Post #6 Reflections on Principles of Communication/Teamwork on programming and problem-solution Project

On a personal note, I am proud to be the pioneer batch of the module CG1413. It was an enriching 12 weeks spent, learning the principles of effective communication and teamwork and practising it in meetings and projects throughout the semester.

Reflecting on the experiences of this semester, I feel that I have vastly improved my communication skills as well as being a better team player; the Problem-solving Project and the CG1102 Programming assignment had provided us with a suitable and effective environment for us to grow and learn. Most importantly, I can now fully understand the possible implications ineffective communication skills can create in a team, and what we as the team members can do to avoid awkward situations. In addition, we also learnt to exercise conflict management in teams, in which we should priortise the goal of the team over personal issues.

In my opinion, I am already applying the principles of effective communication concurrently while learning about it in CG1413.


Taken from http://www.facebook.com/?croperror#!/photo.php?pid=6279&op=3&o=global&view=global&subj=422818325524&id=100000728764367

Being the only Chinese in my group, intercultural differences were already an issue when the team was formed for the Electrical Engineering module, CG1108. I can honestly say that by keeping in mind how dangerous miscommunication can be, I have successfully worked around with my team despite our different cultural backgrounds. Conflicts were reduced to the minimum, and all of us had a great time together working as a team, as we understood fully the consequences of cultural conflicts and the damaging effects on the goal of the team.


Meetings and Presentations

In this module, I have also extensively learnt crucial presentation skills as well as conducting an effective meetings. Thanks to the helpful guidelines given, being a team leader I was able to conduct discussions that achieved desirable results within a reasonable period of time


Our first meeting




Giving a presentation became less of a chore now, as I am better equipped with important skills that I did not realise prior to this module, such as visual aids and body languages.


The first Oral Presentation

I am now more confident than when I first started this module, in terms of speaking well and also taking the initiative to start a conversation. Needless to say, I am now more aware of the important skills that I should acquire prior to a presentation, that is, preparation and plenty of practices.




Writing Skills


Last but not least, writings are also part of communication, as we learnt the usage of wiki in our Problem-solving Project to communicate with team-mates without meeting physically. Also, by adhering to the 7Cs writing guidelines, namely Courtesy, Correctness, Conciseness, Clarity Coherence/Cohesion, Concreteness and Completeness, we are able to interact and understand each other better through reading scripts like meeting minutes and proposals.

Post #5 : Reflection on Oral Presentation 2

picture courtesy of www.asanet.org/employment/careers.cfm

Positives:

From my previous Oral Presentation there was a significant improvement in terms of confidence, and visual aids were being used at a larger scale. For this presentation I felt the need of an aid to illustrate my diagrams in my slides better, and I think my investment of a laser pointer paid off as the outcome was an effective transmission of my idea across to the audience.



Also, compared to the OP1 I repeatedly rehearsed on myself before the actual presentation; hence I was able to make use of my visual aids more, rather than explaining through a speech. By interacting with the screen the speaker can express his ideas better and more clearly to the audience.


Room for Improvements:

For this presentation I had adopted a style that was quite foreign to me: holding a cue card. First of all, it was not a deliberate act as the assignment topic was very data-intensive; initially I felt there was a need for a hand-held aid to remind me of my flow of slides throughout the presentation. I have to admit the move backfired as I made a mistake by planning literally my whole speech, in point form, into the cue card, which was something I did not do before. This resulted in an over-dependence on my cue card, hence causing a situation which happened too many times during my presentation:



I was aware of my problem during the presentation and I made an effort to increase my eye contact with the audience. For future presentations, I would try to adapt the slides to my comfortable style of presenting such as to create a smooth expression of my assignment topic to the audience.


Team Performance

As a team, our slide transitions were generally smooth and we successfully reduced the amount of prompting done during the presentation. This is because of the slide notes that we inserted in a separate laptop during the presentation which helped us to cue on the transition of the slides.

A major flaw in our team is that we were too ambitious in the amount of information we want to express to our audience. Though necessary, it resulted in information overloading, which confused our audience during certain parts of the presentation. Perhaps we should have summarise our contents further and alter our overall presentation to give a concise impression. In addition, because of this problem we overshot our allocated time by more than 50%. This will be an area of concern for the next presentation.

Post #4 : Reflection on Meeting#1

Video recording of a meeting is an effective feedback for improvement on future meetings, and an excellent self-reflection for one to do some self-improvement, be it his/her body language, glaring weakness highlighted by the video itself.

In short, the meeting was generally productive because we had successfully covered most of the topics in our agenda. The meeting notice was sent out at an appropriate timing; this gave the team member adequate amount of time to go through the agenda and make preparations ahead of the meeting, as well as knowing what to expect on the content of the meeting. Prior to our meeting, each team member had to analyze the question and present their views at the meeting. As the leader of my team, I am responsible for leading the team in the discussion and allowing everyone to have equal opportunity in expressing their opinions about the project, especially since this is one of the biggest since the start of university education.

I felt I have done sufficiently in ensuring minimum digression. This was done by showing the agenda in a laptop placed in front of us during the meeting, so my teammates could make easy references to it throughout the discussion itself. As a result, we managed to spend considerable efforts focusing on the project and fulfilling our agenda. However, I thought I could have done better in my part on promoting the flow of ideas during the discussion. This was highlighted by the occasional pauses of silence in some parts of the meeting, where we were all stumped by the difficulty of the questions. Had I analyzed the question more thoroughly, I would be better able to lead the team along to decompose the problem into simpler sub-parts so as to prevent blackout of ideas.

Jason and Gulabi did a good job in helping me to ensure that we should focus on a detailed analysis of the situation and not rushing straight to the solution itself. Many times we thought that we had formulated a perfect solution, but either one among the 3 of us would initiate a rebuttal to make us reconsider our decisions. The two of them also assisted me greatly in time management, so that we do not spend too much time discussing a single problem. These, to me, are signs of good teamwork.


