I think I have learnt a lot in this course and in the preparing period. I will show you some details in different stages of our collaboration project.
The Beginning
In our first meeting of this course, Dr. Yu had showed us his purpose in this class is to make us know how to develop high performance collaborations with others. Of course we have to set up teams in the class and participate in the team projects. At this time, how to keep the teamwork efficiency is very important for every team members to concern about. A good collaboration requires individuals work together effectively. I think the whole period of the class was helping us developing the capability of effective teamwork.
Set up a Team
At the beginning of this course, Dr. Yu told us to set up a team with two people, and all of us can choose teammates randomly. After we have set up a team of two and designed our team logo, the requirement changed, we have to add one classmate in our team or divide our team into other two teams. At that time, my teammate wandered whether to ask another classmate to come to my team or not while I thought we should divide into two other teams. This is because all my other classmates did not want to leave their existed team, and to solve the problem, some teams had to be the divided ones, and I thought it is good to solve the problem quickly by made a little bit concession. I think it was the first conflict I faced to in this course. The way I deal with the first conflict matches the different conflict management styles. There are five kinds of conflict management styles: competing, collaborating, compromising, accommodating and avoiding. And the different conflict management representing different combinations of high, low, or medium importance placed on the two motives: achieving his or her own interest, and achieving the other person’s interest. To be frank, I always place others’ interest in the first place, and I think that can explain why I choose the accommodating conflict management style, because this style is marked by low self-interest and high other-interest, that is, putting the other party’s interests first in order to achieve a solution. After I convinced my teammate, I join in the team with Ricky and Monkey. I think our team, although it was not a formal one, managed the conflict with other teams successfully at last. At least we save the efficiency of the whole project.
Choose a logo
As I pointed out before, I am the new one in the team splendor, but I did help Monkey and Ricky solve a problem about the choice of logo. Without my vote, they would have spent a lot of time arguing which one was better. I did think both Monkey and Ricky are very creative ones. The logo combined the first letter of their English names together to form a word MR, the logo also showed that this team was formed by two gentlemen. I really admire their design. Chris Stevens defines creativity as the “ability to generate and use insight”. Unfortunately, I did not think I am good in this area at that time. I knew that this course would help me to develop my creative thinking skills in the semester. And I prepared to improve my skills by reading articles provided by Dr. Yu. Also, I asked my teammates for advice about how to improve my creative thinking skills. After choosing the logo and describing the meaning of it in front of the class, our real challenge was coming.
First Blog: Win-Win Negotiation
In this week, we had a discussion about salary negotiation and we were required to write the first blog about this win-win negotiation. It is the time for us to collaborate with each other for the first time. It means that day was the first time Monkey, Ricky and me to discuss topics of a course. Although we are good friends, we did not know much about each other’s work skill. We did not pointed out a team leader, so we have to have a task allocation without a clear direction. After a discussion, I decided to do all the technical works for our blog website, Ricky mainly focused on writing the content of our blog, and Monkey took in charge in searching for articles and reference to support our ideas. And all of us participated in the strategy designing period. We always tried to avoid conflict happen, but it was impossible for us to prepare a team project. We had some conflict in the choice of concept and the understanding of articles’ meanings. Most of time, Monkey and Ricky chose compromising management style, which means they use this style seek to get most of what they want, but will give something up to achieve a solution, while I used accommodating mostly. In this preparing period, I found that my conflict management style is not good for us to get the win-win situation in my team. The way they used was more effective, after I realizing this, I made a decision to change my management style in the future. I think my teammates have taught me a lot in the preparing period of Blog 1.
Second Blog: Creativity
In that week, we had a discussion about create a creative learning program for students. In this discussion, my teammates helped me a lot in thinking creatively. Their thinking process matched the ways to enhance creative potential. They tried to minimize self-concern and ego issues in the period. I think I can get some experience from them. This Second blog writing was canceled at last, so we did not discuss further. At that time, we began to have communication time table, every Tuesday noon is the physical meeting time. We use WeChat and QQ for online meetings, mostly taking about the preparation of the final blog and answer others’ questions about what we have learnt in the class.
Virtual Project: Communication
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In week 9, we received an email from them. After the first contact, we decided to use email as a communication method, but the Chris and Joe may be busy at work, they always send us emails at midnight, it is difficult for us to give them replies immediately. In my opinion, email is not an effective communication tool. There are several weaknesses about using email to communicate. Comparing with face-to-face meeting, the shortcomings of email contain low feedback, reduced social cues, length of message, and excess attention. So we decided to use social network apps to do the communication work. At this time, we had conflict with Team Connection. Our team insisted to use WeChat, which was an application familiar to people from Mainland China, while Team Connection insisted to use Whatsapp, an application with less function than WeChat but familiar to Hong Kong people. The price of purchasing Whatsapp is 8 dollars in Appstore, my teammates did not want to spend 8 dollars to buy an application only for this project. We bargained about this for about two days and wasted a lot of time and energy. At that time, my teammates decided to take compromising conflict management style to deal with it. We give up and purchased this application. After successfully managing the conflict, our communication took part frequently.
