Group and Leadership

On the 24^th of September we completed a group den building task. As soon as I gathered with my group we quickly began sharing our ideas. It was mentioned that one member of our team had experience in carrying out these kinds of tasks before, as well as leading them, due to her experience with the Guides. She naturally took on the role of the leader of the group due to this. She explained the methods that had worked well for her before and which areas of the environment were best used in her previous attempts at similar tasks. We then followed her lead agreeing with all the advice she provided us with, as well as pitching in our own suggestions. Within our group everyone was included as we ensured that everyone had a part to play. I enjoyed working with this group. The only slight challenge I faced working in this group was getting to know everyone at first, as most of the group were individuals who I hadn’t really spoken to before. However, through working closely with them all in this activity and asking questions I got to know them better.

 

Explaining

I believe that my group worked very well in explaining clearly to each other what their initial ideas were as well as letting everyone know what role they were taking on and when they needed extra materials such as tape. It was this clear communication through both verbal means and visual cues such as gesture, which lead to the easy sharing of materials and effective teamwork. One stage of the 5Ps of explaining which may have been missed out by my group would be the planning stage. Although we did talk to each other about our ideas whilst participating in the activity, we never took the time before hand to discuss and plan how we were going to use the materials or what everyone’s role would be. The only thing that we planned before hand was what space we were going to use.

 

Environment

The environment impacted our communication in that, as the space was open and there were many other groups talking to each other at the same time, we had to ensure that we were usuing more visual cues within our communication for example when we needed someone to pass a piece of tape we would not only ask but use hand gestures towards the tape in order to be fully understood. When explaining to others we had to be in a closer proximity to them that would not have been necessary if we were in a classroom environment. It was challenging to speak above the sound of the environment. We had to ensure that we were listening carefully and not talking or discussing things at the same time. We had to use a louder volume in our voice to ensure we were being heard over the background noises of the environment. When working in this type of environment there were many possible distractions. The best way to overcome this was to ensure that these distractions had passed before delivering any important information or instructions.

 

Negotiation

Our assigned negotiation task was not successful. We had to attempt to swap one member of our team for one member of another. We believe this was unsuccessful as we tried to attempt this closer to the end of the task and all groups were halfway through the set task already, they had got to know their teammates and were working well as groups and therefore it was challenging to get them to swap as they believed switching a team member may have thrown this off. However, we did negotiate with other groups in the sharing of materials, so these skills were still being used during this task.