Self Reflection Caroline

Self Reflection of High Performance collaboration

When I first looked at the name of this course, I was curious about how to achieve high performance collaboration. I supposed that this course may be similar with other courses. We also had to form groups to do the presentation so as to experience the process of collaboration. However, after taking this course, I realized that it was more complicated than I thought. High performance collaboration contained effective communication, knowledge management, conflict and negotiation etc. When I recalled the whole learning process, communication and conflict management played significant roles in the collaboration.

Before illustrating two significant parts I mentioned above, I intended to talk about forming the group. At the beginning, Tina and I had already built the team and designed the logo. Based on the requirement in the second class, each team had at least three people. Therefore, we had to find another team member. When we asked classmates around us, they all had formed group. We found Liam and asked him whether would like to join us. He agreed to join us, so we formed the new team. But the problem was that Tina and I had already thought of the group name and designed the logo. Did we need to change the name and logo? After discussing with Liam, we decided to keep the same name and logo, just changing the original way of explaining the logo. We performed well in the first procedure of collaboration.

Communication 

Communication is a mutual understanding procedure which participants exchange thoughts, messages, or information by speech, visuals, signals, writing or behavior. As the table shows, communication process is consisted of sender who has the source, encoding, channel, decoding and receiver. Sender transmits a message via a channel to the receiver and receiver has to interpret the message to understand the meaning so as to provide the feedback.

In order to facilitate the whole communication process, we ought to improve the communication skills to convey our ideas clearly to avoid others misunderstanding. No matter in the morning group or the evening group, I attempted to express my suggestions logically to let my team members know what I said. In the process of group discussion, I planned my communication to convey my ides clearly. When our team members provided feedback about my ideas, I listened to their comments patiently. Thus, there was no serious communication problem between team members and me.

Types of communication and communication channels

In terms of the types of communication, there are formal and informal. Formal communication takes place when people in the organization using formal channels of the organization structure along the lines of authority established by the management. Formal communication can consist in verbal messages, nonverbal messages, written and internal notes etc. Usually, formal communications are recorded and kept as organization’s evidence. Informal communication does not follow authority lines and it occurs due to the social needs. It is obvious that we adopted the type of informal communication, because no one had the authority to compel others. In our morning group, we used QQ, E-mail, telephone and face to face meeting while we utilized Email, Skype and WhatsApp to communicate with evening group. The first time we sent E-mail to evening class was February and then we decided to use Skype to hold first virtual meeting on March 16^th. Those two photos took by us when we held the first virtual meeting.

On the same day, after finishing our first virtual meeting, we determined to use WhatsApp as a communication tool to exchange our ideas. The reason we chose WhatsApp was considering the evening group had to work in the daytime and they had habit of using WhatsApp. Additionally, WhatsApp is an instant message which is a type of online chat and offer real-time text transmission through the Internet. If we had encountered problems about the final project, we can discuss in the WhatsApp and solved problems immediately. If we came up creative ideas, we could also provide them in the WhatsApp. Moreover, every time before holding the virtual meeting, we would confirm it again in the WhatsApp to ensure everyone was ready to do video or audio conferences.

After finishing virtual meeting each time, we would assign the task. When we finished our part of the task, we also sent E-mails to our team members. If our team member had confused about what we done in the task, we would set up time to hold video or audio conferences by Skype which assisted us articulate our ideas to be better understood.

Conflict Management

Conflict is an integral part of group information. It occurs when an individual or group feels negatively affected by another person or group (Burton, 1990). If the group cannot manage the conflict effectively, it will impact on the accomplishment of the group project. For instance, personal attacks, isolation and chaos can ultimately lead a group to underperform. Thus, it is necessary to apply conflict management into solving conflict problems.

