Reflection on Teamwork and Communication
With less than a week to the end of the semester and having done several assignments and projects, I have come to a realization that without teamwork and effective communication, many of these tasks would have been almost impossible to accomplish relying solely on oneself.
In terms of communication, I personally feel that my strength lies in my active listening skills and the ability to empathize with my group members. Nevertheless, there is definitely still room for improvement. However, I fared rather poorly in terms of encoding messages as my team members (both projects) have difficulty in understanding ideas I had tried to put across on many occasions especially at the start of this module. This can be imputed to the fact that I was probably not succinct during the discussion as I have a tendency to beat around the bush. But I felt the situation began to improve along the way as I grew aware of this problem and attempted to rectify it. Also, the oral presentations made me realized that I am somewhat still lacking with regards to audience awareness as I failed to maintain eye contact with the audience and I was overly-dependent on my notes.
With regards to teamwork, I am relieved to say that I managed to practice cultural sensitivity and there were no unnecessary conflicts throughout the duration of the two projects, namely CG1102 and CG1108. But I still feel that my competency is somewhat lacking as I often have to rush to meet deadlines many a times for the CG1102 project. One major reason could be due to a lack of commitment on my part and miscommunication among our team. However, through the progression of this module, I did learn to collaborate and coordinate with my team, which I felt was very meaningful as I truly felt that we were really working together as a team and not a group of mere individuals. Another important point that I have garnered from working in a team-based environment is that by being frank and yet tactful , knowingly or unknowingly, we build better rapport with one another which is a crucial trait of a successful team.
Although I am reaching the end of this module, I earnestly felt that I have acquired many essential interpersonal and communication skills throughout the course of which I am very certain will be useful in my career in the future!
