University of Maryland

Pearl Diving Assignment Three

Emma Beernink
ENCE424: Communication for Project Managers
Dr. Shana Webster-Trotman
30 March 2019
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Quote
The quote that resonated the most with me from Weeks 2-5 was from the first week of
class, by Maya Angelou. The quote is as follows: “I've learned that people will forget what you
said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”
(Webster-Trotman). This quote is especially potent to ENCE424 because the approach that Dr.
Webster-Trotman takes is wholistic. Her lectures and assigned reading focus on more than just
the content of the speech, including the communicator’s dress and body language. The quote
does the same. Maya Angelou does not disregard the content of the speech but focuses on an
element further: the feeling the speaker invoked in the audience.
In ENCE424, the activities are designed to leave an impression that show the students the
experience of the speech is sometimes more important than the actual content. For example, last
class, students were assigned a topic at random and were told to speak on it for two minutes. One
of the rules was that you had to “own your space” and touch two lines on opposite sides of the
room while speaking. While watching the speakers, I remember the body language and
movement of them much more than any of the words that came out of their mouths.
This quote is important to me as a budding project manager because to be successful, I
must be able to communicate my technical knowledge and ideas to my staff, but help them
understand, and make them feel as though they are truly part of the team. I would like others to
enjoy working on my teams and want to come back to future projects I may have, and by making
them feel positively and excited to work with me, rather than just focusing on content, I will
create a solid and welcoming reputation for myself.

Reading Concepts
The reading concepts that I found particularly useful were found in Networking for
College Students and Graduates and The Essentials of Business Etiquette.
The first (and most recent) topic that I found helpful and somewhat embarrassing was in
The Essentials of Business Etiquette, Chapter 60. The chapter is entitled “Man, That’s Rude!
Five Dont’s for All Phones.” I did not necessarily expect to find anything that helpful when
reading this chapter, because I consider myself someone that has good phone etiquette. My
parents made sure of that when I was younger, and years of answering the phone at my summer
job (a seafood market!) made sure that I was on my best behavior. However, the chapter
highlighted something that I had completely forgotten about: the voicemail. After reading that
section of the chapter on page 141, I went to my phone and listened to my voicemail. It was
embarrassing at best, featuring background noise and a casual quip asking the caller to leave a
message. I realized (with some horror) that I had missed a call from a potential internship host,
and they had heard it. In The Essentials of Business Etiquette, Pachter recommends that you keep
your voicemail current and eliminate background noise (Pachter 140). I quickly followed her
advice and updated it.
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The second topic that I have used frequently from the reading is also found in The
Essentials of Business Etiquette. I feel as though I frequently write about this book, but the short
chapters hold my attention and deliver the information I need in a very logical, straightforward
way with no fluff. Therefore, I truly feel as though I am getting the most out of it. The chapter
that I am referencing is Chapter 33 “What to Do If You Are Interrupted.” I feel as though I have
been spoken over in social and academic settings by men. It is hard to reclaim your space and the
attention of the audience if you have been cut off without appearing rude, which has always
astounded me, because someone cutting you off is inherently much ruder. I have been employing
Pachter’s technique of “Say something” when such incidents occur (Pachter 74). I specifically
use the “Excuse me – I wasn’t finished” when speaking in groups, because it is a polite but firm
interjection that stops the interrupter in their tracks (74). I have been much more confident when
getting my point across without feeling outspoken or rude.
The third and final topic that I have used the most frequently from the reading is found in
Chapter 2 of Networking for College Students and Graduates. The concept of “STRATEGY for
Your Branding Statement” was incredibly powerful when I first read it, and I have since used it
to market myself and my organizations. The letter I found to be most helpful out of a list of very
helpful letters was R (“Remember the Results you wish to achieve”) (Faulkner and Nirenberg
50). When speaking about my organization, Scholars in Action, for the intense recruiting process
I experienced in the beginning of the semester, I was having trouble getting students interested in
applying for the positions that had opened. I realized after reading the chapter from Networking
that I was having a hard time expressing the results I wanted to see from giving my 30-second
spiel. I began rephrasing, summarizing why they should join; it was not enough to simply say we
were looking for new student program representatives. I need to share that my award-winning
organization with a volunteer base of over two thousand students needed dedicated, motivated
individuals to take responsibility and enact change by joining our organization. The strong call to
action raised our application pool, and soon I was interviewing over ten students for one
position!

