Blog: June 23, 2009
After reading Kitty locker’s article, it brings back some bad memories and good ones. I was taking a management class and we were doing a group project related to the film Twelve Angry Men. We were to act as the jury members and come forth with a verdict. There were five of us in the group. There was one girl who took on the leadership role who became the Jim in group one in Locker’s article. She did not know the word collaborative meant. She had her own ideas and there was no changing her mind. The other members other than me allowed her to run rough shod over the group. We had several group secessions which were a total waste of time and effort.
I think one reason for this was that we never interacted outside the classroom other to say hi in passing. One of Kitty’s reasons for the failure of group one was no socialization among group members. As time passed, the paper was not addressing the actual purpose and goals for the project. I had to go to the professor and talk to her about the situation and what could be done to remedy the problem or shall we say an opportunity. I ended up writing my own reflection and handing it in separately. The group paper received a 71, my paper received an 87. Focus was lost due to several of the same factors Locker’s study discovered. Factors were; lack of personal attachment to the group and the purpose and goals of the project, no proper division of labor and utilizing each member’s knowledge and skill levels, formed an attitude about revising drafts, and failure to correct inter group conflicts. These were the reason our group did not make the mark. This was my bad memory.
In one of the RPW classes with Professor Breeze, we had a group project of making a newsletter. There were four people in the group. To be honest with you I do not remember if we actually had a leader. We meet outside of class several times and each of us utilized our skills and knowledge. Two of us did all the copy and writing the needed articles and the other two people used their graphic design shills to do the layout and design of the newsletter. We all knew each other from other classes and there was a connection that was not present in the management class. This was truly a collaborative effort. We determined the audience of the newsletter and designed the whole project to achieve that goal. There did seem to be all the inter group conflict that was present in the management class. We did our assigned parts of the project and everything came together well and before the due date. I would work again with this group of students anytime. After reading Locker’s article, I can understand and see why group dynamics are so important to a successful completion of a project no matter what it is. It is like a marriage, people have to learn the word compromise. This word is a valuable tool in group projects.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Gordon- I like your reference to marriage and use of the word compromise when referring to collaboration. In my opinion that is a quality that many unsuccessful collaborations are missing.
ReplyDeleteThe first project you discussed sounded very frustrating and reminds me of a project I'm currently on. Our company is rolling out a new records retention policy and instead of providing a uniform training module for all employees, they are rolling out training by department. Even though they are telling us it will be the same training across the board, departments are already tailoring them specific to their units. When first training began, it felt like we stepped in mid-training. Organization was lacking and communication of the program expectations was not efficient. This has been the case for some weeks now. Those of us on the department teams have no power to amend the process. It is very frustrating.