Undergraduate Blog / Defining Your Babson

Principled Business Leadership Institute – A Reflection

Post by Alexis Ierardi ’16

Traveling to the Principled Business Leadership Institute (PBLI) conference in Alexandria, VA this weekend was a perfect addition to my last semester here at Babson. I learned many wonderful things about training the way I think and how to better communicate with others. Being a part of this experience helped me not only learn new things but also to solidify how valuable my Babson experience has been. I was comfortable with all of the sessions that I attended and was able to speak with confidence to answer questions and to provide examples as a part of interactive sessions.

Of the many sessions that I attended, the session about conflict and the session about engaging others really stood out to me. Conflict is something that I had never really seen in a positive light until I attended this session. Here I learned that conflict, when correctly managed, can be a great way to help foster creativity and discover new opportunities. When conflict arises, your moves and countermoves are crucial to a disagreement to either be heated or positive. Although 100% of conflicts may not be able to be positive, you must always try to manage yourself so that you can maintain your professional attitude while also improving communication between yourself and others.

In the session about engaging others I learned about how to not only motivate the middle, but to motivate everyone. The key to success is being able to find out what people value and being able to reflect that in your decisions as a group or as a pair. When people are trying to participate, it is key to make sure that they know that their voice is important, they are respected, and that you set SMART goals. As a leader is it key to make sure that expectations are properly managed and that people can see their actions and positive influence for them to be invested in the success of the group. I was really excited to learn about this because I have found myself in many situations where I could have been able to accelerate group productivity with these tips. Going forward I am excited to be able to use these tools to be a better business leader. Thank you to the Undergraduate Professional Accelerator Fund for providing me with this great opportunity.