Post #6 Reflections on Personal Teamwork and Communication

I admit, I did not thought that learning teamwork and communication could be such an intricate process before starting on this module.

Teamwork use to be a very simple idea of working together, dedicating workload and then merging everything together for one final presentation or talk. But throughout the CG1102 project and CG1413 project, I had seen how difficult it is to work together, especially when the dateline seemed so near.

A team is made up of individuals; hence, opinions differing from each other are unavoidable. I started the module not knowing how to deal with difference in opinion, and came out understanding that each opinion had its own advantages and disadvantage; listing out each opinion and comparing or combining the opinions is the only way to come up with the best solutions.

Throughout the journey, our team had our quarrels and miscommunications. There were also times where I felt that some of my teammates are irresponsible and insensitive when they asked me to come for meetings on Sundays and only sent the slides to me at the very last minute, oblivious to the fact that compilation is still needed. Some things I learnt is that deadlines have to be set earlier than the actual date you wished to see things done, and not get agitated over some insensitive comments or requests, vice versa.

In order to achieve a goal as team, working together in harmony is a must. There must be trust within the group, yet that trust must be supervised lest it gets misused by another; I have learnt how to work with people, trusting them, yet making sure that my trust is not betrayed. With that said, I should always make sure that I do not betray their trust either.

After watching the two presentations and the meeting videos taken, I realised my communication skills were way inadequate. I could not express myself enough for them to be persuaded into using my idea or be convinced that my idea will work. But after these lessons, I did learn that the essence lies in knowing and applying the 7Cs of communication (Clear, Concise, Concrete, Correct, Coherent, Complete and Courteous). A presentation done, which fully complies with these 7Cs would leave the audience feeling complete and probably more interested to hear more from me. This, would be something that I definitely want to achieve in life.

Post #5 Reflections on Oral presentation 2

While i was working at Comex then, i used to have this senior who told me, "Presenting something is easy, all you have to do is to look at him, and tell him in the eye that he, cannot live without your product. You will find power in convincing him through knowing explicitly what you are pushing out to him."

With this mind-set, I presented my Car Park Solutions last Friday. Things did not go particularly well. I find myself constantly making errors when presenting certain points, and some points are not clearly explained, leading to an exciting round of Question and Answer session.

My presentation, apparently was seemingly interactive, attire was adequate appropriate and tone and speed was reasonable. However, I did show certain level of stage fear and lack of concentration when I made that few errors. I realised that I did not made full use of the slides as I was going faster than the slides, which would probably confuse my audiences. I too, appeared restless near the end of the presentation, which resulted in points mispronounce and some others, skipped. The language I used had some minor problems too as it was not proper English and had bad grammatical errors, resulting in the presentation being less convincing. My hand gestures did not aid very well to bring out my ideas.

I shall strive never to commit these mistakes again.

Post # 4.1: Reflection on meeting 1

The meeting for our CG1102 project was held last Friday in school. I was pleasantly surprised that the meeting went quite well with Junhao leading the meeting.

Looking at the video we took during meeting, i realized that I am not contributing enough to the meeting. I did respond at some point during the meeting, but my ideas where not expressed properly and thus could have resulted in them not able to understand me. This, could be that i am not familiar with the project requirement and procedures.

In the same video, i was also seem fidgeting with with my pen and often looking down at the papers when others are talking. This could signify my inattentiveness and shows a lack of respect to the one talking. For this, i offer my sincere apology for being unrespectful.

Hence, in future meeting, i should try to familiarize with the project requirement and the things that needs to be done. I should too, do my primary research on the project before attending the meeting to better prepare myself, should i need to present an idea to others. I should also try to explain myself clearly and concisely when i am stating my idea so as to avoid misinterpretation by others. I should, too , think before hand whether what i am saying is feasible or not before stating it as a suggestion.

I should try to curb my habit of fidgeting with my pen and look in the eye of the person talking so as to show that i am giving my total attention. This could probably allow me to understand them better too.

I give myself a 6/10 for being responsive during the meeting , but been unrespectful towards towards the one speaking. I shall try to achieve 10/10 for the next meeting!

Meeting Video

Post # 4: Reflection on meeting 1

The meeting for our CG1102 project was held last Friday in school. In my most honest opinion, i do think that this meeting is very well done, despite the fact that we are not able to capture a nice 1 hour video as per the requirement of the project. In fact, the meeting was so conducive that we actually over shot our meeting timing by half an hour.

Looking back at the video of the project, it feels good to see that the group of us are able to communicate effectively and harmoniously. The frequent use of hand signals,body gestures and follow-up argument after one party stated their opinion is something that i think every meeting should have.

The meeting was held at a rather fast pace as it is assumed that all of us have understood the task before hand. However this assumption basically broke into pieces while halfway into the meeting as we realised, that none of us understand explicitly what Colin wants,even after reviewing the project sheet over and over again. Hence, in the end, we decide to try our best, to come out with a proper program that we think that the commercial sectors would enjoy, and us, the programmers would enjoy programming.

The overall progress of the meeting was quite good. We were able to come up with a clear outline of tasks to do, while keeping the meeting short and sweet. The issues raised were properly discussed, and the pros and cons carefully weighed. I especially like the way that our leader accepts and rejects opinions directly, yet non-offensively, this is clearly the mark of a good leader. However, the discussion for that whole meeting was that bit confusing to me as the language used is too technical and the jump from item to item was too fast for me to digest.

Meeting Video

Post #3.1: Resolving interpersonal conflict

i could still remember some time ago, i was in this organizing committee for organizing a sport event under the committee sports club.

I was placed in charge of the logistic side under the committee and so, i had to make sure all the logistic items are sourced out and the transportations planned out properly. My job too, included making sure that the members in my team do their part of work for this project.

