High performance collaboration individual report 2

CHEN Sixian 

52910724

Collaboration process

Since we are not allowed to meet face-to-face, our two groups do collaboration through virtual ways. We connected each other through E-mail and then decided to set up a group using chatting software in order to exchange our opinion and data in time. So we can upload our own information and download others’ data and messages from the common database.

It took us some time to know each other and build trust among the team members. Trust is an important component of many interpersonal relationships and interactions. Team members who are responsive to communications, follow through, and take responsibility for results help build task-based trust, which helps enhance the team’s performance. Since task-based trust, or the belief that team members will do their jobs, is key to the success of a virtual team. Since we come from different department and are major in different courses, the way we think about questions are different. This leaded to a lot of problems during our collaboration as I will explain below, but this also complemented the shortage of each group.

We discussed the main idea of the organization, the value of this organization to each company, the way of operation of the organization and decided which industry we should stand for. After finished our own part, we consolidated them together to complete the general frame of the blog and then we modified it according to our own industry’s perspective. Meanwhile, we also consider the reliability and some operation problems of this virtual organization. We tried to make it more authentic.

Once the task was defined clearly, we altogether tried to be combined to create the right blend of technical and interpersonal skills to complete the task successfully. All in all, this was a smoothly process. Although we caught in trouble during the procedure, we did our job and finished the project eventually.

Conflict & Solution

Collaboration with other group

The working and learning experiences have a great effect on one’s thinking and the way of doing things. This mainly reflected on the understanding of the final project. We two group both propose our own idea at first. We had a conflict about the choice of the idea.

The morning group put more emphasis on the form of the virtual organization. They want to ensure the organization is accorded with professor’s request, and the collaboration form and process is practicable. But my partner and I want to do the organization in a more creativity and innovation way. Our initial idea didn’t fit the request very well, and then we tried to figure out a new one. We changed one of our collaboration companies and improve our scheme in order to make it both creativity and fit to the request. Then we express our idea to the morning group. After listening to our opinion, they changed their mind and decided to do our idea together. After reached an agreement, we quickly discussed the brief idea of the virtual organization and how it worked.

During the follow-up cooperation, physical distance and time distance brought with it other issues. Team dispersed affected quality of our collaboration. I found that collaboration across distance is more difficult than in a collocated environment. We have problems including difficulties in communication and coordination, reduced trust, and an increased inability to establish a common ground.

For example, we just connected with each other using E-mail and chatting software. This escalated conflict to some extent. When we using e-mail to resolve conflicts, this carries a major risk: that disputes will escalate late to irresolvable levels and even damage senders’ and receivers’ relationship. When I was confused with other group member’s idea and we discussed through the Internet, we couldn’t see each other’s face and the words couldn’t express ones emotion. What’s more, when a sender bundles multiple arguments in a lengthy e-mail message, the recipient may forget to respond to one or more arguments in the reply. When a sender believes that the recipient has ignored parts of the message, the sender may suspect a violation of interaction norms. Sometimes I can’t get others’ feedback in time and this could lead to a lot of misunderstandings. It made me think that the attitude of some group members’ was not so friendly and some of them were so self-opinionated. This wasn’t a good sign.

Connecting through E-mail in some ways slowed down our rate of process and destroyed our relationships. So this made me think that face-to-face video conversation or phone calls were necessary to discuss disputes. And fact proved that even we couldn’t avoid using e-mail to handle contentious issues in most cases, occasionally face-to-face conversations were helpful. We can get each other’s feedback more directly and timely through this way and this had a good effect.

Also, social-emotional processes are important too, especially in terms with physically dispersed members, interpersonal differences are a greater threat to the team’s social stability because of the greater difficulty in resolving conflicts across geographic boundaries. So a virtual team like us must ensure that team members commit to the overall group goals, identify with the team and actively support a team spirit. It was very lucky that all of the team members are very responsible for this project and this responsibility increased our team cohesion and helped to establish and maintain interpersonal bonds that enable our group to better cope with conflicts.

Collaboration with my partner

We just have two people in our group, so actually it’s hard to say who the group leader is. We worked more like partner for most of the time. Fiona and I are classmates; we are both major in Electronic Information Engineering. So it’s easy for us to discuss the project and exchange opinion all the time. As engineering students, our way of thinking are sometimes familiar. So it was easier for us to come to an agreement in some issues.

It was unavoidable that we may have some different opinions about the project and the previous exercises. The way we fixed this problem was that we both focused on the part we in charge of and then exchange opinion about another one’s idea. Then we modified our own work according to our own understanding and the partner’s suggestion.

Effect on me

This was the first time I cooperate with others in a virtual form. It was really a special experience and had a lot of positive effect on me. Not like most of the classmates, I don’t have any working experience and I have learned engineering for so many years. So this course itself is a big challenge to me.

Firstly I was shocked by the efficiency of part-time students. They have to deal with their own work in the daytime. So in order to finish the project, they put a stronger focus during their spare time. This requires them to fix the problems perfectly at first time. I think it’s the essential ability I should be equipped with in my future career. So I appreciate them for being such good models for me and I have learnt a lot during the collaboration with them and during the time we study together.

Secondly, the lectures and projects gave me a chance to train my writing and presentation skill. They made me thinking and trying to present my own opinion to others. What’s more, the exercises in the class and the projects developed my thinking and made me become more creatively. I have learnt more skills about how to search information, how to negotiate with other people and so on.

Thirdly, I learnt more about how to negotiate among diverse individuals to arrive at win-win outcomes. I changed a lot during the learning process and learned how to control my own emotion. I was a person who always wanted to prove that I am right while arguing with others. After learning the courses, I noticed that competing is not always the best way to deal with conflict and the experience of working with other group members made me realized the importance of collaboration. I learned how to consider both integrative and distributive aspects of negotiation, and build good relationships in order to get the problem solved. I have practiced all these knowledge and skills during the collaboration with the morning group and had a good effect.

Finally, the best harvest I think is the experience of dealing with conflict. As most of the virtual teams, we met a lot of problems when this team was first set up. We overcame the difficulties, such as dispersion, misunderstanding from electronic communication, etc. and then built trust. Each of us contributed a lot to the collaboration and eventually got a happy ending. This project made me get the key point for a virtual team to be success as: high level of trust, open and clear communication, strong leadership, clear goals and purpose and the use of appropriate levels of technology.