ViEwS 'nd' IdEaS

REFLECTION ON CG1413 !

2010-04-13T08:44:00.001-07:00

‘Effective Communication and Team work’ these four words had made a major impact on me in these 4 months! And I sincerely hope to keep this education for life as these two components are very vital in the globalised world today.

CG1413 , provided the perfect ground of resources for effective communication as well as skills for team work. The module was a continuous learning journey which helped us in developing and improving our skills on communication. In spite the work load it was highly interactive and interesting module. It gave us the opportunity to work with different people and hence helped in building up inter personal skills. The collaboration of Cg1413 and Cg1102 made the whole process much more exciting and fun. Working with the two different groups was a new and knowledgeable experience for me.

I had very diverse groups for Cg1413 as well as for Cg1102, which I felt worked for my benefit as I learnt a lot about team work and communication through this. Effective team work was one area I felt I should work on during the start of the semester; however moving along with the course the improvement was very much significant. Being the team leader I wanted to explore and nurture my leadership skills. I tried to make sure that our group coordination was maintained the whole time. Though every member was from different cultural background we worked as team for every task. My team mates from both the groups were very cooperative, understanding, mature and responsible. These projects on the whole played a very vital role in improving and cultivating team ethics in me.

The Oral presentations in the course helped us in working on our delivery as well as communication skills. It facilitated in building up our personality on the whole. Even the whole process of preparing in the group was very educational. These projects and presentation helped us to explore our creativity as well as our strengths. Also in addition the blogs were as excellent tool for our outlet of opinions. It made us reflect deeply for many topics and thus sharpening the analytical as well as critical skills of writing. Blogs gave us the freedom to convey our views freely and also made us express our opinions which I feel is the most important thing in communication.

On the whole, Cg1413 had been a very eventful journey in semester 2. I had a lot of fun. I would like to work on my weaknesses and develop more skills. And I sincerely hope to apply the knowledge acquired in this module in my future avenues!

Cg1102 Group

Cg1413 Group

REFLECTION ON THE ORAL PRESENTATION!

2010-03-29T21:00:00.000-07:00

Our team’s oral presentation 2 for CG1413 was, to a large extent, a success! Our main objective of this presentation was to implant views in the youth about the issue of food wastage and hunger. Hence we wanted to pitch and influence the audience not by monotonous presentation but by putting a little bit of passion into the whole thing. And at the end of the presentation I personally felt that we were to a large extent successful.

Personal Reflection:

As an individual presenter overall I felt that I performed reasonably well as compared to my previous presentation in terms of gesture, eye contact and delivery of speech. As the first speaker I had to be composed and positive as whatever I spoke would affect the group performance as a whole. Hence in this presentation I was more confident and prepared. This I believe helped me to be calm and less tensed during the whole time. However there were some loops and holes in my presentation which I would like to work on in the future presentation.

Firstly referring to the verbal skills, I thought that I very clear and audible to the audience. I made sure that I had emphasis on the key words as I spoke to the audience. We wanted to make our presentation inspiring and instill thoughts in the viewers hence I tried to pause on suitable timings and posed questions to the spectators. This I felt made the audience more alert and self aware. I made an effort to speak slower from my usual speed however sometimes unintentionally my speed went faster. Thus losing the attention of the audience at some parts of the presentation. Also I stammered in some parts which I think I should work on for my future presentations.

Secondly about the non-verbal skills, my eye contact with the listeners during the whole presentation was considerably good. I tried to browse through the whole audience while talking. My hand gestures were coordinated with words I spoke hence helping me in displaying a good body language. My slides transitions were smooth and hence made it easy for me to talk by referring to it at the right times. However I could have made my moves more defined. Also I waited for the next slide to appear thus making the waiting time a little inappropriate.

During the Q&A session I tried to answer as many questions I could, however I felt that I should have given chance to my other group members to answers. As a part of a team it was not very good to speak alone. However to look on the positive side I tried to back up my answers with the research I had done on my project which I felt made the audience satisfied with the answers.