As a leader, i am thus tasked to allocate the jobs to different members within my team. For some reason, one of my fellow team mates was not happy with my allocation of jobs. But instead of telling me, he just kept quiet, until a few days before the dateline.

When we are reaching the dateline, i called for a meeting to discuss what they have gathered. To my amazement, he reported that he had not done a single stuff as he was not happy with my arrangement. In the heat of the moment, i told him off, saying that he was very irresponsible to have not done the work allocated and he had just caused our whole team's progress to become stagnant.

In the end, he just stomped out of the room and disappeared. He was never seen for the rest of the meetings and hence out of desperation, we ended up having to cover his part of the work.




As i reflect back at the moment, i realized that i was too harsh on him. I should not have been so hurting to him and i should exercise restraint when i am angry. I feel that i should apologise to him, but i could not put down my pride and be the first one to apologise. Hence, i begin to avoid him every time i see him.

What should i do?

Post #3: Resolving interpersonal conflict

Thinking back, i use to have this friend who, always wants things to follow his way. Whenever the group of us goes out together, he is always the one leading us to places and keep asking us to oblige to his demands.

So one faithful day, i decided that i should not tolerate with his nonsense anymore. I confronted him on MSN, asking him why do he always wants us to do things his way. To my amazement, he got angry and told me that if we were to lead, the whole lot of us will only end up doing useless stuff!

That comment really made my blood boiled. How could he could that of us? Are we that useless to him? I followed up, asking him that if he felt that we are a useless bunch of people, then why is he even hanging out with us?

His reply made me more angry. "Cause you guys have no friends."

I do not know what got into him, but at that point of time, all I could felt was anger.

I shut off the conversation window, went and found his contact page on MSN window and blocked him forever.

Ever since, I had not talked to him nor made any contact with him. Even when I saw him outside, I would just turn about or ignore his existence; I did not even lend a helping hand to him when I realised he was being blamed for something that he did not do.

I even find myself spreading bad rumours about him unknowingly then.

How do I get back this friend without him being the same old selfish him?

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

Inter-cultural and interpersonal communication.

A search on Wikipedia suggested that the word, "inter", is a Latin prefix meaning between or within a group. Hence, interpersonal communication would suggest communication between people, while inter-cultural communication would refer specifically to communications between people with different cultures.

Interpersonal communication, is a simple , yet intricate topic to understand. Its focus, well, is just to ensure two or more people correctly interprets what the others are saying. However, a lot of people often misunderstood that interpersonal communication have various channels, and not just based on verbal language alone. Simple words and phrases such as "sorry", can cause various emotions to different people.

sorry(In a solemn, soft voice) would imply empathy, sorrow.
sorry...(as per normally said after a mistake) would imply regret
sorry!(stunned look with tears) would imply deep regret and unexpected incidents
sorry la!(loud and proud ) would imply unwillingness and as a jest to the to the person apologized to .

Note that in these few cases, "sorry" had varied meaning as it is now expressed with varied body gestures and tones, even though the word used are still the same.

Inter-cultural communication is similar to interpersonal communication, except that it is between two person or more people with different cultural backgrounds. Often, people do not understand the cultures and beliefs of the people they interact with, hence, a lot of quarrels or aggression often resulted due to misunderstanding of their actions or words.
In Singapore, we often address the middle aged women that we meet with as "aunties" However, in standard English context, "auntie" actually refers to the sister of our parents. Hence when a foreigner comes to Singapore and be greeted "auntie", she would most probably be thinking, that how, is she actually related to this person.
Another more prominent cultural communication is our very own hawker center culture. If you are ordering a Roti Prata and you told the seller that you want an egg prata and a plain prata, some of them will go "huh?", however, if you said" one kosong one egg!", the seller would understand immediately. Same to black tea and milk tea or black coffee, where " teh o, teh and kopi o" would make it more easily understood.

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

Communication and teamwork.

When we talk about communication, we are basically looking at ways to bring information from one host to a peer or a group of peers, in order to convey an instruction, or an idea. The medium used could be through air (verbal), communication electronics such as computers and mobile phones, by written formats, or simply, a short note.

However, as the host and the peers could come from different background, differences in understanding messages from the former could occur due to culture, slangs or language mismatch. In Asian context, this is especially evident in Bahasa Indonesian and Bahasa Melayu. Both are technically, malay. But some of the words used in Bahasa Indonesian have different meaning as with Bahasa Melayu even though both have the same spelling and pronounciation.

The error in decoding the message sent by the host often result in what we termed as “misunderstanding”, which, when happened between two individuals, would create unnecessary conflict, confusion and undesired embarrassment. The potential damage that this could bring about could be drastic, a minute misunderstanding could bring about a small quarrel, while an acute one would result in aggression.

Hence, effective and concise communication is important to ensure that such incidents do not occur.

Teamwork will look at the fundamentals of a group of people working together, towards a common goal or idea.

It forms a very important part of life as we learn to help each other, complement each other to create good pieces of work and achieve better innovations through exchanging of ideas and delegation of work.

However, good teamwork is difficult to achieve as different people have different concepts of what they want to do or achieve.

Hence, effective communication have to be ensured between the team to make sure that the team be able to understand each others’ goals as well as to come up with positive means towards the target.

First!

Hey now!

This blog here was started on the 16th of January 2010 for academic purpose, the module CG1413 wishes to enable us to have good and effective communications. Hence, the language used in the blog, will be proper and and standard English as per the requirement of the module.

This blog would also hold the updates on the progress of another module, CG1102, which is held in collaboration with CG1413. Hence, do expect to see some pictures of programming methodology and other relevant items.

-Byron