Group project really drives me crazy sometimes..

(This conflict i had just encountered one or two days ago)
I had just finished a presentation who i did with three other members. it worth 30% because it includes lots of elements such as research, design logos, business cards, magazine advertisement, since it's a CCT course.

Here's my story, my group has four people, so I'll just named them by I ( represents Me), J , K , L when my group was trying to work on the project one night at the library, J couldn't come because he had work, but he already did the most he could and sent his part to us. So basically, we have only three people to work, but it sort of equals to two people's outputs only, because L wasn't contributing at all. K and I were working all the way through, and when we asks L to simply "START" brainstorming ideas for the magazine Ad, she rejects and tell us that "I'm not good at design, i want to work on some other things." we were shocked by that reply, because she's taking double majors on econ and cct, I'm not saying everyone would be GOOD at designing, we are not perfect, so that is why we want to take these courses to strengthen our expertise and help out each other. But without even trying, she already puts up a "give up" sign, we definitely felt very frustrated. So K and I didn't want to force her, so we just asked what would she want to do, so she picked to work on a simple task by writing down our work schedules of time and locations we met that's supposed to take up just less than half an hour, but took her almost two days to send it to us, but it was way passed the deadline we set up for each task. We don't want to push her too far, but it is really time-consuming and annoying to keep telling someone to complete the task within a "reasonable" time period. K and I were working on all the "design process" because L didn't even want to try and B already did everything he was responsible to. Another frustrating point is L kept
complaining the minor imperfections of whatever K and me had in our work, we accept more suggestions because we want to improve our design, but when L doesn't do what she was supposed to do and pushed the ball to us, she should understand our limits. And L was so good at pointing out the negative things and firing complaints at us, so we were trying to ask her if she wants to work on the Ad since she seems to be knowing what would be the RIGHT thing to do. But she rejects again, and going through the materials i learnt from MGM300, i believe that this person, L, rejects to complete certain tasks we assign to her, is because she is afraid of failures or the negative feedbacks from others toward her work. She is being very conservative and curious on lots of things, because she believes that doing less work would lead to less mistakes being made. But we already explained to her that even a simple shape can be a design, and it doesn't really have to look super amazing to be called master piece. And since we are in the same group, we should contribute equally and hand in work with "QUALITY" as well. At the end, K and I did almost 70% of the whole project. is that fair? but since we knew L for quite a long time, so it was really hard to tell on her. So i realize that working in group with people you know really well might be a troublesome barrier to getting work done effectively and efficiently with fair contributions.

P.S: maybe i should really set up a table of expectations or rules that everyone in the group must follows despite the fact that how long I've known certain members for. Because it might help to increase productivity.

Individual component of career project done!

When i was working on my individual part for the career project, i had really discovered lots of different things about myself, such as personalities, values and working styles. I thought it was really valuable and appealing to me because before taking this course, i did not conduct many personality tests to reflect how i perceive others or myself and my favorable working style etc. I had gained my knowledge on the personal traits and strengths i have which i believe would be helpful when i have interviews that need to present myself based on the strengths i have. I actually believed that the level of interest I have for my career would be the main factor that leads to my work motivation and performance, i had never actually try to identify my personality traits to see if I'm suitable for my ideal career, Marketing. I also have the opportunity for developing a basic network that might help me to get into this field as well.

