Communication
However, communication is a cause for misunderstandings. I personally had a bad experience once. My failure to choose the correct tone for an appropriate message turned it into a nasty sarcasm and in turn broke a good friendship. It was that incident which made me realize the importance of having not just communication skills but also good communication skills.
I believe one does not need to have a good command of the language to communicate well. Simple words sometimes do wonders. Two important aspects in communication to me is timing and smiling. Sometimes, not talking may even be the best communication method.
Teamwork is important when complex or large tasks are to be accomplished. I believe that any one man can accomplish any task, no matter how big or difficult it may be. However, what good is accomplishing a task if it takes a very long time or if it makes that person wear out. To finish a task effectively and efficiently, that is what matters most and only a team can accomplish that.
Having effective teamwork is important to me because I do not have all the abilities required for a task to be successfully accomplished. Through teamwork, my strengths complement my teammate’s weaknesses and my weaknesses compliment their strengths. We are thus able to improve on our weaknesses. The teamwork eventually makes the members individually better.
Communication is a necessity for effective teamwork. I believe that without good communication in a team, the team performs poorer than the team members individually.
You have got a point in the idea that effective team communication is necessary for effective teamwork. However, in my opinion, a team never performs poorer than an individual. As you have mentioned above, there are complex and large tasks that one man cannot finish without costing a large amount of time. Moreover, the result is not sure to be as good as team does even though how bad the team communication.
ReplyDeleteYou blog entry is an honest and frank account of yourself being a victim of misunderstandings between people. It is great to know that you have learnt from all these and made a point to self improve. Very encouraging, we should all learn from you! (I'm a culprit myself, where sometimes I refuse to admit I was wrong =s)
ReplyDeleteYou made a few interesting comments, but one left a rather deep impression on me. You mentioned that sometimes not talking may be the best form of communications. Well, that may sound unorthodox initially. However, there are the occasional times where a group is in a midst of a heated argument that threatens to boil over. Would continued strong opinions from the members resolve the conflict? I doubt so. It takes great effort to calm things down, and that is where the cooling down period is required.
Of course, during this period of cooling down, we should reflect upon the mistakes we have made, correct them, and finally apologize.
Perhaps, I will try that out in the future!
I am sure everyone who reads your blog can relate to what you have said because everyone must have made mistakes while conversing, using the wrong tone or improper body language, and underwent the consequences.
ReplyDelete"Sometimes, not talking may even be the best communication method." Very true !!! By not talking, I'm sure you meant 'listening' :D
I completely agree with your idea that communication and teamwork are interlinked. They are merely two sides of the same coin.
In reply to Khoa's comment: I do think that its possible that a team that lacks proper communication might perform poorer than its constituent individuals. The saying "Too many cooks spoil the broth" applies here.
Like what Lakshmi said, I believe that everyone is able to relate to your experiences as miscommunication happens to everyone and especially in group projects when our interactions with the group mates become more. So, I feel that it is necessary to acquire good communication skills to reduce the number of conflicts and build strong teamwork.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I agree with your point that good communication skills is important because it would allow an intelligent person to be able to bring his or her good ideas across to other people. Indeed, the ideas might just remain as ideas if other people do not understand and cannot implement them. For example, an engineer might have fabulous ideas about building a machine. However, if his communication with the people who are building the machine is bad, the machine might not be able to work as the engineer expects it to be. Therefore, good communication is important for effective exchange of ideas.
As for possible areas of improvement, I think that you could proofread your entry a couple of times before you publish it as there are a few grammar mistakes and weird sentence phrasings in this entry.
Thank you all for the comments; I was actually looking forward to it. Seeing as this is feedback to my very first post, I am eager to improve myself with all the helpful and honest advice.
ReplyDeleteKhoa, I understand and agree with your view there. A team will usually perform better than its individuals. However, we are assuming it is a team. My point was that a team without good teamwork should not even be considered a team.
Justin, I am glad you found something I mentioned interesting. Likewise, I found what you added at the end interesting too. Indeed, the silence is only useful if everyone uses it to reflect. However my point was more towards the idea Lucksme mentioned i.e. stop talking and start listening.
Luckshme, your quote at the end was only slightly applicable. This is because too many cooks will always spoil the broth but teamwork is not always ineffective. However, I still think it explains the crucial part. Perhaps, the quote can be changed to “Cooks preparing their best dish spoils dinner”. This shows how cooks individually trying to make their best dish without any collaboration will eventually make a dull dinner course without coherence and complementation.
Jing Mei, thank you for the feedback. I will definitely proofread my post more thoroughly in future.
To conclude, I think that my point has been made clear and many of you agree with it. There are some interesting aspects I learnt from the comments and this made me literally see my post from a different perspective. I hope to receive more of such constructive feedback so that my subsequent posts will continue to improve.