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.

Communication and Teamwork: why they are important for me?

Communication and teamwork are probably among the most important skills in my life.

I would confess that my communication skills still need improvement (probably due to language and cultural differences). Misunderstandings and undesired consequences sometimes occur when I could not convey my ideas accurately to other people.

For example, I had an unpleasant experience in my project for ACC1002X last semester. The cause was simple: I did not decode my teammate’s message accurately while I did not send explicit message to my teammates. While I finished one thing and told him, he interpreted it as another thing. We misunderstood each other and ended up with a conflict. My teammate claimed that I did not do my work which sounded offensive to me.

Well, when I recall this experience, I wished that I could have taken CG1413 before doing that project. Misunderstanding could really cause a lot of trouble in my life. Only when we communicate with each other well can we work together and be efficient.

As a computer engineering student, hopefully I will be working with many other computer engineers as teams in the future. So, teamwork is really important for me. As a member of a team, I don’t usually work as a leader. More often I will be the person who come up with ideas or the person who does the work. But that doesn’t mean I do not have the personalities of becoming a leader. Although grown up in a country where education emphasizes individual effort, I think I have a lot of experiences of teamwork both in China and in Singapore. So, working together with people from different cultural backgrounds would be fine with me and I hope I would have a nice semester with my teammates in CG1102 and CG1413.