A situation to avoid when conducting meetings:




courtesy of http://www.wetherobots.com/comics/2008-06-16-MeetingTime.jpg

Post #3 : Resolving interpersonal conflict

Some personal insights so far in this module: as the weeks go by, the topics for the blog post every Sundays seem to be getting more personal. Is it only me whom is finding more ease in applying what I came across in the past 20 years or so into each topic?

Entering into conflicts with other people (not animals) has never been a strange situation to me, ever since as a kid I came to realise that there is a world existing around me. My theory is, with interaction there bound to be disagreements, and when it gets out of hand the magnitude of the reactions of the conflicting parties usually determines the outcome of the issue; isn't that how wars are started?

This conflict, which troubled me greatly to decide upon out of so many to write a blog post about, happened when I was working as a temp under a rather famous and hence huge company in Singapore. I got this job through my mother's connections with her colleague, whom happened to be the manager of a department within that company; an unorthodox method that I suspected led to the building up of the upcoming clash with my superiors. The scope was simple enough: proof-reading policy documents and ensuring that their information matches according to my data entry. However being in an office environment and being my first paid job, I was completely unguarded against any politics.

It was an unspoken truth in Singapore that while you are taught in schools that it pays to be honest and efficient, but in reality it backfires on you when you work in offices. My ‘high’ efficiency, because I finished my work too ‘fast’ and ended up doing nothing for the rest of the day, incurred the wrath of my superiors. In addition, I was neither brave enough to communicate with my superiors to build rapport, nor were they willing to take the initiative to show me the ropes around in the office. Not surprising, conflicts therefore arose and I was forced to resign, after a grand total of just 31 days into the job, including weekends. Until now I do regret that this short tenure with the company ended in a sour note; it imprinted within me a very negative impression about office politics, and I guessed my superiors, 3 of them, were not impressed either, especially since they too knew my mother.

I always wondered every now and then, will the scenario be different had I not stick to my own beliefs that clearing my work as soon as possible is the right thing to do? Or is it my apparently aloof, unapproachable attitude the root of all the problems?

Post #2 : Observation of team behavior: intercultural and interpersonal communication

Take a quick glance around you or at the newspaper and an interesting fact can be observed regarding 'teams'. By the term 'teams', I mean any types of team you can think of, from professional sports teams to even project groups in school. You may realise that most of the time, group members are rather mixed in terms of cultures and races. This is no doubt an increasingly common observation happening in this world. People of different cultural and racial backgrounds are working together in teams for a common purpose; an scenario quite impossible to imagine if you were living a few centuries ago, where humans are very bounded by restrictions to working with outsiders of their cultures.

My first impression that comes to mind, when mentioned about intercultural cooperation, would be the phenomenon that most hot-blooded Singaporean males (and presumably some females as well) would die for to watch, and that is the Barclays Premiership soccer from England. Increasingly, the governing body for the league has concerns about the amount of foreigners plying their trades for the clubs, as the percentage of home-grown players are reduced with each foreign arrival. However the fact remains that so many players of up to 30 different countries, and hence cultural backgrounds, are able to co-exist in peace and cooperating for a common aim speaks out the strength in intercultural communications within teams. The ability of the club managers to bond foreign players with the local boys is something worth noting, especially in a country where racial abuse is not uncommon.

Cultural tolerance and understanding are major parts we must learn in dealing with intercultural and interpersonal communication. Knowing the dos-and-don’ts for our teammates’ religious culture helps greatly in reducing the chances for possible conflicts, as it can be a very sensitive issue for certain religions. Also, our cultural beliefs, taught by the families that brought us up, directly shape our style of speaking and actions. Therefore, understanding your teammates’ cultures and interpreting their actions correctly is a key step towards achieving effective communication within the team, and hence forming a successful team.

Post #1 : Communication and teamwork: why they are important to me?

Undeniably, the basis of a formation of a human society are built upon the foundations of effective communication in between themselves and the strength of their unity and bonds, as they struggle against the hardships of nation-building. In other words, communication and teamwork are actually parts of our lives, in a sense that it is something we will engage in every single day.

On a personal note, communication holds a great portion in my life. I have lost count of how many misunderstandings I had created from the words coming out of my mouth for the past 20 years or so, and each time I reflected on why I commit such an avoidable mistake in the first place. I personally place much emphasis on communication because I cherish friendships, and to destroy one verbally is my worst nightmare. Sadly, it did happen a few times and I deeply regretted the lost friendships along the years of education.

To define strong teamwork, I would say "communicate effectively first before gauging how strong your teamwork is"; a group of students stepping all over each other as they attempt to complete an assignment just about sums up how strong their teamwork is. Some would say that both exists as a collective, a kind of "Which comes first? Chicken or egg?" question, but in my opinion a sturdy foundation of communication must be laid upon first before we even consider anything else during the formation of a team. A team communicating well within each other will naturally display an impressive amount of teamwork.

In NUS, working together as a team with strangers proves to be a testing challenge every semester. It is a difficult task, really. Setting up a good first impression, understanding each other, be sensitive when communicating within the group so as to reduce hostility, conflict management, dividing up a fair share of workload, the list just goes on endlessly. I am a believer in teamwork, because during my secondary school years in an uniformed group it was proven again and again the amount of achievement that can be accomplished with a successful team in a short amount of time. I sure hope I can apply all the lessons learnt during that period in my tenure in NUS, not solely for the grades but for the satisfaction gained upon every successful task done as a team.

Greetings!

Fellow CG1413 students can place your bloglinks under the comment section to pump up my links sections

Thanks a million!