The journey experience was quite subtle and turned
out quite amazing in retrospect. First it is the learning of high collaboration
in utilizing the win-win negotiation approach. Then, it is the major project of
engaging in virtual collaboration used in a project setting. Overall, I think
it was self-discovery and self-motivated learning which created the most
learning impact for me personally.
For me, I think in this high
collaboration course, the greatest inspiration is learning from example of
others (Observation-> Reflection -> Action). First, it is a collaborative
approach which is demonstrated by Frank, the professor. He used an approach of
discussion: both motivating and prompting method of learning. There was a lot
of room for class expression, and student participation was highly activated. I
see classmates literally presenting or shouting aloud their ideas and opinions
and we all learned from each other’s experience and sharing. At the end of
every class, we all had an opportunity to vote the best teams, which again, reinforced
collaborative encouragement and appraisal. Although initially, students felt it
was quite kiddy to do that, but eventually, we got into the hang of it and each
team decided to vote the team which inspired and shared the best learning for
the lesson. This is why I said, we learnt from each other’s example, as the
voting did indeed reflect that we did listen
to each other’s presentations.
I felt the most unique is the mode of learning. It
was motivational, innovative and creative. It was not at all like the
traditional, sit in class and learn all you can type learning, which either
congests the brain or leave the brain dead from dullness. Rather, constantly,
we were triggered to find our own answers during the lessons or the projects.
Take the first project, win-win negotiation, for instance. This project
basically left each team to research one’s own approach, material and ideas for
presentation. Moreover, there was no right or wrong answers to the subject,
very much left to be discussed and really up to the imagination of each team.
At the second project of virtual collaboration, it was almost like starting
learning from scratch. Even though some of us have used virtual platforms in
our workplace, the difficulty of the project is due to the gaps in
understanding between team members. Each one has a different version of what
virtual collaboration is. Interestingly, what happened was that, one start to
see the formation of collaboration during the discussions, debates and
struggles. Teams commenced the project with individualistic opinions, eventually
started evolving to a point of disagreement then ultimately to reach a point of
mutual agreement.
This look very much like what was stated in Tuckman’s
(1965) theory of team process: forming -> storming-> norming ->
performing.
One virtually sees the stages formulate. This is
why I mentioned that learning in this course is very self-discovery directed
The teams comprise of 2, 3 persons’ teams- Team Now and Team SOS or other name Harmony and the Tie. The Tie is composed of 3 team members, all mainland Chinese. Our team, Harmony, is multi cultured, with Singaporean- Chinese, HK-Chinese and Mainland Chinese all together. The common denominator is we are all Chinese. In study of high collaborations, culture can influence on the team behavior. A team is made up of a collection of people that must rely upon group collaboration if each member is to experience the optimum of success and goal achievement. For the mainland Chinese mentality, they maintained a teacher-student, leader-follower using dogmatic leader approach. As we have 4 out of 6 mainland Chinese, the approach seemed like a one-way traffic, where challenges and debates are not very well addressed. Instead, the strife for the ‘leader’ to emerge is evident during the discussions. Till at the end of the day, Julie (the more aggressive individual) steps up to champion. This does not necessarily mean that she, therefore, is a natural leader, nor does that mean she had a strong point, it just meant who relents so as to end the strife and come to common ‘pacification’ is why the strife ended. Hence, once the stage is set as such, the leader-follower mode continues to function within the group scenario. However, this is not a long-term welcomed approach for the Singapore and HK Chinese, who believe in liberty and freedom of expression and sharing of ideas. Hence, conflict occurred in subtle but sure ways.
How unity was established? Unity was somehow
reached by the aggressive party conforming to the soft party or vice versa. In
our case was the latter. Initially, Julie was the rough tug, but as the process
dug deeper, Sharon and I felt unrelenting to the ideas as it was approaching an
‘overboard’ situation. We had to call for a compromise. It took us to play a
game of ‘politics’ in order to achieve a point of harmony. We took votes to see
how we approach the next steps of agreement. And upon gathering majority votes,
we raise united concerns against the one standalone. Of course, there was a
stage of ‘tension’ when that happened, but it is inevitable. Team processes can
experience stages of discomfort where edges rub. At that point, we sometimes
have to push back. In our case, applying push back help relieved tension and
regain team focus and objective. At the end of the project, I can say we manage
to stage the show gracefully and everyone in the team could see the push back
did in fact reduce the workload, and streamlined our efforts to focus on the
big picture perspective for the project outcome.
I am a strong believer of team chemistry. Although
I think Tuckman’s theory have its proof, but I think one thing that could have
made the process more enjoyable or the journey more pleasant will be what I
call the chemistry. A soccer quote (wrote Babe Ruth) ‘The way a team
plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of
individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't
be worth a dime.’
I think if a team is made of
egotistical individual stars and if they don’t get along, it will fail. They
can get the project done but it won’t be a masterpiece, rather a piece of rag. Henry Ford said it well, “Coming together is a
beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” One thing that I am happy to say is that our
team not only kept together but worked together. I think that is key focus of
high collaboration. As our name so rightly called ‘Harmony’, how harmony can be
achieved is everyone playing a note exclusive but not independent of the other.
To arrive at harmony is to pitch to a blend with the rest of the team, that
which is often known as ‘fine tuning’. Throughout the collaboration process of
project work, discussions, and preparation, our team was constantly fine tuning
with each other. To reach at a beautiful harmony is when the project is
completed and the presentation came out beautifully orchestrated.
The Endurance Factor – ‘Objective’ in mind
Objective
is what drives the team where it goes. If the
team is short of looking at the objective, it is easy to side track and derail.
I think it was good that we all had a few objectives in view, 1) the objective
to complete the course 2) to outdo other teams in performance 3) to get a good
grade. These objectives are the driving forces for the team to stay together
and to push for the finishing line. The objectives also kept each one focused
and do their part diligently. Each one has somehow an inbuilt mechanism to obey
the laws of success, which is to have imagination, enthusiasm, self-control,
self confidence, concentration, cooperation and tolerance. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Law_of_ Suc
cess,
May 6, 5:17pm). And to some saying ‘endurance (tolerance) is the price tag of
achievement’. The ultimate goal to get our 3 goals achieved, and whatever we
do, we need to obey the laws of success in order that we can succeed. In retrospect,
I think we did succeed. We gained a good appraisal for our project from Frank.
That is really the aim of learning, to receive the recognition and reward at
the end of the day when you have persevered to the end.
I think in a successful
collaboration, everyone in the team is a player and a winner. Without the
element of trust and mutual respect, teamwork is hard to be established. The
high collaboration class has established a success factor which enabled us to
find the ‘fit’ to the team. Each one in the process of collaboration, worked
around by breaking communication barriers, egoism, pride, and allow the
team to form and formulate a team process and approach. Definitely it also
meant rough edges need to be smoothened, temper need to be tamed, slackness
need to be pushed and so forth. But with the objective and goal, it keeps the
team moving forward and towards a common goal.
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