Personal Conflict Management Strategies

When i have conflicts with friends/families, i tend to use the strategy of yielding/accommodating. Because i believe that if i have the ability to reduce the conflict level by sacrificing a bit of myself, i would be able to maintain the relationships. I think most of the conflicts i encounter, they don't usually last for so long and by using that approach, i would feel better for myself because that way it would be easier to reduce the conflict intensity and i usually want to have a good solution so there's nothing left over for me to worry about. On the other hand, if i got into conflicts with colleagues or group members, i usually try to aim for the problem solving strategy, because i want to have a good final output at the end, so if i don't take this approach, but forcing or avoiding the conflicts, i would end up tangling all my problems but never solving them. And by using forcing strategy especially, I'm being self-oriented,which means i don't value the others' benefits, and as a group, i should aim for gaining advantages for all members while solving problems logically. I'm not an ambitious or self-centered person who needs everyone to follow what i say or everything i say is right. I believe such person would have higher possibility of getting into conflicts, especially when working in a group. I always want to try not to react emotionally when i really see those people. But if i can't really control this situation and it gets worse, i tend to show all my dislikes toward such person without hiding, or even speak out what i really think about him or her. I hate to put up a fake mask and say "right, i agree with you and I'll do it" when i don't really mean it. i usually have my own way to express what i really think straightforwardly, instead of trying to please others. But in the business world, i know it is reasonable to stay within the boundary and say what is appropriate. So i really need to work on that by keeping my own belief or point of view at the same time, because i know by speaking without thinking how my words would affect others, i would be suffering in maintaining good relationships with employer and other colleagues.

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GIVE ME ALL THE ORANGES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was in the group that play the role of Dr.Roland, who needed all 3000 oranges from Ms.Cardoza. During the negotiation with the group who play the role of Dr.Jones. We did not really arrive to a concrete solution at the end due to the limited time that we had. But we managed to find out Dr.Roland needed only the rind of the oranges while Dr.Jones needed the rest of the oranges to make juice. I thought our group figure out this information quite early of the whole negotiation. I think by stating the essence of our expectations or what we needed in a dilemma would be a good starting step, because both parties would understand each others' perspectives and thoughts.

In this lecture, we talked about mainly conflicts in workplaces, which involve two people. But in my opinion, knowing how to deal with personal conflicts are important as well. Because i think personal or emotional conflicts would directly affect work performances and lower level of interaction or communication with others. For example, when i had a bad day, i tend to keep myself quiet for the rest of the day, but if i seen someone who did something that i dislike or i don't appreciate, i tend to just speak out all the negative thoughts i have, probably in a bad manner too. This would ruin the relationships with others and probably more difficult to find a proper solution to settle my conflict. When two people get into a conflict, it is hard to solve the problem when none of them yield the other, or even try to solve the problem logically. Although the best way to solve the conflict is by first leaving the conflict and let each other control the negative emotions first and then try solving it again at a later time. But sometimes i think it is hard to leave the conflict, because for the person who tries to get out of the conflict first would tend to be the "loser" or the weaker person who doesn't know how to argue or the one that did everything wrong. I just thought this would make the person who kept fighting feel very proud of himself/herself because he/she could manage to defeat the other. I thought of this kind of scenario is because i had once seen two ambitious and competitive people got into conflicts, and they both did not want to yield each other, and ended up breaking their relationship by not finding each other anymore. But from my expereience, i had never suffered in such big bigggg conflicts that i chose to stop communicating with the other person before. Although mini conflicts i sometimes would encounter, but i always try to yield the other person because i thought it's pointless to drag on the conflict when it is solvable.

And I thought by mentioning how the other person live his/her life or dissing their personal apperances are the worse approach to take when people got into conflicts, because it has nothing to do with the conflict and the more negative comments toward their lifestyles, apperances or past mistakes , the more difficult to solve the conflicts in a win-win situation. Therefore, i had learnt to deal with conflicts in a more logical way and try to keep the emotions of anger or disappointment to the lowest level as possible.

X & Y

The game that we played in class was "Win as much as you can" ...my team was suffering for the whole game because we always valued "trust" and intended to win as much as we can as a group for the whole class. But we failed, because all other teams kept putting up "X" cards. I agree that once trust breaks, the whole project will not function and for those who still believed in "Trust" will suffer the most; just like my team did =(

I admit that i have poor listening skills, because i can only pick up some points as people speak, selective listening is one barrier that i always encounter in my life. I always believe that if i can get the most important points, then I'll be successful in doing all other things. But however, what i think is important might not be perceived as the most important to my other team members...so when i need to communicate with others more effectively, i should consider writing down or remember as much as info i can when i need to deliver the same message to others. Especially in the future, i might need a strong communication skill in my career, and if i don't improve it or bring those barriers along with me, i would be missing out lots of important information or not be able to communicate well with my managers or colleagues.

