The principles of communication and team behavior cover a lot of things, but my group have not make use of all the principles. I will explain which principles we have used throughout the meetings.
For “Twelve Cs for Teambuilding”, I think we have make use all of them except “Charter” which I do not understand the meaning of that word. Secondly, we also make use of the principle of “The Making of the A-Team”. Each member in my group has been punctual and prepared for the meetings. As far as I know, we have been honest in communication and responding to one and another during the meetings. We are open to ideas and criticism from one and another, and we definitely have lots of sense of humour. As far as I know, my group’s meeting behavior belongs to “Task facilitating behaviors”. We always seek for opinions when we provide an idea.
In terms of the individual behavior of each member, I think we are all very responsible. When one of us is speaking, others will listen and speak up whenever it is necessary. In every meeting, each of us will be punctual, and we will always stick to the agenda that our leader has made before each meeting. Despite that, sometimes, we would discuss more on the future things after we have reached the agenda of the meeting. Our leader also did a great job in arranging and chairing every meeting. Whenever a meeting is over, he would set the time for another meeting in the future. Before the meeting, he would secure a suitable meeting place for us and text us about it. Personally, I think he is doing great so far.
In every meeting, whenever we run out of ideas, we would take a break. It is during the break that we would talk about other things and learn more about each other. After knowing each other better, we begin to switch our formal meeting style to a more casual one. We would add in some of our mother language into the discussion and if one of us do not understand, we would translate it into English and he would learn something new. That is how we conduct the interpersonal communication in our meetings.
When we are preparing the oral presentation with the topic “intercultural communication”, I observed that while we are researching on other cultures for the presentation, we would ask about other’s culture in the process. For example, when NTH is researching about the different meaning of pointing out the thumb in different country, he found the meaning in my country is to point at a person in a polite manner. He even asked me about it before he includes that finding into the presentation.
Most teams would have faced many conflicts during the meeting, including my team. As far as I remember, there were two major conflicts that happened in the meeting. The first major conflict is to decide a leader in C1 and another leader in CT, and the second major conflict is to decide who would present which main points. Fortunately, we were able to resolve the conflicts through discussions and understandings.
Overall, I like the performances of my team in tackling C1. But I do hope that we could a great job in CT as well. So just as my post’s title, let’s do our best to be the best!!
I agree with your idea that we should ask about other’s culture in the progress because all of us comes from different culture. It is better to know about our team mates’ culture as clearly as we could in order to communicate well with them. Once we know well about the others culture, we will try to avoid using misunderstanding vocabulary or nonverbal signals during communication and handle problems arisen from team collaboration better. Moreover, knowing more about other cultures is absolutely encouraging because we will have some background knowledge to deal with other people from that culture if we have chance to meet them in the future.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, I also agree that using casual style in the discussion is better because it creates a friendlier environment that can help us trigger ideas when tackling with problems. That’s why in some big companies, the friendly working environments are chosen and developed. In my opinion, maintaining a casual style in discussion makes people feel free to express their ideas and comfortable especially when discussion is unexpected long. Working in a friendly and open environment is actually better and sometimes even more productive than a formal one where people are put under heavy pressure.
Actually I really admire you that you always arrive early, and the message you send is very helpful. But for your message, yesterday I should have been late. I think we all are responsible to our team. I haven’t known any other team hold more meetings than us. And we took every meeting seriously.
ReplyDeleteI agree that our meeting is becoming casual, because we are more familiar with each other. In my point of view, it is a good change. I think we are likely to come up with ideas in casual atmosphere and it is easier for us to communicate.
I also satisfy with our teamwork of OP1 and I think we will do well in CT too.
Thank you, Kok Hui for the detailed description about our meetings.
ReplyDeleteI quite agree with you, especially the fact that “when one of us is speaking, others will listen and speak up whenever it is necessary”. This technique for teambuilding as well as communication is quite important.
First, it shows basic respect to other people, making everyone in the team feel comfortable, and I think that is the reason why each one of our meeting ended up happily.
Second, it can avoid some potential quarrels between the people who hold different opinions. It can be imagined how it is likely for two people holding opposite opinions to start to quarrel if one interrupts the other when the second person is delivering his opinion. Thus, interrupting another person may light the fuse of a potential of explosion of anger.
So let’s keep up with it!