Teamwork experience Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Teamwork experience - Essay Example The researcher states the cultural differences made him stand out of the group at a communicative level. The Australians fluently spoke to one another and quite often, the researcher would feel left out. He tried to join them in the conversation. But he used to take too long to think about right words to construct the sentence, which would not only be embarrassing for him, but would also require them to display patience while listening to the researcher, which ultimately broke the temp of conversation. The author of this article understood English sufficiently to know the meaning but founds it difficult to speak with the required fluency and appropriate usage of words. Anyhow, he did not have any choice as the authority rested with majority and conversation had to be made in English. Besides, English is the course language so he had better give up any attempts to devise another language as the medium of communication. He mostly listened to his group members as they spoke. This not on ly maintained the tempo of conversation, but also provided him with an opportunity to improve his English speaking skill. There was a great deal of difference between the comfort he felt in speaking English between the start of the project and the end of the project. There is another positive aspect of interacting in foreign language which is that it reduces cultural differences among team members and helps in the development of strong rapport among them. (Neyer and Harzing, 2008, p. 13). In week 6, we learned how to work in a diverse group. The diversity among team members can be there in terms of difference of age, gender, culture and such other factors. In our case, our team was diverse in terms of culture as we were all boys and belonged to the same age group. I learned that diversity can cause many conflicts if not handled in the appropriate manner. In order to minimize the conflicts, we needed to minimize the cultural differences by understanding one another’s culture. Therefore, we established a culture based meeting. In that meeting, I was supposed to introduce Chinese culture to my group mates whereas they would talk about the Australian culture. That meeting was specifically meant to enhance our understanding of each other’s cultures. It is possible to reduce the cultural differences between team members if â€Å"mental processes associated with national culture are relatively fluid, and can be changed and sustained by appropriate situational factors† (Leung et al., 2005, p. 367). In the culture based meeting, the specific area that required to be discussed was ethics. Standards of ethics vary from culture to culture. What actions are considered respectable and honoring in one culture may be considered insulting in another, Therefore, in order to make sure that we respected each other’s cultural ethics, we discussed ethics of Chinese and Australian culture in this meeting. This way, we handled the cultural diversity in a v ery good manner. Not only was this meeting very enjoyable and informative, it also helped us escape a lot of dysfunctional conflicts as we knew each other’s cultural demands and would act accordingly so that nobody’s feelings were hurt. In week 7 and week 8, we learned how to work in a team, minimize the conflicts and be successful. Teamwork is very helpful for achieving big tasks that require a multitude of competences all of which are not the property of one individual. Therefore, in a team, members benefit from one another’s competences in order to attain their mutual goals and shared objectives. In our team, students A and B had a stronger bond with each other than with the rest of team members. They would often make fuss over petty issues, and we had to be patient in order to keep the ship