Reflection on outdoor Den Building task.

-Group and Leadership

From my perspective there did not appear to be a single group leader. This task was very much a team effort completed with everyone voicing their ideas and the group as a whole deciding whether to go with them. From a building perspective everyone seemed to adopt their own areas to work on, with constant communications with nearby team members to ensure everyone knew what each person was doing. The group dynamic was very informal without a set leader, but the team worked really well together and we were all very proud or our end result. The entire team worked on the den so nobody was left excluded or observing from the sidelines. The most challenging thing about this task for me was working closely with people that I had only had brief encounters with so it seemed bad to ask who people were just over 3 weeks into the course, but it was all taken in good stride so wasn’t a big deal.

-Explaining

The other groups I went to see explained their ideas very clearly, I knew what their thought processes were and how they executed the building. they explained what issues they encountered and what their successes were leading to their end results. From what I could see the Preparation part was left out pf the explanations, I found this to be the case as the team added on numerous end notes to their explanation as if they forgot to say that, but over all the rest of the 5 P’s were met sufficiently.

-Environment

Being in the outdoor environment resulted in our communication being effected. Being outside meant we had to communicate in a different way, speak louder then we would indoors, use different tools than we would indoors and speak more clearly in order to successfully get our individual points across easier. There wasn’t a great deal of surrounding noise so the sounds of the environment were not particularly challenging, however in the outdoors this fan change very quickly. This can be overcome by the speaker talking louder and clearer and the listener standing closer if possible and having an increased concentration on the speaker in order to not miss anything that is being communicated to them. Personally I did find some aspects of the environment to be a distraction as there is always something that can catch your eye and take your mind off the task in hand. This is slightly more difficult to overcome however making a conscious effort to concentrate more on the task in hand will help significantly.

-Negotiation

Our team negotiations were all successful and we managed to acquire materials that appeared to be vital to another teams structure. The main challenge with the negotiations was convincing the other teams to trade with us something that was a vital part of their structure. This was difficult as they wanted something either equally valuable to us, or something that sufficiently replaced what they were giving us. Through the use of persuasive language and some very skilled negotiating we managed to get what we were wanting, without any major sacrifices to our structure.