Yongbo Qian

Ignite

 

The Ignite Leadership program focuses on the skills necessary for effectively leading formal groups and organizations through change initiative. Prior to attending this program, I was already in a position to be leading some changes. I was the project manager in CUBE Consulting and led my own team to create a new course catalog website. Realizing the current course catalog is vague and boring, we wanted to create a user-friendly and interactive way to present courses to students. I participated in the ignite program with the hope of learning some concepts and tools that can be used in enacting change and making the CUBE project I was working on a success.

 

And the program did meet my expectations!

 

We first learnt from the stories of four Illinois alumni who had enacted positive change in their careers and organizations. In my assigned narrative, alumnus Robert Hart, worked in a totally different culture and power structure and successfully got people in the community to buy into his mission. The main takeaways for me were to always take the faith and build up relationships. Whenever the unexpected challenges come, believing yourself while utilizing the power of positive relationships will eventually overcome the difficulties and achieve your goals. I decided to hold onto those ideas particularly when doing my ‘Course Catalog’ project.

 

This i-program was also very attractive with several interesting team-building activities focused on systems thinking. This helped me enhance my ability to analyze the complexity of organizational environments. One aspect that was brought to my attention is the concept of manager vs. leader. While managers are task-specific and order focused, a leader is about enacting positive change to reach the common goal. Serving as a project manager in the team, I needed to allocate the resources to each member according to their skill set, and make sure everyone is on the same page of achieving our common goal.

 

The most exciting part of this program was the communication of ideas. I pitched my idea to other participants and got encouraging and useful feedback. I was surprised that my idea grabbed the attention of the audience who wanted to see it implemented. This gave me the full confidence to move forward. I also heard many creative and ambitious change plans, which inspired me a lot.

 

I ended up having a good experience and learned a lot from Ignite. A leader is about enacting positive change to reach the common goal, and that is exactly what I learned at ignite. I hope to continue using the training I received in working on my existing project and my future change endeavors.