SP Jain School of Global Management

Self-reflection paper

Chu Thanh Thao

Student number: BS21DON022

BDS 21 September 2021

Subject: FOUNDATION SKILLS 1
Division: A

Mr. Richard Coller

Friday, December 10, 2021

Peggy Klaus, the author of The Hard Truth about Soft Skills, has a saying: Soft skills get
little respect but will make or break your career”. Understanding the importance of soft
skills, acing them has been one of my goals since I was in high school. At the beginning of
the class, I could see many of my shortcomings in these skills. Being a part of this Personal
and Foundation Career Skills, I was able to be gentle with myself and improve various
essential skills.

Every session is precious lessons to me, and I would love to write about my thoughts in
every session. The order of this writing follows the order of the sessions in this course.

The ever-first session is about self-discovery. If you want to be successful, marketing

yourself! Show other people how good you are, but how to do it? That question had been
on my mind until I learned about personal branding and SWOT. After the first session
provided by Mr. Richard, not only do I understand more about myself, but I also know how
to express my amazing abilities. Honestly, finding my personal brand was not that easy, as
I believed that I had not well-understood myself yet, so how to find a brand that speaks my
voice? However, a personal brand does not only mean a product brand and it does not have
to be famous or iconic. A brand can be a company, a city, or a person. That really did
broaden my mind, I was able to extend my vision and started finding a brand from my
smallest things, from the familiar things that I love. I have to admit that finishing the “My
personal brand/profile” template from the professors gave me a true achievement as I had
successfully found all the treasure in myself. Then, the difficulty of the work seemed to be
on the next level when I had to reflect on my personal brand and complete the Personal
SWOT Template. I always understood my weakness and I frequently used that,
intentionally or unintentionally, demotivated myself. SWOT stands for strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Nevertheless, in Mr. Richard’s dictionary, W is not
weakness, it’s the thing we are “WORKING ON”. And only with that sentence, I
reconsider myself and realized how hard I had covered my weaknesses and tried to
overcome them. I have been trying to be better and working on the things I have yet to be
good at, and they are not my weaknesses. Writing the template was the same as looking in
the mirror, finding the “not-pretty-yet” and fixing it. I truly appreciate this lesson and even
more when I received Mr. Richard’s feedback. Even though this is not in the lesson, but I
can feel and learn from my professor the power of words in his speech, his way of
delivering the lessons, and his writing.

It is widely understood that public speaking and presentation are soft skills that require
excellent communication skills, enthusiasm, and the ability to engage with an audience.
Ironically, it is also the most popular fear among students, including me, and comes along
with the fear of judgment, which makes the fear of public speaking seem bigger to me.
Therefore, it was my pleasure to have two sessions on presentation skills. The speaking
will be much easier when you follow Mr. Richard’s ten steps for an effective presentation.
It might appear to be quite theoretical, but it made sense when Mr. Richard and some of
my classmates made some speeches. The speeches had been improved each time we heard
them. “Practice makes perfect”, practice is the key, and it was. We also have a chance to
team up and practice delivering the presentation to our best! We did apply the steps and no
matter how the result is, I feel grateful for all the member’s hard work, and I can see their
improvement in this assignment. I guess Mr. Richard was right when he said I should put
myself out there gently and when the right time came, I might be surprised at how quickly
I became good at it. I tried my best, I practiced numerous times and I have received
compliments from my foreign classmate. To me, it was a success and undoubtedly, I will
learn by heart these ten steps.

There is a saying from Shiv Khera, an Indian author, activist, and motivational speaker,
best known for his book—You Can Win, that “People who wish to go into the future should
have two skills to succeed – the ability to deal with people and the ability to sell.” With a
little prior experience in selling some educational courses for my mother’s business, I think
it is true. When you want to sell something, you are practicing your communication,
negotiation skills by applying all your best knowledge related to the product and your
experience using that product. Nonetheless, thanks to this fourth session on selling, I found
some of my mistakes that I can work on to be better in selling. I have not used language
effectively as well as had answers ready. And the most crucial one, “sell the problem you
solve, not the product” and tell the story! The art of selling is also the same as the data in
data science, we do not study to only analyze the data, we study to tell the story from the
data.
Entering the university and working environment means joining uncountable meetings, but
how to optimize the meeting is always a problem to concern. With the lesson learned from
the sessions about effective meetings, I have been and will apply these steps whenever I
am in charge of or join any meetings. To be efficient, we should learn eight habits for
highly effective meetings, each of these habits shows its own importance and leads to
successful output for any meetings. Our team did the same to these steps when we held a
meeting for our group presentation assignment, and no wonder why we had a great
connection with no conflicts between members and complete the work on time. It is true
that at the end of the lesson, there is a quote: “Effective meetings don’t happen by accident.
They happen by design.”

Conflict is evitable, it may happen in any conversation, meeting or during negotiation, but
the way we see and solve it is our decision. The sixth session with the name “Conflict
resolution” teaches me the way to solve conflict successfully yet remain good relationship
by applying the “Conflict resolution” process and using emotional intelligence. The lesson
was beyond helpful, I had applied those techniques in the debate with my sister and we
were able to avoid saying words that might hurt each other.

In my view, everything people do is negotiation. And negotiation is not about win or lose,
it is about gaining mutual agreement between two or more people or parties. Whenever we
are in a negotiation, having a plan is the most important one comes along with the listening
skills and the respectful attitude. It may be quite exaggerating, but I do believe that
negotiation is an art, it requires planning, courage, the right choice of words and patience
as well. And that is the reason why Mr. Richard put the quote: ““Let us never negotiate out
of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.” from the famous president John F. Kennedy.

The last session we had in this course is about networking. At the beginning of this session,
we were asked “what is the hardest question?” - that was hard to answer as well. So, it
turned out that “Can you introduce yourself?” is the most difficult one, and it was right.
Introduction is the very first step when it comes to creating network. Therefore, it is
essential to have a nicely introduction to make a good first impression as well grab others’
attention and continue the conversation. This question has been much easier for me to
answer at the end of the session and thanks to the template “Create your own Elevator
Pitch” provided by the professor. During this session, we did not only learn how to
successfully make network but also understand the importance of networking through Mr.
Richard’s stories.

Contract to other courses, I really enjoy the time studying, doing the assignments, and
team-working. What I like the most about this course is the way Mr. Richard delivers his
lesson. He uses keywords and visualization instead of full-of-words slides; he brings
chilling vibes to every class instead of the tension, and he always concludes the lesson by
quoting instead of some boring summary paragraphs. All the sessions are valuable and
hope I can apply them all to the fullest. With the help from teachers and my classmates,
my soft skills would certainly be improved, and be ready for the future. Last but not least,
I would love to keep in mind that “Be bad” from Mr. Richard!