EXL - Leadership Self-Assessment

First was the leadership self-assessment I filled out in the first month of my graduate degree. This involved ranking myself on different traits that showed my leadership capabilities. This exercise was meant to help me understand my leadership strengths and weaknesses so that I could utilize my strengths and work on my weaknesses.

The results showed that I was highly effective in the following skills: integrity, problem solving and people. The results also showed that I needed improvement in these skills: priorities and attitude. From these results I learned that I needed to focus on keeping my priorities in order and maintaining a good attitude when times get tough. To improve in these areas I set to goals for myself.

The first goal was to get a 3.5 GPA or higher by the end of my degree. This made me prioritize my life, which made school first and fun last. This worked for me because it is now the last month and I have maintained a 4.0 GPA for the entire degree. I’ve learned how to make a list of things I need to do and rank them from most important to least important. Being able to do this has helped me eliminate the clutter in my life as well as open up a lot of free time because I don’t waste time trying to figure out what I need to do anymore.

The second goal was to get perfect attendance, which I had never done my entire time spent in educational systems. This not only helped me with prioritizing my life but it also helped me with my attitude. I achieved this goal by waking up everyday with a smile no matter how I felt. Everyday I would show up 30 minutes before class, ready to start the day. This was a huge deal for me because I have always had a problem waking up with the attitude to “take on the world”. I forced myself to keep going and now it is engrained in my mind.

Overall this exercise has taught me a lot of important skills that will help me in the entertainment business industry. Most importantly it has taught me to sit down once a year and reflect on what I have learned and what I need to improve on. This will help me to make goals for myself so that every year I grow as a person and a leader a little bit more.

PTM - Help A Non-Profit Organization

For this leadership portfolio activity I was assigned to a group of people and we had to help out a local non-profit organization. I was chosen to be the team leader and as a group we chose to help the non-profit organization Hands On Orlando. We met with them and decided to shoot a promotional video that would help them attract sponsors. From this project I learned to be more assertive when performing the role as team leader. At first I was more laid back and I noticed that my teammates were starting to look lost. That is when I stopped being laid back and started giving specific instruction and setting deadlines and it worked. After I made the change to my leadership approach my teammates started to take their own initiative to get things done. I learned that giving specific instructions and setting up a time frame for when these objectives needed to be completed helped my teammates feel comfortable with what they were doing. After they felt comfortable they started to make their own decisions, which was what I wanted from them in the first place.

BSB - Turning Point Story

This assignment was very personal for me because I had to make a keynote presentation about a turning point in my life. My story was about my life long dream of playing professional sports and how it all ended one day in high school. I broke my ankle badly in a game and had to get surgery on it, which caused my level of play to drop dramatically when I returned from the injury. I learned two really valuable lessons from this time in my life. I learned that I could adapt to a situation with out skipping a step. I took the competitive nature and passion of sports and turned it into a passion for learning. This inevitably helped me to come to Full Sail where I found my true calling. I also learned that a person should never put so much devotion into one aspect of their life. It is good to be passionate about something but have a backup plan or a paralleled passion so that it is easy to transition if one of them doesn’t work out. 

EBF - Interview With A Financial Expert

This assignment required me to interview a person that had experience with negotiations. For this I went to a family friend that had six years of experience negotiating for the United States Air Force. From this I learned that I could never be too prepared for a negotiation. The way to get the advantage over the person you are negotiating with is to research them thoroughly. For a job interview I will not only have to be ready to answer questions about myself but I will have to understand the company I am trying to work for.

NDM - Interview With A Negotiation Specialist

This assignment required me to interview a person that had experience with negotiations. For this I went to a family friend that had six years of experience negotiating for the United States Air Force. From this I learned that I could never be too prepared for a negotiation. The way to get the advantage over the person you are negotiating with is to research them thoroughly. For a job interview I will not only have to be ready to answer questions about myself but I will have to understand the company I am trying to work for.

PAM - Interview An Artist Manager

This leadership portfolio assignment gave me the opportunity to interview an artist manager. The person I interviewed was successful managing his own band and another small local band in Maryland. The one thing I learned from this interview was to be mindful of my limitations. If I am doing too many jobs I may overextend myself and end up hurting whatever project I’m working on. There are a lot of talented people in the world and while I may be able to do the job I might be better suited concentrated on something else. I will have to be able to understand when I need to work on something and when I can have someone else do the job. This also ties into getting my priorities straight and if not done correctly could waste a lot of time and money.

AEL - Entertainment Law Podcasts

For this assignment I was required to listen to multiple entertainment law podcasts to get some ideas about possible legal problems with businesses. I learned a lot of information from these podcasts but one thing I can say about all of the information is to plan for everything you can think of and be ready for what you didn’t think of. This is especially true when it comes to dealing with different countries because laws and customs are different. Something that may be legal to do here might be illegal somewhere else.