How Leaders Can Improve Their Work Environment

 When we think of projects, most of us young folks think of group assignments in school. What pushes us to get the work done are the deadlines that threaten our grades. They are often from the classes we care the least about, but sometimes they allow for more creative freedom. I often found myself leading teams but I wouldn’t get the results I wanted. My passion for the projects didn’t match my teammates’ and I practically had to beg for some of them to collaborate. I was able to learn more effective leadership methods from the book, Leadership is Language, written by L. David Marquet. 

Creating a Safe Atmosphere

This was something I tried by giving compliments and showing concern during their emergencies, but I found that there’s more involved in that. Our use of language is important in how followers feel about their roles. 

• If they express concerns and we reply with invulnerable comments like “we’re going to be fine”, it gives them the impression that they shouldn’t question our decisions because they are set in stone.

• When we ask leading questions during a dilemma, we are giving false comfort that only tells them to keep conforming to their roles. 

Making Their Voices Heard

When we think of work, we associate it with the act of doing something. We often forget how much of a role thinking plays in both innovation and employee satisfaction.

• Asking open ended questions that can’t be answered with a simple yes or no encourages employees to explore a problem from different angles. 

• For meetings, it is better to get everyone’s opinions before discussing them so people aren’t swayed towards a popular idea.

• There is a balance in how much doing and thinking needs to be done though. Too much doing and employees will become too stressed to think; too much thinking and there will be too much time wasted with no work being done. 

In my experiences working in Game Design, I had a mindset of getting other people to DO work for me to bring my vision to life. In moments where they wanted to give input or express concern, I would dismiss a lot of it which would kill their motivation. What they wanted was to create something they could be proud of. Instead of threats like a poor grade or firing them as a motivator, I should’ve created opportunities for them to explore new possibilities. Marquet’s book gave me pointers that I plan to use with all future projects I lead. It taught me how the leader creates the environment for their followers to thrive in.

Struggling to Lead Others? Try this out!

 As we grow up hearing about the success stories of leaders on TV and social media, it gives us the impression that leadership is all about having Control. We see charismatic personalities that have amassed billions with their contributions to their industries. That is what gives us the idea that those who lead are aggressive and intelligent go-getters that can come up with the best ideas. However, I learned that this wasn’t the case in the book, Emotional Intelligence for the Modern Leader written by Christopher D. Connors. The book has an emphasis on the followers that make up the leader’s team. A term that really stood out to me in its first 2 chapters was called Servant Leadership. 

It is a concept where the leader focuses on the growth of their followers and meeting their basic needs within their organization. It requires an unconditional desire for them to be successful. To be a servant leader, one must have Empathy. The book defines that as “the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing” as if you’re in their position. It helps you build relationships and understand the concerns that your followers may have. Showing them that you care is what will make you a successful leader. 

From my own experiences, I used to be a ‘my way or the highway’ type of leader. I liked to create ideas for projects, yet I knew I could not fully realize them on my own. I needed help from others. When I would have a team, I would run into the same problem with every team. I would have team members procrastinate on work and it felt like I was the only one passionate about the project. This was because I never checked in with how they were feeling and what ideas they had. As much as I hate to admit it, but in my head they were just extra pairs of hands for building my project. I never thought of them as brilliant minds waiting for an opportunity to shine. If I did not put my idea first, I could have had more passion from my teammates. 

If you find yourself leading in college or in the workforce, make sure you are thinking about how they are perceiving their work. If you take just a little time to check in on them, it can go a long way in motivating them for the long-term.

Final Post

 Technology has always been advancing since time began. It is like a parabola if you chart the innovations and how fast they have come. The 1st computer was proposed in 1837 by Charles Babbage as a multipurpose machine called the Analytical Engine. It wouldn't be realized until 1910 by his youngest son Henry Babbage who was able to form basic calculations on it. This would evolve into becoming programmable with the Z1 in 1936, a proposition for the Turing machine operating off of logical instructions that same year, the Colossus being the first electrical and programmable computer in 1943 used for decoding cryptic German messages in WWII, and many more. These were the stepping stones for computing as a whole, and we have gone in many unexpected places within 100 years. 

What I grew up with in the early 2000s hardly resembles what the next generations have gotten in the late 2010s. Games to play on the go were only on cartridges you would buy from a store. Now most games are downloadable on mobile and other game store fronts. Most of the content I would watch would be on television through channels like Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network. I would have to wait for my favorite show to be on. Now most kids are watching any videos they want on YouTube. Instead of favorite shows, they would have favorite content creators, loving their personalities and skills. All of their content is on demand as long as they have the internet. 

