Individual Assignment:
How to make my teammates and me perform better in a group? According to the document named "Effective Teamwork" given by professor Yu, Simply bringing people together does not necessarily ensure they will function effectively as a team or make appropriate decisions. An effective team is a process "1+1>2", and we can get many benefits from the successful teams. For example, greater clarity in expressing ideas through group discussion, more efficient use of resources–especially time etc. However, building up an effective team is not easy, many aspects should be considered. We try to make the cooperation between the two teams worked better, but we faced many problems in the virtual project. The communication issue was the first problem we faced. Fortunately, I think we have created a good communication environment. However, it is also existed several potential problems. What's more, there are some negotiations and conflicts happened in our discussions. Even though we have solved them finally, but some of results are not in the win-win situations. Next, I will show the integrated analysis of the reflection.
How to make my teammates and me perform better in a group? According to the document named "Effective Teamwork" given by professor Yu, Simply bringing people together does not necessarily ensure they will function effectively as a team or make appropriate decisions. An effective team is a process "1+1>2", and we can get many benefits from the successful teams. For example, greater clarity in expressing ideas through group discussion, more efficient use of resources–especially time etc. However, building up an effective team is not easy, many aspects should be considered. We try to make the cooperation between the two teams worked better, but we faced many problems in the virtual project. The communication issue was the first problem we faced. Fortunately, I think we have created a good communication environment. However, it is also existed several potential problems. What's more, there are some negotiations and conflicts happened in our discussions. Even though we have solved them finally, but some of results are not in the win-win situations. Next, I will show the integrated analysis of the reflection.
Introduction:
The virtual project is very special for me, and I never experienced before. To my point of view, the cooperation with two teams is much more complex than just one team. The two men (Chris and Joe) in evening class are both local people in HK, but all the members of our team are from Mainland China. So we have many different aspects on thinking, langue, beliefs and values. It is a critical issue for us. On one hand, the differences can bring us different ideas and inspiring us. On the other hand, they have caused some conflicts and problems between the two groups as well. In general, we cooperated very well and keep a kindly discussion atmosphere. However, in the process, we still faced some difficult issues.
We began the teamwork very early, in week 9. The team in evening class first contacted us by email. At that time, the task for us is designing a virtual program between two companies. In other words, we need to find two companies in different industries and come up with a virtual cooperative project. This task is not very hard for us, so the communication way of using email is effective enough. However, with the research continues, using email as the only way to communicate cannot give us a comprehensive understanding of our project. We need another kind of communication tools that can let us talk with each other at anytime, anywhere. Therefore, we would like to choose Whatapps to keep in touch with each other in daily communication, and we also still kept applying email to transfer the important documents with many words. Besides, the time problem also bothered us. The two team members in the evening class are part-time students. In general, they have their own jobs. At the same time, we also have some group discussion of other groups in other courses. So finding a fixed discussion time became more difficult for us. After sharing our timetables through Whatapps, we find a suitable time point for our discussion. So we will do a on-line meeting using Skype in the evening of every Thursday until the end of the project. All of us think the on-line meeting is very significant for finishing our project better. And this meeting gives us a chance to share our opinions and do a brainstorm in time.
Communication problems:
Communication is the process of transmitting and understanding information and ideas, Team identity and group cohesiveness. Actually, Ricky, Jake and I are good friends in life. So the communication among us is good and without much barriers. Even though we are not familiar with Chris and Joe in the evening class, we still tried to use different kinds of ways to contact with them, such as using email, Whatapps, and Skype. However, good team communication is not only keeping with each other, but also collaborating their job with others. The document "Effective Teamwork" mentioned that members work too much on their own and lose touch with how their work relates to others can reduce team effectiveness. We also faced this kind of situation in the virtual project. To my point of view, there are three reasons lead to this problem.
The first reason is without commitment and promise at the beginning of the collaboration. We didn't show our goals in the group assignment to the other team. And so do them. That means both sides of the virtual team didn't finish sufficient preparations. Moreover, we just do the jobs belong to our own team, and care less on the other team's work. Thus we cannot get enough advises from others. So we have to modify our project many times to make sure everybody satisfy it.
The second reason is the limitation of the virtual communication on-line. As we know, the information technology bring much convenient for our daily life. Smith (1995) has outlines five characteristics of virtual community, which are Aspatial, Asynchronous, Acorporeal, Astigmatic, and Anonymous. In other words, we can talk with others at anytime, anywhere in the Internet. However, Smith also points out that, in most situations, people cannot see other people in the virtual communication. Therefore, they can't get the information of the facial expression and body langue. Especially in the Confucius culture environment, people really keen on using ambiguous words to express their meaning. At this situation, the facial expression and body langue are become more important. That is the reason why sometimes our teammates have misunderstood their ideas.
