I think you'll both agree that our team has certainly had it's share of difficulties and frustrations. The fact that we have dwindled from a team of five to three is certainly a testament to that!
I know hindsight is always 20:20, but looking back I feel that our biggest mistake was listening to one team member's request to not meet via Skype or talk on the phone. As you know she wanted everything to be done via Facebook messaging. Therefore that all communication was done via the written word, which meant that neither body language nor tonality was able to be expressed. The words we use are only a small part of communication. Messages were often misunderstood and that got people’s backs up. This also meant that we had no team meeting or minutes. I'm not blaming her at all, we are all equally to blame for not pushing for a better communication method.
I think I understand her reasons. She said from the very first blog that she didn't enjoy verbal communication and found it difficult to hold conversations and almost impossible to make eye contact. I feel for her, but unfortunately we allowed the requests of one person to affect the whole team. This is a communications paper after all, and I think working on your weaknesses is one of the most important parts of learning! Personally I believe if we hadn’t listened to that person, and had been having regular phone calls or Skype calls, our communication would have been much better. It would have also helped her get out of her comfort zone and she may have still be with us.
Despite these issues, and others our team faced (maybe the number 13 is unlucky after all!), I think we managed to get through to this point without too much stress. Our report is looking good will be submitted tomorrow.
Well done team 13!
Well done team 13!
2 comments:
Hi Athena
I love how you mentioned that you would have liked to help your team member overcome her fear of group activity. That is a great thing about working as a team, is that it is a chance for people to lift and help each other. I have found working in a group great because I have been able to learn so much from the others. I didn't know anything about Google documents and had never used the conference call option on Skype before. I also learned a lot more about working in a team and referencing a report.
You are spot on about communication being easier when able to see people. I agree that body language and tone is so much of our communication. Can you imagine how many relationships have come undone because people got the wrong end of the stick from not being able to see others, or hear others?
Thank you for sharing your sentiments about your challenges. You all did very well to get the whole report done with just 3 people. Good on ya. :-)
Lease
Hi Athena,
Great post!. I am proud that our team decided to stay till the end and worked out an ideas to get the work done. Initially, we had everything flowing but I do agree to the fact that the Facebook call was a blunder and didn't work out.I do agree with you that when you are working from a distant things and ideas don't seem to get conveyed that well. Regular Skype calls would have helped take away any confusion we had. But I like the fact this team wasn't "unlucky" in the end as we managed to divide what roles we were going to play with the passing time to the deadline. Well-done team!
Cheers,
Div
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