Reflective Writing(Wong Chun bong 52986595)

Reflective Writing---What I did and what I got through this collaboration with my team mates.

Wong Chun Bong 52986595

Sources: http://liftupthyneighbor.com/unique-wall-mirror-decoration-ideas

In this course, I always cooperate with my two team mates for our team project. In this team, we are required to do collaboration with morning team Ants to work as virtual organization. It is good chance for me to work together with non-local classmates. Also, I experienced something that reflected my strength and weakness. Let’s go with me to see what happened in this  project from my view.

Introduction:

My team mates are two nice girls---Michele and Sally, they are full time MBA students came from China. You can see that our group structure is two girls with one man, two full time MBA students and one part time Organization and Change management student, two came from China and one is local. Base on this general information, everyone can be easy to predict conflicts must be happened.   However, it runs quite smooth, at lease on the first assignment about negotiation project.

In this first blog assignment, since it is our first group project and the preparation is just one week. Everything is rush and we must catch all the space to do it. In this project, we had two meetings for preparation, one is after the class and the other one is on Saturday.

In the first meeting, we cannot setup the target that we were all in cloud, so we decided that I was the representative for the team to request professor and other teams for the guideline. Also, all of us are required to read the two related articles to make fully understanding of this topic.

After that, we had second meeting on Saturday and we decided the topic as TVB and their employee. We separate the project in three parts and each one handled one of them. I am handled the introduction part and the final review of our whole project.  Lucky, the final score of this first project seems quite well.

Review this first group assignment, I found that I am on the leading position for creating ideas, planning the structure and discussing the details. For this initial project, I kept advice ideas to stimulate other two teammates thinking and found that the topic we chosen are the most interesting one.  After that, base on our teammate Michelle searching, we decided two main content about negotiation between TVB and artist/temper actors. After planned the structure, we discussed details of them, another teammate Sally sometimes advise opposite point of view that to make us refresh the ideas. Finally, we completed the job and the score is accepted in our team.

May be you can see some features of our three team mates. It is the base of our group that can predict what will happen in the next big project---virtual organization with another team.

In below parts, I will not just tell the story about how to work this project; it seems quite boring. Let’s see below five contents I want to focus on and it should be good for reflect myself during this project.

Communication method:

In this project, we generally have two discussion groups; one is internal discussion in our own group Forrest, the other is discussion with the morning group Ants through internet.

For our internal communication, it always is face to face, I really trust it is the most efficient way compared with our virtual communication with morning class. I will show it to you on below. In our internal discussion, it always happened during our class because we are all busy. I have my own job in night time and they have many lecturers for their MBA program. Sometimes we can hold meeting on Saturday if necessary. Sunday is unavailable because Sally need to back her Shenzhen home as she has a whole day class in Shenzhen on every Monday. In-class meeting is always very short, just a few minutes but it is quite work. We can directly share our own ideas and confirm what next steps we should take. Perhaps it did not have any deep discussion for analysis our topic but it’s quite well to make the process smooth.

For our virtual communication with morning team Ant, it is mainly use technology as tool to chat, such as email and QQ. The reason to use QQ is because the whole morning team and two of my team mates are came from China, QQ is very familiar with them. For me, I am ok to just install it; the function likes Whatsapp and Line. For email, it can share ideas offline with all team mates in the same time. We always use it to remark our main ideas and key words as it is clearer to explain. Compared this two methods, I prefer email more and QQ is not a good way for official communication. When we all chatted in QQ, typing time is required but the discussion topic will not wait for it. Some ideas may be missed or no conclusion but we all go to other topics. Also, since QQ is normally to chat with friends, so we were sometimes out of our project. For email, it can show up our ideas more clear individually, the writers have enough time to scan their own ideas first before sending, every readers also have enough time to digest it. However, it will be lack of communication because we cannot ensure everyone read this message. In our group discussion, it always just one as representative for email discussion in both groups. 

For any formal discussion, I strongly suggest face to face meeting are more efficient and it can make sure the understanding on both sides. Virtual communication should be a support tool that for on-live chatting once unavailable and recording notice after every meeting. However, in this project, as it is virtual organization so we must use it as main tool for communication. It is waste some times as we cannot handle this virtual communication well. In next part I will explain about the discussion.

Discussion:

For our discussion, I want to mention two different styles for our two groups.

In Ants group, they have four peoples and all of them seems quite enjoy to share in discussion. Of course one to two people in their group are more active to join the discussion and share what they think. Also, for their discussion, you can see they should have internal communication first before our two group meeting, some draft ideas and the project direction is agreed in their group internally. I think it is so nice that they have their internal procedure and everyone they show out are understand for their team, it makes good impression to us.

For our team, as we always just have a short meeting in class, so we can just decision what next step we should do, for example, we should read some articles or search some information about the ideas individually. The output is not always well as all of us are busy. I always prepared the information by myself for every coming meeting. It should be well for our internal meeting but I do not think it is good when facing other teams. Sometimes I planned ideas to show up to Ants, our team will have argument for it internally. I really do not like it as we should not show any conflict to others, our partner team will have bad image to us and not trust our ability as well. In our QQ chat, I always chat with Ants team by my own, sometimes my teammates are missing the meeting because of busy and they also mentioned that there is no space to share their comment because the topic is going fast. I agree the second point that it is absolutely the disadvantage for QQ discussion but I will confused about the first reason. The advantage for virtual meeting is everyone can join it in every where every time freely, I hope all of us can be work as a team and can get supportive from each others.  

Decision making:

The important part for discussion is to make some decisions.  For this project, every decision should be agreed by both teams so the decision making is the same as to get agreement for both teams.

