As the majority of students would agree that BA-352 is one of the most challenge courses in LCB. It requires deluge amount of individual and team work. I was lucky enough to be in a team where we all worked well together and produced something we were proud of. This was the first big business project for most of us on the team, so we all went into it on a similar page but brought different point of views. In my team collaboration page, I will specifically address how I have achieved my team work experiences throughout the term.
In order to enhance our team collaboration, we had two peer evaluations reports, one in the middle of the term and one after our final presentation. Although our team didn’t have major problems, it was still good to take a step back and reflect. In our midterm team feedback report, I received support from my team members about my ability to work with everyone. One of my team members said, “Very persistent, fought for ideas he believed in and often convinced the group of them. Di not participate in group think.” This made me very confident because it was something I tried my hardest to do during team projects and I was glad that it came through. As an international student, I often felt just easily follow along with others that would give me much less work load and no one can blame me, because I can always use English is not my first language as an excuse. But I tried to do a different way this time, and that was one of my greatest weaknesses listed in my Self-assessment survey that I did at the beginning of the term.
In addition, I got my highest points on Model the way from my Self-assessment survey. I am not the one who is good for confrontation and don’t want to potentially create a situation which could bring something controversial up. So I tried to be a good model and hopefully my teammates will find what I was doing and be able to follow up. This can also be contributed as a team collaboration, because by setting up a set of good and positive behaviors for the team, it would encourage them to do a better job.
I realized that I was not the one who could always entertain and encourage my teammates to do work, I choose to do some smaller things such as reserve meeting rooms, set up a good layout for our meetings, and I even bought drinks and breakfast to the team to encourage our team dynamics. I believe the team would be more productive and interactive and being motivated, if they all observe that there were someone who was willing to take the initiative to start doing something for the team. As matter of fact, it turned out be efficient for what I have done for the team.
Artifact: At about week four, one week before our first proposal, we were so struggling on find some effective needs for undergraduate students at LCB. We have decided to meet on Sunday morning in the Knight Library at the end of week four. I thought that if we screwed up on this meeting, we won’t be able to present our proposal on time, and we will fail the class. I had thought about this over and over and trying to think of a way that I can help the team. I started to re-read the leadership readings that Ron had assigned us at the beginning of the term. As I was reading it, I have found that one of the five practices in leadership exemplary is enable others to act, and I thought may be I can give some incentives to the team and they could be motivated and spark their mind to come up with something valuable. So, by doing modeling the way, I have listed a deluge of problems that I think our students need. They were not very good ideas but I just want to show them that one of us in the team had spent a great amount of time focusing on our team project and that person should be respected and getting back some ideas from others in the group. In the early morning, I went to Starbucks and bought drinks and breakfast for everybody to the meeting. I started to share my lists with my teammates and told them I much I have been contributed to the team. Suddenly, some miracle has happened and people in my team just pour down to their energy to the meeting and within 3 and half hour, we had the most productive time and basically got every thing done. I think they have realized how to respect others who sacrificed for the team, and at that moment, I don’t think our grades even matter to us. We just want to pour our heart into the subject in return to the contribution that one did for us.
Since I am an international student, there is culture difference between my teammates and myself. I was unable to cheer up my teammates by sharing my jokes or humor because things that I found funny may not be funny to them. However, one thing I learned throughout the term in terms of team collaboration, is that if I can’t have a constructive conversation to make them like me, then just be a good listener and be supportive when they find something happy and can be laugh about it.
Artifact: This term, I have four upper division business courses and it’s my second to the last term before I graduate. I have a lot of pressure both from school and my family. Therefore, my situation is completely different with all my other teammates. I constantly have the feeling that I need to maximize my time during the day to be most productive and efficient. So I had a tendency to be more serious about our meeting time. For the first two meetings that we had, I immediately feel the discomfort because we spent at least 15 minutes at the beginning of the meeting sharing our person stories. I thought it was absolutely unnecessary because it has nothing to do with our project. However, for a team to be productive and efficient, there must be a positive feelings within our team members. As I mentioned earlier that I happened not to be that person who can have a pleasant starting conversation, because of my culture difference, so I found a way to be supportive and just be a good listener when they were sharing their stories. This really allowed them not to give me a bad judgement so when we ready to get into the topics, I can be more critical and subjective.
Team collaboration is one of the most important components in leadership development, because individual can never achieve the same amount and efficient output compared with a group of people. In addition, learning how to collaborate with my teammates can also be a benefit when I am ready to look for a career and build up relationship with working professionals. Overall, I think I have demonstrated what I suppose to done and required for this class as team collaboration. However, there are many areas that I need to improve for the team collaboration in the future. For example, I need to be more vocal and learn the culture diversity between U.S. and China. I need to be more supportive to my teammates’ opinions, and appreciate their feedback to me.
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