Self-Reflection by Nee

Self-Reflection by Ni Huaize (52766838)

Collaboration may be the most important and pivotal element for a team and our team IFINITE formed with a strong belief that we would have a cheerful collaboration in this course, as the spirit of our team:

INFINITE creativities

INFINITE imaginations

INFINITE power

INFINITE success

And we believed that the combination of our three can excite infinite possibilities, actually we did it to ourselves, but we can be better, especially for myself.

Simply, collaboration is working with each other to do a task, to accomplish a task. As Henry Ford said “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success”, forming the team is a beginning, and in the process of team collaboration we should concern a lot problems about how to communicate efficiently, how to make a better teamwork, how to manage the conflicts, etc.

In my view, I divide our collaboration into three parts as the diagram and in each part I will talk what happened in these three parts, and show my self- reflection.

Teamwork

Collaboration requires effective team work. Team members must trust and respect one another. There must be open communication and a willingness to accept input from others.

Researchers have identified teamwork processes have three categories:

•Transition processes

•Action processes

•Interpersonal processes

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teamwork)

Actually, I think we did well in these three processes, as we three are friends before the course, and the interpersonal processes both in transition and action are very smooth. We discuss with each very often about the topics no matter covered in the course or not, we enjoy the meeting before class , before assignment and before project, also we are from the same major, have the roughly same knowledge background in studying, which are all beneficial to our teamwork even collaboration. We make sure that the team goals are totally clear and completely understood and accepted by each other.

A good teamwork as we did will lead to better problems solving, accomplish tasks, healthy competition, developing closer relationships.

In general, I really enjoy this wonderful teamwork journey.

Communication

An efficient communication for the collaboration is indeed very important, and keeping our team using just one or two channels of communication makes collaborating significantly easier, actually, a single channel may not be the option, because we need channel to share our ideas with each both in real life and virtual space which I mean we three may not be together in one place. We choose two ways to communicate within team:

 

·Using instant message software-Wechat

·Face-to-Face talking

Wechat

 

 

As the advertisement of wechat shows, we can use it to connect each anytime, anywhere also we can chat in voice, video, and text.

We use it really often to share our ideas and comments.

 

Using wechat like IM software, we can communicate immediately, also the record can be saved into the cloud so that we do not need to record the notes.

Face-to-Face Communication

But the most important way for our team is face-to-face talking or meeting. We make the decision, or define a target by face-to-face way.

Nothing can replace the value of face-to-face communication. We communicate over wechat but even then, messages get misinterpreted and a sense of personal connection is never truly established or maintained. In fact, it’s said that over 90% of how we communicate is through nonverbal cues like gestures and facial expressions.

Even the technologies changed a lot on the way to communication, but in the prcess of communicating with each, I do realize that the most efficient also the most accurate way to communicate is still face-to-face communication comparing to other way like email, phone or IM software like wechat.

 

How about using virtual way (NO Face to Face) to collaborate with other team as we did in the final project?

In my opinion, using email is better than using IM like Skype in our case with morning team.

 

Skype:

Email:

 

Using email, we both have more time to understand more about thoughts of each team and discuss within the group as well. Then we could give sufficient explanation to the morning team, so that the communication is more favoring.

Conflicts

 

In fact, there are no conflicts in the process our team collaboration and we always have a same direction thinking for the assignment or project.

Why NO?

Actually it is hard to answer, but I can combine conflict management skills to share some reasons why there are no conflicts in the collaboration of us.

The first reason is effective communication in us, effective communication skills is of utmost importance to prevent conflicts. While interacting with others, you have to take special care of your speech and the way you speak.

The second reason may be the positive attitude, and we all have the positive attitude on the assignment and project collaboration which is essential to avoid fights and conflicts.

And another reason is the patience, we are all very patient to the collaboration that do have positive impact on avoiding conflicts.

For me, How to be better?

Although we team have a cheerful collaboration in this course, I think I need to be better in future collaboration with others no matter in studying or working.

I need to be a better listener, the listening skills is very important in a meeting or a discussion of a collaboration because an individual must be very clear what the other person saying and wants in a team ,so that you can give helpful comments.

I need to be a better sharer and I should prefer to share the knowledge in the collaboration. It has been said that knowledge is power and an effective team player should share that “power” so that it enables others on the team to succeed.

Lastly, I need to learn How to be a Team Leader!!

Reference

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teamwork
[2] Course Handout-"Reflective_writing_handout"
[3] Course Handout-"MGT 6209 Virtual Team Project Instructions revised "