A huge one that leaves me with more concerns as a future parent are the innovations in communication. The only way to communicate with people long-distance back in my day was if you knew their phone number and had a phone on you. Nowadays, there are voice chat in video games, video calls on a lot of platforms, social media outlets everywhere, etc. I didn’t grow up indulging too much in that stuff so I wouldn’t know about all of the dangers. I can only make assumptions from my point of view. I’ve seen cases of cyberbullying, obsessions, and harassments that I would want to keep my children from. I understand that a lot of what defines our behaviors as adults are based on childhood experiences and trauma. I would want to keep my children safe, but at some point, I may be holding them back from forming their own identities. I would hate to undermine their intelligence as well. I remember my parents holding me back from playing Pokemon when I was a kid. I felt left out when most of my peers were trading the cards and battling through the games. I came to learn that my parents got a lot of their views of the franchise from superstitious priests convinced the game was about raising and playing with cyber demons. After doing research when I was older, I found that the game was nothing like that and my parents made those decisions based on misinformation. 

I bring this up because I have some assumptions about technology and how it has affected my generation. We are very tech savvy with various programs and operating systems, making us capable of helping older people resolve issues. But their generation seems to have more real-world knowledge than us. I can list off things like agricultural knowledge, the importance of cooking utensils, how to write in cursive, knowledge of how car engines work, etc. Our generation may have ease of access to information pertaining to these topics on the internet, but are our brains dependent on that? I have my concerns for the future generations because I had a point in time where the world didn’t revolve around it. I won’t fully understand what it’s like to have the internet be so present in my life and that will blur the line for me as a parent. I don’t think that any generation is dumber than the other; we just put more of our brain power into different things. The question I have is; is technology the right thing to focus on? It’s difficult not to focus on what’s new and impressive, but are we losing a bit of our humanity because of it?

The rate of technological innovation is at breakneck speeds, but is it moving too fast for us to fully understand it? What was once sci-fi became reality. It’s growing more difficult to predict what will be created next. With that, is it going to be more difficult for people 10 years apart to understand one another?

Post 11: Privacy Issues Today

 There are a lot of sci-fi media about the great advancements that our technology will take in the distant future. Though there are a lot of fantasies about how much more convenient our lives will be, there are a number of dystopian stories about when technology goes too far. We are currently in an era where our devices all intermingle on the internet. They share web browsers, emails, contacts, credit card information, etc. At surface level, this seems like something convenient to have. However, we are unknowingly giving all of our information out to advertisement companies. All of our searches on Google, our activity on social media like Facebook, our recent purchase history on sites like Amazon, what we would say around Smart Speakers like Alexa, etc. What I just listed are companies built off services that are free to use. We often see these companies making great profits and their creators making billions. It's because these services sell our information to advertisers. These companies will try to figure out our interests and align them with our identities. They will send us links to products we might want and add more data according to our behavior around that. Our smartphones keep track of our location and speech, so these companies are given a lot of information about us to make assumptions. This information about data collection is kept hidden either in lengthy Terms of Conditions we will never read, or with changes to those policies we just don't get to read. Even though these companies use them with our convenience in mind, it is still an invasion of privacy. 

A story I believe is closer to reality is 1984 by George Orwell. In it, people were punished for showing too much emotion, a lot of their decisions were decided by the government, and any resemblance of independence was shut down with manipulation and brainwash. I drew this correlation with what is currently happening in China. Unlike with us, they don't get the choice to remove AI from their lives. Their streets are full of cameras with face recognition and they keep track of how each of their citizens follow traffic rules, what they buy, etc. This isn't used just for evidence, their behavior plays an active role in their credit score. Doing anything frowned upon will decrease it, and people with a high score will get access to more discounts in stores. It's like playing God with just cameras and AI. 2D recordings only show our 3D world from an angle. They can miss important details and hop on assumptions. Turkish Muslims in China would face great scrutiny because of the way they looked on the surface, like terrorists. That people could not live a normal life there with the discrimination. The scary thing about all of this is that China is one of top manufacturers of this AI technology and they have sold them to at least 58 countries already. A world full of this evil use of technology is a scary reality and with how technology improves quickly with time, our privacy is greatly threatened. 

Post 10: EOTO 2 Learning

 What has fascinated me the most about Media Law and Literacy is how much is kept from the American people. A lot of information is kept secret from us, and we can only gain access through obscure means. Our own government has a history of exploiting the rules of the Constitution to make things convenient for themselves rather the citizens. However in the second EOTO, I was able to learn a lot more that they do against their people. Group 1's presentation was about Awareness and how that is exploited. Disinformation is the act of purposefully giving the people false information about an event, not to misunderstood with misinformation which is accidental. It was a shock to hear that this happens within our country. People will get into large disputes about what's happening in the world and that can sometimes lead to violence. False flags are about the government doing something awful and pinning it on another party. This bleeds into Disinformation. From the beginning, America was supposed to be the country for their citizens to place all of their trust in. Nowadays, it feels like they are abusing their power of influence to get they want out of the people. 