Conflict Problems

Although the whole procedure of collaboration among team members was smoothly, there were still quite a few conflicts. The first conflict was when to conduct the virtual meeting. Considering the evening group who were required to work in the daytime, our morning group had to accommodate the evening group. After discussion with evening group, we decided to conduct the virtual meeting on Saturday afternoon. Another conflict was choosing the communication tools. All members of our morning group come from mainland China, we have the habit of using QQ as our common communication tools while evening group who are local people have never used QQ before. They have habit of using Skype and WhatsAPP. In order to get in touch with evening group conveniently, Tina and I downloaded the Skype and WhatsApp. After we downloaded the Skype and WhatsApp, we often used them to communicate with evening group.

  

The last conflict was team members who did not participate in the virtual meeting. Since we adopted the virtual collaborations and relied on virtual communication, it could not guarantee people would appear on time to participate the discussion, especially during the festivals. We originally prepared to do the virtual meeting on April 6^th. However, there were only Alice and me online on that day. Both of us could not contact with our team members. It was in the period of Easter Day and Tomb Sweeping Day, some team members perhaps went back hometown to sweep tomb. Therefore, it was failed to go on the virtual meeting on that day.

Solutions

Kenneth Thomas and Ralph Kilmann gave us some enlightenment about how to deal with those conflicts. They identified five main styles which assisted people to realize what conflict resolution style they adopt. Five styles were competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding and accommodating.

As the diagram shows above, competing is high assertive and low cooperative. It is a kind of power-oriented. In the competing situation, people only consider themselves and take advantage of their power to win their position. Collaborating is high assertive and high cooperative. When collaborating, people attempt to work with others to find a solution which satisfies both needs and achieves win-win outcomes. Compromising is moderate in both assertiveness and cooperativeness. Compromisers intend to find an expedient, mutually acceptable solution that partially satisfies both parties. Avoiding is low in both unassertiveness and cooperativeness. People withdraw from the conflict situation, because they are afraid and do not have enough confidence in managing conflict. Accommodating is low assertiveness and high cooperativeness. When accommodating, people are willing to meet others’ needs at the expense of their own needs and maintain harmony.

During the process of collaboration, we took cooperation style to deal with conflicts, because we believed that good relationships were the first priority. We built mutual respect and trust among team members. Therefore, when conflicts took place, we confronted conflicts immediately. If one of team members had issues, he or she could express it through our instant messages like Skype and WhatsApp. And then we discussed together, listening and selecting other team members’ suggestions. Finally, we chose a better alternative. From the first conflict I mentioned above, evening group consulted our curriculum schedule and told us they had evening classes on Tuesday and Thursday. However, Tina, Liam and I had optional causes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday night. Therefore, we reached an agreement that we held virtual meetings on every Saturday. In terms of the second conflict, when we succeed in video conference by Skype. We noticed that Skype only provided one week free to use the function of group video chat. A week later, when we attended to use group video chat in the Skype, we had to pay for it. If we used group voice chat through Skype, it was also free. At that time, Tina and I suggested evening group to download QQ, because QQ was free to offer group video chat. Evening group agreed with our ideas and attempted to explore how to use QQ. Due to unfamiliar with QQ, evening group had some problems when they utilized the QQ. As a result, we decided to use group voice chat in the Skype instead of group video chat. For the last conflict, we determined to remind our team members of virtual meeting one day early through WhatsApp or E-mail. Before virtual meeting on that day, we also sent messages by WhatsApp so as to ensure everyone was ready for the virtual meeting.

Conclusion

During the whole leaning process in this course, I got better understanding of how to combine effective communication skills, conflicts management and negotiation skills to achieve high performance collaboration. It was an exercise preparing me for the future career path, because I am going to work in the accounting firm that emphasizes the effective collaboration among people to accomplish the project. Additionally, from this virtual collaboration experience, it opened new communication channels for me. Before this virtual collaboration, I had never used Skype and WhatsApp. Owning to this virtual collaboration, I learned how to use these two new communication channels. In summary, I enjoyed this collaboration experience.

References

1.      Burton, J. (1990). Conflict: Resolution and Prevention. New York: St. Martins Press.

2.      Ruble, T.L. & Thomas K.W. (1976). Support for a two- dimensional model of conflict behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 16,pp 143-155.