.
So, every time we identify a violation,
we have to ask a question, what do we do with this information?
Do we stop the activity?
Do we stop the activity and report ourselves?
Do we look the other way?
And you have to have the kind of personal integrity
that requires you to do what's right, and
that is inevitably to stop doing whatever it is that
you're doing wrong and, in our case, report yourself.
Nobody likes it, we don't want to do it, but I worry more about the athletic
programs that don't report anything than I do about those that do.
And to me,
if we're reporting 15 to 25 violations a year, that means we're doing a good job.
because the rules are so complicated and
convoluted, it's inevitable you're going to break them.
You're not doing it intentionally, but when you do, you have to have enough
integrity to stand up and be accountable for what you've done.
Now that is an unintentional violation.
When you identify situations where someone is intentionally circumventing the rules,
then you have to be very decisive in those situations,
and I think, in our environment in particular here,
in the athletic program, you can't tolerate intentional rules violations.
I talk about this all the time, when our program does well,
when the volleyball team wins, it makes all of us look better.
In the same vein, when one of our teams cheats, it makes all of us look bad.
And so, we can't take the good and not accept the bad, and
if we're all going to be in this together when times are great,
we gotta be all in this together when times are bad.
You've gotta be willing to hold your colleagues accountable the same as
you would yourself, and sometimes that doesn't make you popular,
but it makes you right and it makes you a leader.
And that gets back to what we talked
about with being a leader, being a leader is not about being the most popular.
It's about being a person of integrity who can influence others, and
if you're a person who can influence others, and you use that influence
to demonstrate integrity, that's what makes you a leader.
>> As you prepare for your capstone project and
we come to the close of this course, I have three pieces of advice for
you, this is my parting advice, my parting gift.
My first piece of advice is choose your colleagues and your bosses for character.
You are going to associate Your reputation, your name,
and how you develop with the people you choose to work with.
Choose them for their character.
Make sure that their values match.
They don't have to be the same as you.
They have to be compatible and not send you in directions you don't want to go.
Two, use your skills to be a constructive, value-added professional.
And most particularly when you encounter problems use your skills to
approach them in an energizing, constructive, professional way.
Three, have good luck, and by this I don't mean sit back and
wait for good luck and karma to shine down upon you.
What I mean is, make your own good luck by choosing your bosses and
colleagues for character.
And using your professional I.Q.
to be an energizer and a constructive problem solver at work.
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C. K. GunsalusDirector of the National Center for Professional and Research Ethics (NCPRE), Professor Emerita of Business, and Research Professor at the Coordinated Science Laboratory
