Collaboration
Working with others has always been a challenge for me; I had difficulties delegating tasks and accepting others’ work on tasks that were not up to the standards I set for myself and the group. Working with this BA 352 team, however, has changed my views on collaboration and has allowed me to be able to trust that the work coming from individuals was of their best efforts. At the beginning of the term, we learned each others’ strengths and weaknesses. We all discussed how invested we were in our educations, which helped me to understand that each person was going to put forth his or her best effort.
I contributed to my team member’s abilities to collaborate and work to produce a solution that we felt was best as a team. One way I added to my team’s collaboration was through my positive attitude. I always encouraged members to contribute their ideas to the group to be discussed and used or revised. In my midterm and final evaluations, my team members described me as “open-minded” and said I “listen to all ideas”; I tried to become inclusive of all ideas to allow team members to feel that they have contributed significantly and we can work together as a team. My encouragement has helped get some of the best ideas out of group members. For example, I invited ideas for our solution, no matter how ridiculous they seemed. One member came up with an interactive technology idea, which seemed impossible to some, but together we found a way to incorporate this interactiveness into the proposal through the use of iPads. This is demonstrated in the solutions section of the proposal, found here in the BA 352 final proposal.
Some of my weaknesses regarding collaboration was my tendency to go off focus. I tried to remain focused on the task at hand, but sometimes I would wander on a different pathway for a solution. I would tell my team and then some people would try to see my pathway, while others tried to stay on the solution we already found. This pulled the team apart in the beginning stages of the proposal process during the ideate stage of design thinking. In the future, I plan to try to take my team back to the looking stage where we brainstorm ideas for solutions that will not be judged or evaluated.
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