Reflection on CG1413

At the beginning of this semester, I was wondering what is the so-called "Effective team communication" when I first looked at the title of this module, CG1413. Now, at the end of the semester, I am able to say, I know what is "effective team communication" and I have become a communicator.

At the very beginning of this module, we studied the principles of communication and teamwork. Although the principles were quite theoretical, it was not difficult to carry out in our real life. For example, when our CG1102 project group dealt with conflicts, we were expressing ourselves as explicitly as possible. We also set clear team expectations and assign proper roles for each member in the team. As we followed the principles, we were able to work effectively as a team and solve problems efficiently. However, there are also some aspects that needs improvement. For instance, when one of our members were missing, it might be better to listen to her reasons first rather than being too harsh on her. We may improve our skills as listeners.

We also learned the courtesy in writing letters and emails. As both my CG1102 and CG1413 project groups both depend largely on email meeting, it was faily important to get to know how to write properly. I was quite glad that all my group members in both teams could communicate via email without any misunderstanding. Although my mother tongue is not English, they all have no problem understanding me.

In the following weeks, we mainly focus on two projects. In my CG1413 group, I think we were working very well together as a team. Although we had some difficulties deciding the topic at the beginning, we were brainstorming together, throwing ideas and finally decided our topic and the approach to solve the problem. During the project, I contributed my part to our group. It was satisfactory that I have no problem communicating with my friends. However, in my CG1102 project, I think I need to improve my teamwork skills. Sometimes I have ideas in my mind, but I was not open enough to share with my teammates. In an effective team, all members should feel free to come up with ideas and explain to their teammates. Unlike Jun Hao, our enthusiastic and talkative leader, I was too shy and did not usually share my ideas. That's what I should improve in the future.

In conclusion, I feel my CG1413 experience very impressive. The communication and teamwork skills that we learned and practised in this module will probably help us through our lives in the future.

Reflection on OP2

We had our second oral presentation of this semester on Mar 25, last Thursday. As usual, a reflection would probably help me to improve my presentation skills in the future. In this post, I’m going to reflect myself on my performance in the second oral presentation.

Comparing to the first oral presentation, I think I’ve made some improvements. First, I felt myself not as nervous as during the first oral presentation. It is very easily seen that during oral presentation one I was very nervous and repeated myself a lot. My voice was also very soft because of nervousness. However, during the second presentation, thanks to my teammates’ encouragement, I was more confident in presenting our ideas. Although it could be seen from the video I was still a bit nervous and repeated and stopped sometimes, the general impression was more confident. Second, I was more confident in answering questions from the audience. In the first presentation, I was so nervous that I almost did not answer questions at all. This time, I was able to confidently answer questions from the audience. What’s more, I made more eye contact with the audience and smiled more. I knew I was feeling a bit nervous on the stage. So I tried to remind myself constantly to look at the audience and smile more so that I could give the audience an impression of confidence. Although I prepared cards for my scripts, I tried not to read them so that I could focus on the way of presenting rather than memorizing the scripts.

There are also some aspects that should be improved in future presentations. One problem is that I’m still feeling nervous when I stood up and presented. When I felt nervous, the chances of forgetting the contents became higher. In other words, I had a blank mind when I presented. In order to overcome this problem, the only way is to train myself so that I would not feel nervous in front of the class. Although it needs time, I believe I could do well in the future. Another problem is that I was not using body languages effectively. Good gestures and expressions usually leave a good impression on the audience. However, I almost stood still with a stiff expression during the presentation. I need to remind myself to use more body language in future presentations.

In conclusion, my oral presentation was better than the first one. However, I should practice more to make improvements in my presentation skills.

Reflection on Meeting One (Rewrite)

Picture from: http://pic1.ooopic.com/uploadfilepic/sheying/2008-08-23/OOOPIC_vipvip_20080823010228a45ce13a7c919b8323.jpg

(Since the last reflection on our first meeting was not very well done, I would like to rewrite a reflection on the meeting.)

When I reflect the meeting again, I come up with two criteria on deciding whether a meeting is successful or not. First, every member must come well prepared for the meeting. Second, everyone must be active during the meeting.

In order to make a group meeting effective, all the group members must come prepared for the meeting topic. I think all members have done well for this part. As we could see from the video clip or hear from the audio recording, all the members are familiar with this topic and have a clear idea of what are we supposed to talk about in the meeting. For myself, I read through the lab manual and thought of possible solutions that might be raised during the meeting. Then I critically evaluated them before coming for the meeting. So I was able to discuss with my group members the pros and cons of different ideas.

Besides good preparation, each and every members in the group have to be active in coming up with ideas. I have to say that I did not do well. During the meeting, Jun Hao talked a lot and really presented his thoughts to us. In contrast, I was much too quiet. It was not because I did not understand topic. I just wanted to evaluate in detail all our ideas and see which one is better. But I ignored the fact that without communicating with other members, one could never solve a big problem on his own thinking. So I need to be more active next time.

This is the link to the video clip of our meeting.
http://blip.tv/file/3214581
You could also find the full version of our audio recording from the page.