I feel quite well for this part because we are all open-mind to accept opposite ideas. A warm discussion is in our two team meeting that we can also make some agreement. It is the reason why we always indicated our group project are sunshine in the preparation process.

Sometimes we have some argument when make decision; it also seems smooth to solve it. For example, when we decided to use catering and fashion or catering and dating as two different field company for our project, it did not find any opposite side for both ideas. We will just analysis which one is more creative and more information we can find. Of course, we will also consider which one is more attractive to professor. It is the most important decision should have more discussion and argument, but everyone is easy to agree. Is it a good action? Sometimes I do not think that, maybe we are all busy for others issue. When we found a "seems" good and logical ideas, we will accept it easily. Compared with other group’s ideas, I think they are more creative and professional as well.

By using our virtual communication tools, the advantage is to record for our discussion and conclusion. The only thing we should do is to modify the discussion data to be a minutes. It is quite harsh that no one wants to do it. For me, I also reject to do it as I believe my memory for all important parts I talked. It is not a good habit for me, when I want to expand some ideas base on our discussion, it may be out of the topic. Also, since no team mates do it, even do it but it is just for themselves that no show out to the whole group, it will make confliction as misunderstanding between us.

Conflict:

In the above part, I shown that we seldom have conflict for decision making, but it does not mean that no any conflict between us. We have other conflict in other sides.

In the initial stage, as we got the details and requirements about how to run this project, I planned contact the morning group Ants first and prepare our draft ideas. However, my teammates think it is still too early to prepare and they have other assignments need to complete. So everything is postponed a month.

After month ago, this project deal line is coming and we must connect Ants immediately. It also confused for me that why Ants also not connect with us? I found that other classmates were started contact with their partner teams and hold the first virtual meetings. I known that one of group was nearly completed the project when were just planned to start it. It is exception case as I known but I really believe we are late. I am not happy for it as we should prevent it one month before.

To prepare the presentation of our project, we planned to share the workload that everyone handled their own part separately. I understand that we are all busy so I used my office hour to prepare a draft power point. I can make our preparation under a guideline and we can follow it to discussion our presentation. Since I designed the main guideline of the PowerPoint, I am assigned to hand the main parts about the explanation of our virtual communication and what benefits of it. It is my pleasure to handle this main part about our central idea of this project but I think other parts are also important. For this article, I also handled related parts that I should write more than half of this blog. I feel quite upset as every workload should be share to each one fairly, we are all busy but it is not the reason to put most workload on one.

Reflection with improvement:

After review what I did inside this group activities, I really think to improve my communication skills are the most important thing to do in the coming future, It is valuable for me to be work in group or to be a leader in my career, that involved how to make  decision in group and prevent conflicts for it.

May be let me consider why this conflict was happened. We all known that some conflict are productive that can bring new ideas and modify the plan more well. However, on the above mentioned the conflict in our group was about the lack of communication that we all do our own job, just considered our own opinions and force others to follow up our own rule. Since this is a in-class group assignment, no one had any power to force others. I think that to be more sensitive to other are essential for this collaboration; we must get the win-win situation make all feel comfortable and completed the project successfully.

Below some points I found about improvement to myself. I should also be useful for everyone when you want to improve your teamwork.

First, I should talk more with my team mate to understand more how difficulty they are facing for this job. It is not for just discussion with them about homework or project; I should try to know more about what difficulty they are facing. In the above example, my team mate Michelle and Sally are came from China, they should not so familiar in this studying and life environment compared with me. Also, their MBA course is a one-year program and six courses with fifteen credits are required per semester. For my teammate Sally, she is a fresh student that to take this MBA after completed her Bachelor degree, so she should not be well to work under high workload. For another team mate Michele, her family is in Hangzhou and she sometimes need to back home. All this factors will affect my teammate concentration for this project. I am a part time student with own job, so I am also busy in my life. However, I am mature to handle it as I should be good handle this workload since working over six years after graduation. If I can do it, I should take more responsibility for the project and provide more help to others.

Second, as I mentioned on above that I should provide more help to my team mate. It is not only to handle more workload in the whole project; I still trust everyone should take certain workload as their responsibility. I should try to explain more explain the assignment more clear to teammate. It is quite difficult to me as I always just transfer what I think to my teammate. When facing other challenges or opposite ideas, I will ignore it. That’s why I sometimes have confliction with my team mate Sally. In next time, I should reconsider my idea and review it base on some opposite ideas. For another teammate Michele, I should invite her more to share comment, it is good to improve our team relationship and reshape our project.

Third, it is very common but I really felt it through this project that is to get common language with all your team mates. In both my group Forest and the morning group Forest, all of them come from China and their mouth language is Putonghua.  I can speak and understand Putonghua because my job required working with Chinese clients. However, when I need to discuss assignment with them, I found it is quite different that sometimes I cannot listen clearly what they said; they spoke very fast so I always misunderstanding their meaning. Also, since all the team mates came from different Chinese cities, so their Putonghua tones are different, it is another reason that I cannot get their meaning. In this project, I always use both Putonghua and English for our communication. It is better but the better should be all use Putonghua.

Conclusion

This project is completed but I think I can do it better. The reason may be about my ability and communication skills. After review that I make some mistake sure as design the initial draft ideas of this project, make decision of which direction we should go for this ideas (collaboration between catering and fashion.) and some conflict with other team mates.

Now it is all over and we should go forward. I am really thanks to anyone help and provide support to us. For Ants team, they are well collaborated as compared with other group comment about their cooperation situation. For my two beauty team mates Michele and Sally, I always force them to provide more ideas and increase their involvement of in the project, thanks so much that they can still do their best in this team. It is good experiences to work with all!!!!