Zhenyu (Stone) Shi
301297511
D101
Black T-shirt
Accounting & Operations

Overall if I have to rate myself in collaboration throughout this semester on a scale of 1 to 10, I would give myself a 3 at most. At the beginning of this semester, I had hoped to fully dedicate myself in our teamwork by building good relationships with other team members and creating decent climate of collaboration among the team. Unfortunately as this semester comes close to the end, I find myself did not achieve what I had hoped. In lots of cases, I just did whatever work was assigned to me and submit it to the team/group at the end. I turned out to be more introverted than I had expected and often times I held on my opinions on many group decisions or did not even have any opinions at all. This could be greatly shown in the case where my task team gathered together to finish the final report during the Easter break. We all were expected to contribute our ideas on how to answer the questions of the report, however, I did not voice out my suggestions to the rest of the team other than just agreeing on most of theirs. My lacking of collaboration could also be shown in our team/group Facebook conversations where we chatted about most of our group assignments at. Most of times, I just read the contents of other members’ texts and did whatever I was asked to do instead of actively interacting with others. All of these examples above created an image of me lacking willingness to truly engage within the team/group and it unsurprisingly affected the final evaluation of me from other team members in a negative way. However, in certain cases I did work collaboratively with the team/group such as when I volunteered to be one of the presenters for my task team for the final presentation. All four of us, the presenters, spent several hours together practicing and revising on each other’s’ parts after we had done our own parts separately. During the time we met up, we did not just pay attention to practice our own parts but gave each other suggestions constantly. Doing so not only allowed us to have a satisfactory presentation at the end but enabled me personally gaining more confidence which could be very helpful for myself in future team activities.
Working in a group with so much diversity definitely helped me gain more understanding of others as well as myself. While diversity provides a creative and positive working environment, sometimes it could also bring conflicts. For example, at the beginning of this semester when we were preparing for the supporting documents for the pitch, Karen and Johnny got into an argument because Johnny thought that Karen went too much in detail for her part and was wasting everyone’s time. Karen got a little upset because Johnny expressed his concern in a very strong tone. I was able to notice the whole incident and apply my knowledge of their differences to try to solve the conflict between them. First I knew that Karen had a solid green MVS preference which led her to focus on detail sometimes too much. Then I knew that Johnny had a red green MVS preference which was shown on his strong drive to complete the assignment quickly. I personally have a blue MVS preference with Caring on top of my SDI strengths list. Thus, I tend to focus more on people and take the group harmony very importantly which led me have this desire to solve the conflict. Because of what I learned about diversity from this course, I was able to apply it in many areas even outside of class such as in sports activities. I and several of my friends love playing basketball together. With the knowledge I gained from this course about everyone’s difference and strength, I have more understanding of my basketball team in which we have a leader who takes charge mostly during the game and also someone who is in charge of the defense line or offense line according to what we are doing good at.
As I mentioned earlier that during the Easter break when my task team met up to complete the Task Team Report together, I was not voicing out my opinions as much as I was supposed to. Thus, Johnny expressed his concern on my seeming unwillingness to participate in a very strong tone which made me felt a bit offended and trying to argue against him that I was willing to participate instead of cooling down the conflict with a rational mind. To think back right now, I was the starter of this conflict because of the fact that I was holding back my opinions which was no help to the team. So Johnny had a perfect reason to bring it up. And what I should have done to cool down the conflict is to utilize the first truth first tool to tell the team first I felt sorry to hold back my opinions and explain the reason for it (might be that I just did not have any idea at that time).
As I stated a couple of times above, having effective communication within a team strengthens the collaboration. Also this is what I believe to be the most important thing I have learned from this course. Having effective communication does not just mean we listen to others and agree with others like I did in most of team gatherings. It means way beyond than that. It requires us responding, with our own opinions.

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