Reflection on the first meeting

On Friday, our CG1102 project team had a team meeting during the lab time. After the meeting, I'm having some thoughts and self-reflections on the meeting.



First, it was really unfortunate that the two camaras we used to record the meeting both went down and we only had about twenty minutes video recording. However, it is fortunate that at least we had prepaired a audio recording of our meeting. This lets me think that no matter what we do, we have to prepare for unexpected situations. Although we had prepared two camaras in order to back up, we still did not record the video for the whole meeting. Our last resort of audio recording really helped.



Second, I want to reflect on the performance of myself during the meeting. It seems that I have been a bit quiet during the meeting. I think I should speak more and be more active. However, I being quiet was not because I did not prepare well for the meeting. I was spending too much time thinking during the meeting. Whenever our teammates presented their ideas, I would always spend a bit longer time than others to think critically about the idea. So, I should be more active and coming up with more ideas next time.



In the end, wish everyone a HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR!

What Should the Boss Do?

Alex is a young man working in a company. He graduated from a well-known university just a few years ago. He has great enthusiasm and ability. He also shows his capability as a leader. So the boss asked him to be the leader of a new project. However, there is another older and much more experienced technician Bob in this project group. Bob has been working for this company for about fifteen years. He has made great contribution to this company for a long time.

Although Bob does not feel that he should be the project manager, he does not feel happy to have a boss that is much younger than him. For the sake of the project, he does not show his dissatisfaction. However, he is always against Alex.

Alex is a humble young man. He usually asks Bob for his opinion as Bob is much more experienced. However, Bob is not honest with Alex. When Alex asks Bob whether his ideas are good and applicable in private, Bob always praise his young boss and says there is no problem with your idea. However, when they conduct a meeting with all members’ and sometimes their big boss’ attendance, Bob points out a lot of problems with Alex’s ideas and usually makes him feel embarrassed. Once they even almost end up in a quarrel.

Now it has already been the most important time for this project. If the big boss just let the conflict continues, the project will probably end up with poor quality. If you were the boss, would you fire Bob or come up with some clever ideas to solve this problem?

What Should I do?

When conflicts occur, there must be some problems behind. In order to solve the problem, we must analyze it first.

In the given case, conflicts arise at three occasions. The boss first blamed the young graduate for not inviting other members of the department. Then, the boss was not pleased with the restaurant the young graduate had chosen. The last time was when the lunch was finished, the boss was asked to pay the bill. The conflict is mainly between the young graduate and his boss. In summary, the young man did not satisfy his boss at all on this event.

So, let’s solve the sub-problems one by one. In the first occasion, the problem arose because of inexplicit instructions given to the young man. However, it doesn’t mean that the young man totally takes no responsibility. In such situation, although not specified, he should take the responsibility of informing his co-workers. When receiving such instructions next time, the young man should think a bit more. If it is suitable for him to do a bit more, he should do it.

When the boss asked him to book a restaurant, the young man should have taken the boss’ preferences into consideration. After all, it is the boss who treats the department. Described as a traditional Singaporean-Chinese boss nearly 50 years old, the boss probably cannot accept young people’s ideas about restaurants. The young man should think twice before making the decision of the venue.

The last situation has left the boss really embarrassed. Obviously, the boss assumed the dinner had already been paid. The young man could pay for the dinner first. The boss would surely refund him after the treat as he promised it was his treat. The young man was really not “clever” in this event.

In conclusion, the young man did not do well because he simply understood what the boss said word by word. He could and should think a bit more than just the boss’ explicit instructions. He needs some improvement in his understanding of high context culture. Well, the first thing he has to do is of course apologize.

Intercultural and Interpersonal Communication

(Picture from: http://www.acmilan.com/lm_team_roster.aspx)

In my CG1102 and CG1413 team, we have two Singaporean boys, one Indian girl and a Chinese boy. When we discuss in class, it is interesting to see that different cultural backgrounds can have a great effect on the communication between us.

The most obvious distinction is the different accents that we have. Jun Hao and Byron speak Singaporean English and sometimes a little bit Chinese with me (Sorry Lakshmi). Lakshmi speaks English with some Indian accent. I speak English in a very Chinese way and cannot speak very fast. We are from different language backgrounds, but as a bridge for communication, English is our common language. Nevertheless, due to our mother tongues, we cannot use English as well as a native English speaker. That’s where misunderstandings during communication process occur. Sometimes due to my vocabulary limit and other people’s accents, I cannot understand totally what they mean. Sometimes because of my unclear sentences, my teammates could not get what I mean. So we need to repeat or rephrase again and again. Misunderstandings really affect the efficiency of our discussion.

However, the cultural differences are far more than just different accents. The cultural background defines a person’s ethical group. Why I am a Chinese? Why Lakshmi is an Indian? It is not just because we look different and speak different languages. The key factor is that we have different values in mind. And even though Byron and Jun Hao are Chinese as well, we still have great differences. The environment where a person grows up defines how the person thinks, behaves and values. So how can we solve this problem? From a foreigner’s perspective, I think as we are here in Singapore, we need to get ourselves involved in this large Singaporean cultural environment. Although it is not easy as we have a fixed way of thinking rooted deep in our minds, we need to change ourselves to be accepted in this society.