In-Class Debate Activity

For the in-class debate, I was assigned as a panelist for the Human Embryonic Stem Cell
Research topic. My specific role within the group was as a researcher so I could ask informed
questions when the pro and con sides were presenting and be knowledgeable on background
information to understand the arguments that the two sides were presenting. While Sara Kim
served as the team leader for our group, I believe that I would have taken a different route then
her when deciding roles for others and navigating the project as a whole.
If I had been team leader, I think I would have been more assertive when deciding the
roles of my team. While letting others decide can be helpful, I think it ended up wasting a lot of
time. I believe starting by saying we need a certain number of researchers and questioners,
allowing people to volunteer, and if no one volunteered, putting people in certain groups to
begin. We wasted a lot of valuable research time by people going back and forth on what they
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wanted to do, and my personality style (which is quite assertive, as you will read below) would
have been much more direct while assigning roles. I believe that we also could have managed
our time more by having one person give us time updates continuously. That was one of the
assigned roles, but it did fall to the background once we began working. Keeping a continuous
time watch would allow others to budget their time correctly and we could have had an end-of-
research group discussion and decide on questions to ask. It was much more impromptu than I
personally liked when it came to questions. To clarify, despite my differing leadership style and
comments on the activity, I feel Sara did a good job managing our team and do not mean to
slander her work in the slightest.
Overall, I am pleased with my team’s performance. We managed to learn a good deal
about a rather complex topic within the time allotted. I learned enough to disprove the Con
team’s argument, as they insisted that the embryonic stem cells would eventually develop into a
child, which is simply not the case. The stem cells used in research are typically from three to
five day old embryos, which never develop into fetuses, that are created using in vitro
fertilization (National Institutes of Health). My main takeaways from this in-class assignment
were to do as thorough research as you can in the time allotted, delegate tasks to your team, and
manage your time effectively through a team member monitoring and calling out time left.

DISC Personality Assessment

After taking the test, I discovered that the DISC Personality Assessment classified me as
a “Dominance” personality type. The Dominance personality type is characterized as a person
who is “usually self-sufficient and individualistic,” “enjoy competition and challenge,” and who
“want authority” (DISC Dimension: Dominance). This was somewhat unsurprising to me, as
other leadership and personality assessments classified me as an activator, someone who takes
charge, and is goal-oriented. Self-awareness of my personality type can be helpful, because the
test reported that people with a high level of Dominance in their personalities can be perceived to
“impatient and dissatisfied with minor details” and can be seen as “domineering and
overpowering” (Disc Dimension: Dominance). As a project manager, I should be aware of the
perception of these traits because it can make my team uneasy and stressed if they believe I am
being over-critical of their work. Being aware of these traits will make me a much more effective
communicator because they will allow me to see my personality from another’s point of view;
what seems normal to me could come off as rude and domineering to someone else. I will
calibrate when entering crucial conversations to compensate for this.
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References

Faulkner L., Michael and Andrea Nierenberg. Networking for College Students and Graduates.
2017.

Pachter, Barbara. The Essentials of Business Etiquette. McGraw Hill Education, 2013.

“Stem Cell Basics I.” National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services, 2016, stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/1.htm.

Webster-Trotman, Shana. “ENCE424: Weeks 1& 2 In Class Lecture PowerPoint.”

Communication for Project Mangers, 5 Feb. 2019, University of Maryland. PowerPoint
presentation.

“What Is the Dominance DISC Dimension? - Learn All About the DISC Dimensions.” 123test,
2019, www.123test.com/disc-dimension-dominance/.