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.