Post 9: The Bell Curve of TIme

Rogers; Diffusion of Innovations (or Ideas) has a bell curve about how new inventions and concepts become part of society. Time uses the X-axis and Penetration uses the Y-axis. During the experimental phase, presence stays a bit static. Early adopters sends it into a steep rise with it peaking at the Early majority. The peak is the Critical Mass. Late adopter start the slow decline until it steeply drops with Laggards coming after it was popular indefinitely. 

In the Video Game Industry, we see this pattern with every Generation. For context, console Generations change when more powerful and upgraded systems hit the market. We are currently transitioning from the 8th Generation to the 9th with the PlayStation 4 to the PlayStation 5. At the beginning of these, we will see prototypes of new hardware at conferences like E3. Some game demos will be shown off and some will be playable. There will be die hard fans who will preorder these systems to get Day 1. I would say our Early Adopters to Early Majority depends on the system. It takes about 1 to 3 years for most systems to peak and sales rise around Christmas. Late adopters come near or during the announcement of the next upgrade. Laggards are usually people who don't care too much about video games, can't afford the latest system, or are collectors. The indefinite period of Laggards fits the collection hobby really well because game companies will stop manufacturing these systems after a while and small communities will keep supporting their favorite systems. What keeps game companies afloat are how they announce the upgrade around the Critical Mass. Players will eventually get tired of the same system after a while so making the graphics better and adding a few innovations will give them a new start with the bell curve. 

For me, I have grown tired of this cycle, so I have moved to playing video games on PC. This platform leaves upgrades up to the customer allowing for more freedom with the system. If your computer can handle the game, you can play it. Learning of the Diffusion of Innovations theory is making me wonder if home consoles like the PlayStation will die out. I am getting tired of my games becoming obsolete in less than 5 years and being locked out of playing older Generation games on the newer systems. Everything dies out eventually. 

Post 8: EOTO 2

Media Consolidation is the process of fewer and fewer corporations gaining ownership of news sources. It has a lot to do with the quality and accountability of American journalism. There are only six companies that have a hold of all of the TV networks. They are Comcast, Newscorp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS. According to the chart below, they make up 90% of the media we watch and read today. Back in 1983, there used to be about 50 networks controlling all the media, but since the Telecommunications Act from 1996, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) loosened their regulations on cross-ownership. It is a monopolization on news outlets, specifically an anticompetitive monopolization for it absorbing all of them. It is in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act from 1890 (federal antitrust law) yet it seems that networks are able to get away with it Scott free. As a result, this has created a disconnect with people's opinions and the news broadcasted. This is because the business leaders are choosing what stories to broadcast rather than the journalists. There are only six angles to current events that will be televised. Like what I covered in my fifth post, certain stories just get overlooked entirely and pushed away into obscure locations. With sites like Anti-War and The American Conservative, it seems like even Google is working with them to keep this information away from the people. It is almost like they are trying to brainwash people and they are able to get away with it. 

When it comes to learning new information, I am very easy to persuade. I am probably the easiest man to mislead and I will get passionate about opinions I form, whether they are right or wrong. I would say this generation tends to flock towards popular opinions these days. In video games, it seems like one video making of a game will deter thousands from even giving it a try with "Videogamedunkey" being a popular example of a content creator. I have taken steps to look at both sides of an argument so I can my own opinions. I have been learning a lot about the world in my Philosophy class like the processes needed to create our smartphones. Kids in third world countries are essential enslaved and forced to mine for materials like titanium. That is something I just happened to learn in school. I will find so many interesting stories on YouTube, but something like that never shows up. We are consumers in the smartphone market where there are new phones released every year. A story like that would likely hurt that market, so taking measures to block that content makes sense. It just is not right to keep so many people out of the loop on topics like that though. It is like they know how people will react, so they hold out on the truth. With Media Consolidation, we are kept from the most important information of all, what is currently happening in our governments. From the start of America, citizens were encouraged to have the government working with us. However, throughout our history, it has felt like they have been trying to find exploits anywhere that it is convenient. Protest is a way we get our voices to them. To maintain their power, they have to keep valuable information from us so they don't have to make any changes they don't want to. 

Links Used:

Media Consolidation Meaning and Affect: https://billmoyers.com/story/media-consolidation-should-anyone-care/

Monopoly Law: https://www.classlawgroup.com/antitrust/unlawful-practices/monopoly/ 

Telecommunication Law: https://tacomacc.libguides.com/c.php?g=599051&p=4586162