Amanda Padron

 I have always asked myself: what does it take to be a leader? It always seemed like something that came naturally to someone, and I always wondered why I wasn't born with that gift. When I think of a leader, I think of someone who's always bossing everyone around. However, not all leaders are like that. In my speech class, we were all divided into three groups, and my professor assigned each one a different topic. For the first group, their topic was about culture and communication. I personally think that they did an amazing job of explaining the importance of it. The first person who presented they talked about how culture is a learned set of shared interpretation. They also talked about beliefs and values. I believe that learning about culture is important because we get to learn more about ourselves. They also talked about how communication is the vehicle by which culture is expressed. Communication is very crucial because without it you won’t expand on your learning on different cultures. Something that they talked about that was extremely interesting was the culture shock. There are five phases to it. The first one talks about the honeymoon stage which is basically that the culture is brand new and that the goal they want to reach is coming true. The second one is called the rejection phase which is basically the reality of life can be overwhelming and sometimes things won’t go your way. The third one is about the regression phase, which is to deal with stressful changes, and that you can only surround yourself with people of your own culture. The fourth one is called the recovery phase in which a person can work through the regression phase, they may be able to accept and feel accepted by American culture. The last one is called reverse culture shock which a person may become so accustomed to their new culture. I never really understood how big of a process it is to get accustomed to a culture. Another thing they talked about that was very interesting was about ethnicity. An ethnicity is a group of people that share a common cultural heritage. I learned that these groups are defined by nationality, languages, cultural factors, or religion. Something that I find important is religion because it is a belief with a set of rituals and ethical standards based on a common perception of what is sacred or holy. Some people don’t like to talk about religion because many people may believe in different things and have different opinions. Lastly for this group, they talked about sexual orientation. In this generation, there are a lot of gender identities. A person's sexual identity in relation to gender is attracted to different sexual identities. I believe that group one did an amazing job in explaining all of this especially since it is a risky topic to talk about since there are lots of different opinions and it is very controversial. 

Now let's talk about group #2. They talked about different types of groups and their nature. The first group they talked about was about social groups which are basically about a group of individuals that care about each other and enjoy spending time together. I personally care about people however; I am an extremely introverted person so I might come out as the type of person who doesn't care about what I truly do. The next one is about support groups which are about a group of people who have the same or common goal experiences who provide each other with comfort and advice. Some things that are support groups can be on virtual meetings especially during this pandemic and it's safe for everyone to attend. Another group they talked about was interest groups which are about people who seek to influence public policy on the basis of particular common interest or concern. For example, some interest groups include; community theater groups and neighborhood clubs. Another type of group is service groups which you perform hand on charitable groups. I related to this a lot because in high school I had to get my community service hours, so I did a lot of things for the community and joined some clubs. Joining and doing community service hours helped me open up a little more than what I usually was. Another group that was mentioned was workgroups and teams which basically is a group people gathered to complete a task. In this type of group, they have different objective goals, roles, and rules. That is honestly very important to have in a group because if everyone has a specific goal, with everyone's help you will be able to succeed with everyone's effort and help. Lastly, the last group I’ll say is the virtual groups that everyone gets online and they meet. Now during the Coronavirus, many schools and jobs are required to stay home and do everything virtually. In my opinion, I personally don't like being online because I get distracted easier and it's honestly not the same but since we've been doing this for months already, I got used to it. In my opinion, every group has something in common which is a goal. It can be any goal, and everyone is there to help each other out and support each other.  

The last group was the one I was in which talked about leadership. This topic was very interesting because it explained a lot about the importance of leadership and what it is. Something that I found good was one of my classmates Greg who talked about how he related a lot with this chapter because he works at Target and he is a leader in his job and he is responsive in having everything in order and making sure everything goes smoothly. A leader is someone who leads a group of individuals to reach a specific group. The leader in our group was Greg. He made sure everyone had the information on what to do and he organized everyone’s part so nothing would be misunderstood.  He easily reached out to everyone and made sure everything was done on time. This chapter taught me a lot that one of the major things you must have in order to be a great leader is to be a great communicator and passionate about their goal. You also have to be an extrovert which is something I lack with. The chapter also talked about how to deal with miscommunication and how to be a better leader in a group. A leader might be a designated person in the group, but everyone plays a role in being a leader. In this group, I honestly felt like a leader because I took action in getting everyone's video and making the PowerPoint nice. It felt nice knowing I was there to help my classmates together. I really enjoyed doing this assignment and I can’t wait to see what my other presentation has to offer.