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SELF-EVALUATION AND REFLECTION

Paint 4 Pups: Self-Evaluation and Reflection

Student’s Name

Institutional Affiliation

Honest Self-Evaluation about my Effort

The Paint 4 Pups was held at Paint the Town in Columbia, Missouri on Sunday, April 23rd at 3 PM. As the team’s local business liaison person, there are various contributions that I made towards the realization of the team’s overall goal. Part of my role included coordinating and communicating with local businesses and stakeholders with the purpose of seeking financial and material support for the local firm referred to as No Kill Columbia. The animal advocacy not-for-profit company is committed to safeguarding the rights and well-being of animals and raising awareness and education on the need to stand up for animals. Therefore, the primary role of the No Kill movement is to help minimize the number of unwanted and unplanned companion animals by stressing on the significance of contributing towards funding of low cost sprays and neuter clinics in Columbia. Therefore, to work towards these objectives, I performed various roles related to my position.

First, I was able to identify many local businesses within the immediate environment in which our team operates. These businesses expressed willingness to join hands with the movement in accordance with their respective social responsibility policies. For instance, due to my communication and outreach programs, one local bakery provided donations in form of cookies and breads. Moreover, I booked an appointment with a group of community based organizations that have also been involved in similar outreach initiatives. These organizations pledged to provide financial logistical support to enable us bring speedy change in the current situation. In addition, I played an instrumental role in integrating and coordinating with both internal and external stakeholders. My coordination role took place among individuals, functions, and sub units through hierarchies of authorities. However, there are local businesses whose structures were somewhat complex. As a result, I utilized a collection of integrating mechanisms to improve communication and coordination process among each function and division. In view of the above, there are various communication tools that I used to create awareness to members of the public. They included: brochures, newsletters, emails, organizational websites, and sign posts.

Most of the efforts that I made were through direct contacts with business leaders. These persuasive efforts were fruitful in creating a context within which local business stakeholders and members of the public work together by mobilizing resources for donations to No Kill Columbia. Members of the public of different demographic groups expressed willingness to actively take part in the project. Approximately 38 attendees managed to provide their financial support. Out of this number three-quarters were females. My liaison role was not limited to external affairs. This is because I increased coordination among different team members and sub-groups. This is because when the amount of contacts between the functions increased, I had to step in to increase coordination with others.

While my contributions were sufficient to meet the overall team objectives, there are certain areas that I feel that I could have placed more efforts. For instance, my liaison program mainly targeted local businesses to the extent that I overlooked other potential contributors such as ordinary members of the public, opinion leaders, and other animal protection agencies. Therefore, to improve my performance in the future, I will embrace an all-inclusive liaison program that encourages equal representation of all key stakeholders to actively take part in the program. This is because embracing a participative and open approach to this problem will create a higher level of awareness in the entire community compared to working with only a few stakeholders. Moreover, more funds and donations are anticipated when there is balanced representation from all stakeholder groups.

If I had another chance to perform the above role, I would focus on improving my communication and outreach strategies. In the previous project, the channels of communication that I utilized were not comprehensive enough to reach out to as many people as possible. This is because I only made use of print media channels such as brochures, newsletters, posters, and email messages. This approach is not enough since different target audiences have their unique preferred channels of communication (Downs & Adrian, 2012). Therefore, to solve this problem, I would add other more effective platforms such as social media forums, road shows, door-to-door campaigns, as well as broadcast media advertisements.

Self-Reflection on the Course Content

There are various ways in which the course content has prepared me to perform my roles effectively in my team. One of the areas that the course stressed on is team cohesion and coordination. To this end, I have gained insights into ways in which I can work towards improving cohesion without having to engage in intergroup competition that undermine the performance of the group (Dyer & Dyer, 2013). Apart from teamwork, the managerial concepts provided in the course have enabled me to perform my liaison roles well. As the course contents suggest, managers perform the coordination and communication roles (Hill, Jones & Schilling, 2014). These are the same roles that I undertook as the liaison officer within my team. In so doing, I perfected the work of transmitting information across the company in order to influence the views of external and internal stakeholders. Therefore, the knowledge that I gained during class work enabled me to view the challenge ahead as familiar and manageable. While these course contents were important in preparing me for the task that I was to perform, there are areas that were covered earlier that did require redoing. They include strategic management and organizational coordination.

References

Downs, C. W., & Adrian, A. D. (2012). Assessing organizational communication: Strategic

communication audits. New York: Guilford Press.

Dyer, W. G., & Dyer, J. H. (2013). Team building: Proven strategies for improving team

performance. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.

Hill, C. W., Jones, G. R., & Schilling, M. A. (2014). Strategic management: theory: an

integrated approach. Boston: Cengage Learning.

Kaufmann, H. R. (Ed.). (2012). Customer-Centric Marketing Strategies: Tools for Building

Organizational Performance: Tools for Building Organizational Performance. New

York: IGI Global.