We use this platform to share ideas about the project and to ask for supports from Team Connect. And we combined Whatsapp with emails to do the communication work, after we had a discussion in Whatsapp, one of us would make a summary and type it down to send to all of us. I think this way is very effective for us to recording and reminding different ideas of our project. When we began to prepare for the presentation about our project, we used Skype voice meeting function for communication. The online voice meeting can solve problems effectively because all of us can understand Cantonese spoken by Chris and Joe, and they can also understand Mandarin. And to understand the meaning of a speech is much easier than to get a point by reading an email. So we use the voice meetings to solve complicated problems.
Virtual Project: Plan
We had to choose two companies in different industries and put them together to do the online collaboration project, this required creative thinking. After Chris and Joe told us their choice, we chose to make up a company in supermarket and tourism industry and thought about two types of collaboration. In the plan designing period, the two teams divided tasks effectively, our team mainly focused on providing possible plans while Team Connect focused on evaluating our plans and giving feedbacks to perfect the plans. There are disagreements in this period, which organization should take charge in running this online platform? Is a video competition is better for the online platform than a picture competition? Use cash or products to be the winner reward? We had negotiation about these topics. Fortunately, we had solved these problems successfully by using concepts and skills showed in the lecture of win-win negotiation class. The conflict between two parties was managed by collaborating ways.
I think the two teams worked very well in this period, the three of us did not have logical thinking and critical thinking skills as good as theirs, while they did not have much off-class time to think about plans as we did. I do not know whether my teammates had developed their critical thinking skills or not in this period, I really had leant a lot from Chris and Joe. And the negotiation part showed the efficiency of collaboration conflict management style, I will try to use this management style to solve complicated problems in the future.
We were required to share our plans in a presentation, after the presentation, Dr. Yu gave us a useful feedback to remind us choose only one industry and analyze the plan further, so we had to cut off one industry of the company. This caused the next conflict. Ricky and I wanted to keep the hotel and travel agency while Monkey wanted to keep supermarket. To manage this conflict, I used the critical thinking skill to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the different industries and kept asking myself why I chose the hotel and travel agency but not supermarket, after my self-question and a negotiation, I gave up about my ideas. Although I gave up at last, I think I used the collaborating management style. This give up did not make me unhappy. I did not lose anything because of it. I used critical and logical thinking skills, win-win negotiation theory to help me manage this conflict. Now I look back, I really have learnt a lot in this course.
Virtual Project: Implementation
In this period, we mainly discussed how to write our plans down in a blog, after one semester, we already build trust among team members, so the working efficiency is good in our team. The only thing we need to finish the part we were responsible for with good quality. But we still had to set up meetings to negotiate about the logic and style of the blog post. We also had to think logically, critically, and creatively in the negotiations. All the three of us took part in blog writing stage to finish the project. I believe our team is really working together to complete this complicated task. And I hope we can finish this project with a high quality.
The End
We are required to post our virtual project and individual assignment on the blog. It is the end of our collaboration in this semester. In this semester, my teammates and I communicated a lot both in physical ways and virtual ways. We talked about our project, our study experiences, and our futures. This communication is not only benefit for the teamwork efficiency but also benefit for our friendship. I think it is a great experience for me.
Our team has some shortcomings, too. Ricky, Monkey and I are not good at combining theoretical things with practices, we always use lots of time arguing whether we can use the theory to explain the fact or not. It can reduce our teamwork efficiency. And our logical thinking and critical thinking skills are not very good, although we can come up with many creative ideas, we do not have the capability to see the potential threats and weaknesses of the ideas, without Chris and Joe, we may waste much time dealing with useless ideas. These are the two concerns which I did not shared with my teammates because we can handle them with the help of Team Connect.
All in all, I think the course really offers me a great opportunity to learn something from others. It helps me to develop my communication skills, conflict management skills, logical thinking skills and critical thinking skills, the experience is like a treasure kept in my mind. I hope I can keep what I have learned in this class and keep seeking for further development in the future. Thanks to Dr. Yu, all my classmates and Team Connection.
References:
1. Mondejar et al. (2010), "Introduction to International Business & Globalization: Text and Cases", Sinagtala Publishers, Inc, Manila, Philippines, 328pp, ISBN:978-971-554220-3.
2. Andrew Hargadon and Robert I. Sutton. (2000),“Building Innovation Factory”, Havard Business Review.
3. N. Venkatraman and John C. Henderson. (1998), “Real Strategies for Virtual Organizing”, Sloan Management Review.
4. Michael R. Hillmann, P. Dongier, Robert P. Murgallis, Mary Khosh, Elizabeth K. Allen, R. Evernham. (2005), “When Failure Isn’t an Option”, Havard Business Review.
5. G. Ingmar, P. Jennifer. (2011), “Is There More to Email Negotiation than Email? Exploring Facets of Email Affinity”, SSRN Working Paper Series.
6. Peter Gwynne. (2002), “Does E-Mail Escalate Conflict?”, MIT Slogan Management Review.