The last reason is the limitation of using emails. Even though we have different ways to contact with each other, email is always the main method. In the document "MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW", there are several weaknesses about using email to communicate. Comparing with face-to-face meeting, the shortcomings of email contain low feedback, reduced social cues, length of message, and excess attention. In other words, email communication faced the problems of lacking emotion expression, misunderstanding of the message, and neglecting some important information. Even though we have taken on-line meeting to enhance our cooperation, but we still believe that face-to-face meeting is much more effective for solving problem than the virtual communication.
The last reason is the limitation of using emails. Even though we have different ways to contact with each other, email is always the main method. In the document "MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW", there are several weaknesses about using email to communicate. Comparing with face-to-face meeting, the shortcomings of email contain low feedback, reduced social cues, length of message, and excess attention. In other words, email communication faced the problems of lacking emotion expression, misunderstanding of the message, and neglecting some important information. Even though we have taken on-line meeting to enhance our cooperation, but we still believe that face-to-face meeting is much more effective for solving problem than the virtual communication.
According to problems we faced in communication, I have some opinions to improve it. First, I think, both sides should show their commitments to each other and set a mutual goal at the beginning. Thus we will have a specific direction in the work. Also, we should take an active part in others work and change our mind to make our working more effective. Second is trying to ensure everyone listens. We have known that we may neglect or misunderstand information when we exchanging ideas in the virtual community. So it is necessary to take some measures to let everyone know the significant points of the mission. For example, we can add the times of on-line meeting or extend the meeting time. Besides, because of the invisible issue, we cannot feel the emotion of others and can't get the information from the body langue. Therefore, we can choose another communication tool, like QQ, to do some video meeting in our cooperation.
Conflicts analyzing and solving:
In teamwork, we always face different kinds of conflicts. These conflicts are hard to avoid and sometimes do not need to avoid. In traditional view, conflicts are bad and can cause poor communication, lack of openness, failure to respond to employees' need etc. However, in interactionist view, we should analyze it more critical. All the conflicts can be sum up to two types, one is functional conflict and it is good for business. The other one is disfunctional conflict which can cause some bad influence on the cooperation in team. Besides, there are three kinds of conflicts, which are task conflict, process conflict, and relationship conflict. But it is very hard to say what type is functional or disfunctional. Therefore, I need to put them into real situations to analyze. In fact, we have met several conflicts in the virtual project. Next, I will show what they are and how we handle them.
First conflict we faced is the problem of effective communication. According to the 3 kinds of conflicts, I identify it as process conflict. Because it is about how works get done. It bothered us a lot at the beginning of our project. Both sides of us want to choose the software we are familiar with, as the main communication tool. Our team insisted using QQ or Wechat, team Connect suggested the Whatapps. To our point of view, comparing with Wechat and Whatapps, the later one doesn't have obvious advantages than the former one. What's more, Whatapps is a kind of paid apps and most of the Chinese people like my team members and I don't want to pay for it. So at the beginning of discussion, we take the competition way to bargain with them. However, we found this conflict had waste lots of time and it was not much important for our cooperation. Due to the reason, our team gave up our advice and downloaded Whatapps. I think we took the correct action finally. As we know, avoidance is suitable for the solving the trivial issue and at that time we have no chance of satisfying both sides. In my opinion, we handle this conflict very well.
The second conflict is task conflict. Even though we didn't set a mutual commitment for our cooperation, but we all have our own goals and try our best to finish our project. Of cause, there are some disagreements when we discussed the content of our work. In the project, we decided to build up website named Virtualspcc.com to broaden the business of our corporation and organization. However, which side should play the main role in the virtual project? We did a negotiation. For our team, we wanted the web could bring the largest economic benefit for us. So we insist the web should be operated by our Supermarket. On the other hand, they think the Community Chest is a charity institution. They worried that our Group can bring too much commercial elements to the web and give the public a ambiguous impression. In this part, we took the strategy of compromising. Because of the problem of building up the new web is very significant for both sides and opponents with equal power. So the final solution is Community Chest in charge of the daily operation and Splendor keeps the right of supervision. What's more, we also have the different ideas about the video competition --- "Vote for Charity". Team Connect wants to reward the winners by bonus. However, we prefer to give them our company's products and services to decrease our cost and manage the inventory. In our opinion, the suitable method to cope with it is collaboration. We think the two ideas are useful for attracting people to take part in our activity. Therefore, we decided to combine them together. We decrease the sum of bonus and add the award of products in the on-line store of Splendor Group. Besides, we also came up with a new idea, that is showing our outcomes to the public media and meeting the psychological needs of participants. Finally, in the group logo design, we still face some problems. There are two logos below, I like the former one, but Ricky insist the other one. Finally, we took the way of voting to solve this problem and choose the latter one as our team's logo. To my point of view, democracy is also a effective way for breaking the ice and solving conflicts.
