Group and leadership
In the outdoor activity, I feel that there was a team leader. One of my team-mates had a history of camping and working outdoors and therefore had many ideas in which we could complete the task successfully. We made the decision of the team leader through a group-decisions on our strengths and people volunteering for roles. The action that marked them as the leader was how they instructed the rest of the group on what to do. They explained how they wanted the den to look and how we were going to accomplish this, while also following the correct criteria. They took lead on building the den while telling others on further materials we would need. They also informed us of what materials we could trade. In result of this, I feel that the team worked well together, and we all participated. I do think that we should have swapped roles at some point during the exercise to allow each other to get the opportunity to try different roles rather than just one. This would have allowed us to explore more variety of communication skills. I feel the most challenging part of working within this group was communicating with different people as the groups were mixed.
Explaining
I feel the group explained everything very well as they described everything clearly and concisely. They talked at a good pace with a loud voice to ensure we heard anything. They also pointed at each thing they were describing to allow us to add visuals to their explanation. When listening to the other group and how they built their dens, they missed out on describing how they had planned their dens and how they chose theirs and based their explanation on the final piece.
Environment
I believe my communication changed due to being outdoors. As I was communicating in an open space and there were other groups in the surrounding area, in order to communicate successfully I had to use a higher volume for my group to be able to hear me. I also had to have a closer proximity to whoever I was talking in order for them to hear successful and so I did not need to shout. If far away from my teammates I would also use gestures like a thumbs up or down when finding different materials and checking if we needed them or not. I felt at times it was difficult to speak above the sounds in the environment. To overcome this, we used gestures and signals to each other rather than words. To make communicating in this environment easier I believe that huddling together allows everyone to be heard better if they are within closer proximity. I think the speaker should gathering everyone together in a place in which nothing is happening in the background to allow everyone to focus on what you are saying rather than what’s going on behind them. I also think using a louder volume is a necessity to allow everyone to hear over the background noise of the outdoors. Through our decision at the end, I felt it was difficult hear the speaker due to the noisy environment. I also feel people were still talking through the decisions as they were still hyped up from the activity. To overcome this, we could do pre-discussions and reflecting indoors in which will help to keep concentrating and focus on the speaker as well as allowing listeners to clearly hear anything being said with no confusion. It will also allow people to calm and settled down after the excitement.
Negotiating
Our negotiations were successful. After planning how we were going to build the den and the materials we would need in order to do so, we gathered all the materials we did not need. We then analysis each group and guess what materials they needed we did this through communicated with each other and agreeing on decisions. We then used these objects to trade for ones we needed. While trading we had to use our persuading skills to help the trade take place. We did this by telling them what they could use it for and how helpful it would be for them to have. Therefore, our negotiations were successful due to our ability to agree on decisions and debating skills. The most challenging part of our negotiations was when people did not want the item we wanted to trade. To overcome this, we explained to them how they could use the material to trade with another group for something they had that they wanted. This was successfully. In order to complete this stage, we had to have confidence in what we were saying, and this allowed us to communicate well. We had to approach others in a way that was friendly and made them want to negotiate with us. Another challenging part was when people would not agree with the trade and we had to give up. This meant we had to go back to our group and discuss or next tactic.
