Thanks to static.pyzam.com/img/funnypics/6...work.jpg for the pictures.
This picture really brings out the crux of the word teamwork. Share Victory, Share Defeat. Work as a team and strive together as a team!
Reflecting back on this weeks tutorial on communication and teamwork was really an eye-opener to me. After working on team based projects since secondary school(some successful and some turned out to be remarkable failures), i sort of had a vague grasp of what was needed and expected to function in a team. Never was there, though, any kind of pointers that explained what was successful and effective communication and teamwork, so this week's lesson, i must admit, was enlightening and very useful.
I believe that communication and teamwork are going to be the most important assets that we will need as we graduate from engineering. As the lecturers often point out, no engineer flies solo. These assets are important for me in that not only can i bring a new set of skills to the table when it comes to contributing to teamwork, moreover i can do it in a effective way.
The most recent project i did was actually last semester for a business module i took as a breadth. Our assignment was to help the less fortunate in a video project in teams of five, and on hindsight, i would admit that the group had no teamwork at all. Basically is was more of a group of five individuals doing to each their own, and not only that, communication was sparse( limited to necessary emails to inform each other on updates). The project culminated to a point where i was doing the video editing all alone due to a breakdown in communication, and finally when everything was completed, instead of exchanging hi fives and cheers, back-biting ensued. Emails laced with sarcasm and false politeness exchanged between my members, each complaining about the role(or lack thereof) they did.
Not only was that a horrible experience, it showed me the perils of lack of communication and teamwork in a group, and i would hope that such an experience never repeat itself. Hence i believe that the lessons on communication and teamwork are very important to me so that such a dismal situation can be averted.
Hi Jeremy!
ReplyDeleteIt seems that you have a good grasp of how important good communication and teamwork skills for you. This is apparent from your vivid description of your experience. By the way, I feel sorry for you for having such a bad experience of working in a group. Your description reflects the use of concreteness from the 7Cs.
However, you are not careful in your writing that you have made so many simple mistakes which could have been avoided. For example, there are many ‘I’s which is not capitalized. It seems like you have failed to proof read your writing before posting. This makes you miss one of the 7Cs which is correctness which may lead to people not taking your writing seriously since you sounded a bit informal.
Moreover, you are not concise enough in your writing. There are many things that can be trimmed down such as the part when you explain how you never ‘had pointers for successful and effective communication and teamwork’. This part does not address the question and you also did not provide explanation to link this to the question. The last part of the third paragraph where you complain about your group members also seems to be extraneous. These two are just but examples that show your writing to be lacking in focus.
In conclusion, I think that you have successfully addressed the question. I hope you will not have a bad teamwork experience again especially in our CG1108 group!
Cheers,
Christabel
Hi Jeremy,
ReplyDeleteI agreed with a lot of what you said in your post – like, for example, that communication and teamwork will be extremely useful to us when we graduate from NUS. It is also too true that in secondary school/JC/Poly, we were never told the meaning of good teamwork, and effective communication was never taught, it was just expected.
I can sympathize with you over the bad experiences in groups – it becomes worse when each member of the group is graded individually. This was the case for a Singapore Studies mini-project I took last semester – everyone wanted the participation points, so instead of working together to make a good presentation, each person made their own slides (complete with their own formatting, fonts, colours etc.) and tried to make theirs as long as possible so that they would get to speak longer. They end result was that it felt to the rest of the class like a 3 people presenting on 3 different topics since there was very little communication and teamwork among us. However, I feel that teamwork and communication cannot be a one way process – the whole group has to try to work as a team or else it becomes very difficult to make the team work.
Cheers,
Abhinav
Hello Jeremy, I am sorry to read your bad experience and I agree with you that communication and teamwork are important aspects we need to graduate. If there is no communication, the group members will be unhappy. One example would be you being left all alone to complete the video editing tasks when there is a communication breakdown. I think that your group members should be thankful to you for making such a huge sacrifice. Assuming that no one did anything in your case, the project might fare badly and this cannot happen in our final year project.
ReplyDeleteYour group was also lacking in teamwork as there is no effort at distributing the tasks well and it has resulted in unhappiness among the members as shown in their feelings towards the end. If the group had appointed a suitable person to share the tasks fairly and thought of any punishment to deal with those who failed in their tasks, there would not be any hard feelings after everything. This shows that the group need to communicate more as communication is important in teamwork. In your case, group disunity has lead to making more enemies than friends and creating a sense of mistrust among the members.
I feel that you could have voiced your opinions and let the rest of the members feel your frustrations as I would probably do. It would be too stressful to do a huge task alone and worse still, getting blamed for a poor job. However, since you have realized what communication and teamwork is about, I am sure your future ‘team’ will do better jobs next time!