Even though, we didn't form a very good relationship with the group Connect. Fortunately, we didn't face the relationship conflict as well. However, I remember I have ever experienced a terrible cooperation with two people in another course this term. As we know, the relationship conflicts are always disfunctional. So the poor relationship between the co-workers brought many problems. First is langue problem. The two students are local people in HK. They are not only speaking poor Mandarin, but also English. So we cannot communicate with each other smoothly and it leads to several misunderstanding about words translation. Second is the different mode of thinking. According to the Hofstede's Theory, the culture of HK and China is rather similar, but it still exist some differences. Such as the part of IDV, the people in Mainland China are more collectivism than those in HK. So in every group meeting we arrived at the place on time or a bit earlier. But they are always late for over 20 minutes. That made us very angry. What's more, email is the main way to connect with each other. But the problem is they always gave delayed replies to us, especially in the weekends or holiday. So other teammates complained about it many times. Thus the relationship conflict made our teamwork less efficiency and waste lots of time. To my point of view, we should take measures to solve this kind of conflicts when it just happened. In the Iceberg Model of Culture, the difference of the people come from varieties countries is not only their behaviors, but also their attitudes, assumptions, values, and beliefs which cannot be seen easily. So I have to understand more comprehensive to the people from another environments. And it is helpful building up a effective working atmosphere in the cooperation.
Creativity issue:
Creativity is the ability to generate and use insight (Chris Stevens). It contains two parts, which are novel and useful. In most situations, the degrees of the two traits are not as the same. Meanwhile, the degree of creativity is depends on the lower trait. Group is a good platform to complement teammates' advantages. That is the reason why we need teamwork. In the cooperation, we can do brainstorms to share our ideas and try our best to make them come true. Ricky, Jake and I are good friends no matter in class or after class. So we can discuss our task and share ideas in a harmony atmosphere. Even if someone's idea was refused, nobody would feel depressed and keep bring his ideas to us. I think it is good for improving the creativity of our team's task. Comparing with the Six factors that enhance creative potential (C.D. Stevens, Coming to Insight, Eventually. Screenhub, March, 2007), we still have some aspects need to be improved. First is Egolessness, which means "Lose self" and to minimize self-concern and ego issues within one's creative work. In my opinion, it is really difficulty for most of people. Because of people always express self-concern unconsciously. So we need to do practices to make our thinking more rational and objective. What's more, another weakness in developing our creativity is Abstractive Play. We have been used to analyze the opinion by our own way. Sometimes, we look at only one side of the coin. Therefore, we need to develop skills in generating abstract thought, particularly analogy and metaphor. Analyzing issues from different angles can give us surprising answers, and it is helpful for finishing our assignment better. Besides, we also need to improve something that already existed to enhance our innovation capability.
For me, this course is a special learning experience. I have been not only studied the theories, but also exchanged my ideas and experience according to the practices in class. I have known how to perform better in negotiation and understood the virtual communication more clearly. Besides, this course also gave me some methods to help me handling the conflicts. These theories are really useful for me when I start me career in the future.
Reference:
[1] University of Washington. A Note on Virtual Communities, March 13, 1999.
[2] N. Venkatraman and John C. Henderson, Sloan Management Review，1998.
[3] Glonaz Sadri and John Condia, Managing the Virtual World, January, 2012.
[4] Constructing Excellence, Effective Teamwork, March 2004.
[5] Henry W. Chesbrough and David J. Teece, Organizing for Innovation: When Is Virtual Virtuous?, The Innovative Enterprise, August 2002.
[6] HR Focus. Nov2012, Vol. 89 Issue 11, p7-8. 2p.
[7] Harvard Business Review. Creativity as an Exercise in Self-Discovery: Interaction. Mar2013, Vol. 91 Issue 3, p16-17. 2 p. 1
[8] Koltun, Vladlen. Siliconindia. Virtual Worlds: New Means of Communication. Jan 2009, Vol. 12 Issue 1, p41-41. 1/2p.
[9] Butler, Kelley M. Employee Benefit Adviser. Virtual reality takes on benefit communication and enrollment. Aug2008, Vol. 6 Issue 8, p66-66. 1p.
[1] University of Washington. A Note on Virtual Communities, March 13, 1999.
[2] N. Venkatraman and John C. Henderson, Sloan Management Review，1998.
[3] Glonaz Sadri and John Condia, Managing the Virtual World, January, 2012.
[4] Constructing Excellence, Effective Teamwork, March 2004.
[5] Henry W. Chesbrough and David J. Teece, Organizing for Innovation: When Is Virtual Virtuous?, The Innovative Enterprise, August 2002.
[6] HR Focus. Nov2012, Vol. 89 Issue 11, p7-8. 2p.
[7] Harvard Business Review. Creativity as an Exercise in Self-Discovery: Interaction. Mar2013, Vol. 91 Issue 3, p16-17. 2 p. 1
[8] Koltun, Vladlen. Siliconindia. Virtual Worlds: New Means of Communication. Jan 2009, Vol. 12 Issue 1, p41-41. 1/2p.
[9] Butler, Kelley M. Employee Benefit Adviser. Virtual reality takes on benefit communication and enrollment. Aug2008, Vol. 6 Issue 8, p66-66. 1p.
