5 Lessons I Have Learned From Leading My 5 Senior Design Teammates

One of the most valuable mindsets that I have adopted in life came from a lesson from my father, a self-proclaimed shaman who has explored many spiritual ideas. He told me about this theoretical idea that before birth, we create contracts with other souls to either teach us or adjust our life trajectories in some way. But to learn these lessons there is often a cost associated with it. For example, if you decide in your pre-birth that you want to be empathetic, then the cost may be that you need to undergo difficulties that were administered by a friend.

Though I dont exactly subscribe to this ideology, I do find it to provide a helpful framework on how to make the best of all situations in life. The natural question that follows when faced with challenges and adversity is:

What am I supposed to learn from this ______?

And " _____" could be a person, life event, or anything else. This mindset can be applied to all aspects of life, but today, I would like to talk about what I have learned when applying this mindset to the members of my senior design team. Here are the 5 lessons that my 5 teammates have taught me.

The 5 Lessons I Have Learned.

1. Adjust your leading communication style based on the individuals on the team. Not everyone thinks in the same fashion. Change how you lead and communicate whether your talking to an extravert, introvert, fast pace thinker, slow paced thinker, or perfectionist.
2. Assign identities that people would be proud to live up to, its one of the greatest tools that you have as a leader. I have previously underutilized teammates by not encouraging them to stretch further than they ever had before. I could have drastically improved the output of some of my teammates by recognizing their potential earlier on, and utilizing it by putting them in positions where they could express it.
3. Spend time building relationships with your team members. Take breaks to have meaningful conversations to deeper the relationship and trust that you have between you and your team. It creates a more fulfilling environment to work in for everyone.
4. Remember to give everyone the positive reinforcement they deserve. When you're constantly putting out fires, its easy to focus on the things that need to change to be better, and not on the things that have been going well. How I experience this is that much of my time and positive reinforcement is spent on people who need the extra assistance on my team, leaving the most capable people on my team not receiving the amount of praise that they deserve. To combat this I try to commend everyones efforts where possible.
5. When interpersonal problems arise, nip it at the bud and dont let it fester. Im a believer that having good relationships are one of the most important aspects of life (which is supported by the fact that its the on of the single greatest contributors to quality of life). So if a team member constantly makes seemingly small remarks that bring a team down, therefore causing interpersonal problems, it can substantially affect moral and productivity of the entire team. This resentment or feeling of insecurity can keep people from sharing their unique ideas on even not feel comfortable expressing their true selves. The sooner you can resolve these interpersonal problems, the less damage they will cause.