Your thoughts on team-work

Thanks classmates for listening to Billy and I present our book - "Feel the fear and do it anyway". Hope you got something out of that. I sure did, as soon as that class was over and I went and checked on my emails, there was an email informing me that my trip to New Mexico/Mexico was cancelled. Not only was I verrrrry excited about going on this trip, the study tour was worth 6 credits. Initially I was stunned, but the advice from "Feel the fear" kicked in and I realised I had to nod my head up and down and not fight my universe by shaking my head side to side. At the moment I have no idea where I stand as there is now the strike to get through. It might be that I will not be graduating with the majority of my class, which is sad, but I have to work with my reality and if I cannot complete my 6 credits by May, I will have to accept that in-order to move forward.

It was very interesting listening to Ruska's presentation on team work and I thought it reinforced the importance on how cultures play an important aspect in understanding and working with your team-mates. How does the team work together with such differences? In class we talked about each member must be real, creating a safe environment is important, so that each team member feels safe and appreciated for their differences. It is important to find a common goal to work towards. We learnt that teams need a deviant to help stir things up in order to see different aspects to the situation. Possibly the person that has come from a different culture could bring in different aspects, so being open minded is important to allow different ideas to grow. This is a great opportunity to see how creative the team can be. It was suggested that teams need competition. I see a problem here if team members do not completely understand each other. I believe that everyone is competitive, but not necessarily competitive against other people. There are people who are competitive against themselves and that creates a different energy, therefore if there is a competition, it is important that team members are aware of each members driving force and how to get the best out of each member.



I too came from a back ground where team work was not part of my education. You worked on your own, but I actually do not mind working with teams. It is important for me to find a team that I am comfortable with and who are organized, reliable and committed. When there are team members that are not reliable that does cause friction and it is difficult to find a solution to that. So I understand Ruska's statement about "don't count on teams generating magic", it definitely is not always the case.

The article "Can I have your half attention, please?" is interesting. It is true that some people in class have their laptops open and have half a dozen sites open at the same time and I wonder how can they be getting 100% out of the class with their attention in 6 or 7 different places. The response of one person regarding banning laptops in class was interesting, she said that her attention span only lasted so long and that she could not imagine living without her laptop. The article goes on to say that students have too much pressure to concentrate specifically on just one thing and that students have jobs and other things and that they are trying to get everything done at once and so they don't have the luxury to just sit and concentrate only on the lecture (Pinchin, 2009). Well from the book "Feel the fear", Jeffers tells us that we need to be 100% involved in each box of our lives. So maybe by being focused on one aspect of our lives at one time will lessen the stress and we will allow ourselves the time to succeed in each area of our lives. It's just a thought.

That's it for this entry, see you next week.