Group Reflection

Our group had a very good synergy which helped us to perform well. There were some aspects we have to work on but there are some which should remain the same. Our group understanding was very good. We tried to stick tour goal during the whole presentation. We all were very self-aware and believed in what we were saying. Group coordination during the whole thing was very pleasing. However some places things could not go in a flow. Slides transitions in some parts were a little off timed. Also our Q&A session was very imbalanced as one of our group mates did not get a chance to speak. Hence as a lesson I feel we should have practiced more to perfect some of the loose ends.

REFLECTION ON THE FIRST MEETING!

2010-02-18T06:30:00.000-08:00

My first meeting of CG1102 was overall a very insightful experience. I faced the worst situations as well as the best ones during the whole process. This meeting actually helped all the group members to know each other’s strength and weakness and hence helped us work accordingly. I had a group consisting of only three members. Thus it was important for all three of us to attend the meeting as this was the time we had to build up our base in the project as well as bond with each other. However I had a very hard time in getting to decide the meeting time, this primarily happened because my third member was missing from the whole picture for few days. This situation really got me and my other group mate in little panic. However I felt we handled the situation very calmly, maturely and most importantly as a team. We both tried to ask his friends and personally went down to his hostel. After two days of struggle we at last got in contact with him. This incident actually made me reflect that as a team it very important for every team member to set proper expectation for everybody. And hence we made this as our one of the main agendas for the meeting.

On the day of the meeting when three of us met we discussed about how one should always be aware of their responsibilities especially in a group, because if one person slacks the whole group gets affected by it. On our amazement we discovered that the member who was missing actually did a very large part of coding already. When both of us saw his work we were very impressed by him. We also made up for the time we had lost. This I felt was very thoughtful and responsible on his part. I strongly feel that as a team every team member should feel the belongingness and the responsibility towards it. And to great extent these qualities were seen in all my members.

Meeting went very smoothly without any hiccups. Decisions were taken very quickly with the consensus of the whole group. We managed to follow our agenda very closely without being distracted. This all happened primarily because as a group I felt that we had a very good understanding among each other during the meeting. All three of us were from three different parts of the world, hence there was a little difficulty in understanding the accent of the other group member .However, and despite the language barrier we tried our best to understand each other. On seeing the video, I think it was really good that we all worked together and listened to each other's ideas and then implemented them collaboratively. In addition I feel that assignment also helped us to learn to work as a team. The assignment required us to divide the task; this idea strengthened our team spirit as we realized that one cannot do without the other.

Overall I feel the meeting was very beneficial to our group in terms of academics, knowing each other and realizing one owns responsibility in a group.

A picture from our first meeting!

RESOLVING INTERPERSONAL CONFLICTS

2010-02-07T08:06:00.001-08:00

As a part of human nature ‘Conflicts’ in a group are very natural. Every person in a group has different views, thoughts, culture and perspective about things. This I believe can lead to clashes in ideas and thinking pattern. This temperament of humans is very interesting and appealing. I personally have also faced some interpersonal conflicts which happened just due to a mere difference of thinking.

I was the part of the drama society in my Junior College. It was a CCA where group work was very vital as all the performances and shows were organized and enacted by all of us together. To my surprise, coming up with a play was not a cake walk. It did not only involve actors and script but had many more things attached to it. Just as every new member, I was also lost about our first production. My director assigned roles to all of us. I was designated to be the assistant stage manager. Having such an important post made me very nervous as I was supposed to assign specific roles to the backstage crew. I had many of my friends in the back stage group which made me get into a very awkward position because everybody was trying to force their choices on me. As my duty I assigned people according to their abilities. This ended up creating bitter feelings in them for me. They started ignoring and disrespecting me as a member of the group. These cold feelings were actually hindering the progress of the production as a whole. We all felt the degradation. I decided to confront the members and resolve the tension.

