Learning to be Led: My Experience Joining a Team

This year I had the amazing opportunity to join some fellow marketing students as we participated in an independent study called Applied IMC. This class was led by our awesome and inspiring professor, Dan Purdy.

Applied IMC is a brand new class to the marketing program, and I got to experience putting my project management, communication, and content creation skills to the test for the past 6 months. In the first week of the class we were broken up into groups based off a specific target market and created campaigns to suit whoever our target was. I was lucky enough to join a team with my fellow content creator, Colby Klym, and our team lead and content editor, Abbey Spivey.

Prior to this class, I've been a part of many teams and I was confident in my ability to be a team player; however previously, I had usually been a team leader. Joining a team where I had a direct report was something new to me and it definitely taught me a lot about the communication that goes on between a team and a manager.

I felt so lucky that I joined a team where our leader was supportive and encouraging, yet still let us grow independently. During this class we created lots of content; Abbey was able to teach us how to design graphics, and how to create engaging and fun, yet informative video content as well. Although I had experience posting on social media before and creating campaigns; content creation was a new experience for me.

Our team lead, Abbey, was encouraging, and pushed us to improve each piece of content we produced; while still giving us the independence to make the final decision ourselves. She was able to teach us how to film video content, and even spent hours with us in the library or conference rooms, teaching us how to edit and integrate campaign themes and the WWU brand into our content.

The support that our team had for each other made it one of my favorite groups to be a part of, and the communication skills I learned will help me moving forward. Not only did I learn how to be part of the team; I also learned valuable leadership skills that I'm sure will help me moving forward with my career.

If you are a WWU Marketing Student and want a hands on-teamwork-based class, take AIMC. I've been able to add so many skills to my resume, and even received a paid internship because of the work and skills that I got from AIMC.