building the tower =]

soo fun to play that tower game!! but it was actually quite difficult if you do that blind folded..involve LOTS of team work too. But I had fun cooperating with my team members. Although i don't know them that well, but we trusted each other and did better and better each time. From that activity, i found out that i presented myself as a more task-oriented leader, because i was very focused on getting the task completed, but did not give many encouraging feedbacks. This is very interesting, because i had always thought i'm a people-oriented leader. But maybe i wanted to achieve more than i had set as my goal, so i neglected the fact that i should give constructive feedbacks to my team members so they would feel more valued and comfortable to continue to complete the tasks. Like Lori mentioned, it is very very rare for leaders to have a balance porportion of both people-oriented and task-oriented leadership, but hopefully i can train myself to give more useful feedbacks to others more frequently while maintaining the quality of work.

funny funny OFFICE!!!!

LOL...the Office video was so funny...the manager is so remarkable. When i first saw the manager and his humor, i thought he was quite a fun manager to work with, because usually a typical manager to me, is quite serious and would not interact with the other employees that are in lower positions. After watching the video, i thought it would be good to hang around with a manager that is so energetic and humorous all the time, but probably not a good idea to joke about everything at anytime. I would not want to work under someone who thinks humor can motivate everyone in workplaces. I agree using humour to reduce the distance between employees and as well to motivate them, but overexaggerate humour would demotivate people, especially when you did or said something offensive and you delivered it as a joke.

I actually learnt about Reducing feelings of equity in this management course when i was in high school. Now i really brought up my memories about when my classmate(who i think was not as hard working as me) got a higher mark than me on a project, i tend to be very demotivated and depressed for the whole day. Then i would start thinking if i should just stop being as hard work as i was, because i thought my hard work didn't lead to a satisfactory result that i expected. But when i first learnt about these equity theories, i just thought it would make me feel better if i don't compare my rewards/results with the others, because i actually don't know how much effort did they put in and the quality of their final products, so i shouldn't complain about not being treated equally. I believe these theories would definitely help me to overcome any feeling of unequity in my future career, knowing how to deal with my frustration and disappointment about equity will help me improve my control of emotions and develop a stronger "attachment" to the organizational culture.

Emotion intelligence + work with older people

Long time no blog!!!!...too many midterms and assignments to defeat! anyways...the E.I test and working with old people assessments were quite interesting! i actually never thought about how high my E.I would score. I was quite surprised it was over 120. And i personally like to work with older people, because most of them are fun and have positive attitudes, and they would definitely help me to gain more knowledge in different areas that i might have neglected. I believe that their past experiences would earn me great preparations for my future career path as well!! =) And i just remembered that i had once volunteered in a Senior Center, and all of the elderly were friendly and fun to talk to, so i believe that i would have no problems communicating with older people in my future work place.

I'm a really relationship-oriented person, because i tend to care about how others feel and think first, then i would start thinking about the work or tasks. I just think that having good relationships with others would help me reduce the intensity of the whole team, so that everyone can work in a more friendly and relax environment. I would say that i prefer a flexible and free working style, but still consider task as a major factor. I would like to work in an organizational culture that every employee cares about each other, and the company should have a decentralized structure, so almost all levels of management have chances to interact with each other, so there is actually less "CLASS DIFFERENTIATION". This actually reminds me of the Marketing director i interviewed last weekend, who mentioned about treating each other like family, and there's actually no "manager" when they work in a team, meaning that everyone works as a team while putting down their "positions" at that moment. I really wish i can work with the people who are willing to share any ideas or concerns as well. Instead of hiding everything that disappoints them...or working toward a goal that they don't believe or enjoy...i think it is better to clarify all the concerns so that the team can perform better.

I think i should improve by working as a task-oriented person more often, so i get a balance of these two working styles, shouldn't have too much empathy which influences my emotions of working. Because it is more difficult to get things done when everyone knows my weakness of empathizing others all the time, they might start to delay their work by making excuses.