Confrontation was a difficult step, however very helpful and productive. We all actually sat and talked about the problem and came to a common consent. At the end of it we all had the same goal of putting up a good performance, which eventually did happen.

Overall I felt that interaction and positive attitude are the basic vehicles of problem solving which initially and ultimately would depend on the individual, the information available to the person, his competence to use that information, his intention or desire to achieve a particular goal, and kind of activities he engages on the route to the goal.

Following is a video On resolving interpersonal conflicts which has inspired me a lot !:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RixFY2xO3OY

Observation of Team Behavior: Inter cultural and Interpersonal Communication

2010-01-31T03:35:00.000-08:00

“I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.”

The above quote is written by a great man Mahatma Gandhi. He defined 'Culture' as a integrated set of human belief , behavior and values which were depended upon the symbolic thoughts and social learning . Mahatma Gandhi was always very amazed with interaction between different cultures and always preached that learning about different culture and values helps a lot in intellectual growth.

In agreement with above I personally define culture as a pattern of knowledge , goals , beliefs and behavior among a group of people in a society. These culture are divided into many different types like religious, generational, behavioral etc. All these cultures and traditions have there own characteristics and belief system and thus it is very interesting to know the consequences of these culture being mixed with each other . In todays globalized world , we live in a mixed society. Hence the skill of intercultural and interpersonal communication is highly important. Being a part of a mixed cultural group has its weaknesses and its own strength. It can result in miscommunication between the members of the team however on the other hand it can actually help one look at a problem with different perspective.

I personally have experienced the pros and cons of an intecultural group. When I came to Singapore in my Junior college i had seen a very different culture here in terms of religion as well as in the terms of behavior of the people. Initially it was very hard to cope up with the cultural change, however gradually i realized that I get to learn a lot of new things through this cultural exposure. In my Project Work Group i initially had difficulty in convincing people to come a common consent , sometimes due lack of effective communication the work was not fully done , however when slowly we started understanding each others frequency and behavior. Bonding with each other and knowing about others culture made me personally more curious and interested is learning more about Singapore.

In conclusion i feel that being in a world of mixed culture and traditions one should try to discover the importance and the relevance of all the culture . As this can help us all to work together as a team and hence help in development !

Picture Source : http://images.google.com.sg/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=intercutural

Communication and Team work : Why is it important to us?

2010-01-24T08:03:00.001-08:00

Communication is a link which binds every creature of the world together and with every stage of life its importance changes, but it remains crucial to our existence. Human is a social animal and for its personal development interaction is vital. Hence the interdependence nature of the world strongly signifies the worth of communication in our lives.

Coming from an air force family background, I have always been moving to different places throughout my life. Every new place came with its new culture, new people and sometimes new language. This experience indeed taught me many things among which communication was the most highlighting aspect. Interacting with people helps one to grow intellectually, emotionally as well as socially. It helps us to broaden our views and ideas, which I strongly believe is very important for development. Communication with people has personally made me more confidant and knowledgeable about things around me. However there have been many instances in my life when communication has failed. I firmly feel that miscommunication worsens the problem through misunderstandings and which can often lead to broken relationships. However it’s an irony that only effective communication can be the solution of the problem.

With communication there is a very important factor involved which is ‘teamwork’.

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” ~Henry Ford

Teamwork is important to pursue a carrier in today’s world. A. I believe that true team spirit comes from the belief that ‘none of us is as smart as all of us’. We can see the importance of teamwork in sports, government, organizations etc. After a personal experience of working with Startup @Singapore ‘s event committee I feel it is very vital for one to coordinate and cooperate with one and another to get the desired results.

Hence I would like to conclude by saying that teamwork and communication walk hand in hand in this highly developing world and hence is not only important for individuals but for every one.

Picture Source : http://images.google.com.sg/images?hl=en&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=3&q=team+work&btnG=Search+images