Self-reflection
of the learning journal of collaboration
(Meiling
Lai, 97488356)
“Collaboration is the best path to success in
virtual team work”
-Introduction
This final
project is designed for us to learn a virtual collaborative experience. In such project, our evening team no. 9 and
morning team no. 9 were assigned to form a business by two separate companies in
different industries (i.e. a backpacker forum and IBIS Hotels) to achieve a successful virtual
collaboration that can add value to the two companies in return. In this
elaborate project, we can get a virtual team experience that allows us to
creatively combine resources and talents in this entrepreneurial adventure
through building a virtual website. Moreover, it enables us to encounter and
consider the extent to which problems and issues (typically to be encountered
when people collaborate in teams) are exacerbated in virtual situations.
-My feelings and thoughts
As Thomas (1992) stated, conflict begins when one party perceives something that
another party has been
negatively affected, or is about to be negatively affected, that the first party cares about.
To be honest, first,
once we (evening
class students) learnt that our class needs to cooperate with morning class, most of
the classmates or at least myself have a negative feeling, like there is lightening-what a shock?! It seems to me full of
uncertainty. Who are the morning class students? How can we contact the morning class? Can we have enough time to complete this project? ...... Many questions
came to my mind. Later, when some classmates who had interacted
with the morning
class in
another course reported that a majority of the morning
class students came
from mainland China. This made me feel even worse as I am really poor in
speaking mandarin. I not only worried
about the communication difficulties
and it also
reminds me a negative experience in collaboration with mainland China students that I ever had before.
In last
semester term, I had to
complete a group project with 2 full-time students who came from mainland China. They were very passive to participate in the project. This experience may cause me to
have a bias against other
mainland China students, but the feeling is real.
-Problems and issues encountered in the virtual teams’ collaboration
As occurred in a normal group development, the problems we need to
deal with, including lack of trust, gossip, scheduling difficulties, false
consensus/groupthink and differences in the way various team members interpret
information, when experiencing a virtual collaboration with the morning class. Luckily, functional conflict is healthy and
necessary for effective teams. Applying win-win methods, such as satisfying both sides’ needs for conflict
resolution, would lead to functional outcomes from conflict,
such as improved group performance and quality of decisions.
During the initial stage of collaboration
process, we communicated via email (see Appendix) because
only email addresses were
available. Nowadays, where information is the
raw material of work
in virtuality dimension, it has never been necessary to have all the
people in the same place at the same time (Handy, 1995). As Handy (1995) said, email or personal phone will
be more dramatically different than it sounds. We are able to contact
anyone no
matter where they are or what they are doing. So, it is relatively good for us to use this
technology to communicate in this virtual collaboration process, especially when we never meet other virtual
team members face to face.
Handy (1995) also
pointed out that e-mail has many attractions,
including immediacy, but it is not the same as watching the eyes of others. And Johnson (2002) said that e-mail lacks
co-presence visibility, audibility, co-temporality, simultaneity and
sequentiality. These properties enable
communicator to achieve a shared understanding about the encounters and a
shared sense of participation. They also
allow participants to time and adjust their actions and reactions to reach an agreement.
During the e-mail communication, secondly, low
feedback rate increased the risk of escalation in conflict process. At the very beginning, our team’s primary
contact person, Mandy sent an invitation email to the morning team to discuss
the assignment, but no reply was received for several days. This made me feel it is raining outside-what
did not go so well. For my expectation
of well time management and we need to briefly present our ideas very soon, so I
acted as a facilitator to send a follow-up email to the morning team to request
for reply. Luckily, it worked, they
replied that they agreed our suggestion.
Johnson (2002) stated that, electronic
communication would generate not much feedback, such as clues about how a
recipient is reacting to one’s message. As
a result, participants cannot clarify misunderstandings or adjust their
comments to repair missteps fluidly.
Actually, we
are deprived of the ability to employ all our senses in the virtual world.
Consequently, we receive the information
from the senses that are being used must be translated and amplified. Especially
when we apply this situation to a team consisting of people from multiple
cultures with different personal styles, the challenge grows exponentially
(RW-3.com, 2012).
We found that mainland China students just have no habit to reply email even they
have read the message. Therefore,
the morning team gave me their contact numbers and advised to use WhatsApp as
another communication tool to complement email. However, the morning team consists of full-time students, they would like to
discuss the assignment during office hours, while we being part-time students
have to work during such hours, it is really difficult for us to fulfill their
need even through WhatsApp. Therefore,
we need to voice out and let the morning team understand this situation.
-“Good”
and “bad” about the collaboration experience
Actually, I would identify the real conflict
happened when there was a false consensus about the framework/contents of
presentation. About two weeks before the
fixed date of presentation, I started to design the power-point for our
presentation. However, we found that the
morning team still wondered at the date
of presentation and kept dragging the framework repeatedly. And they just argued the pairing of NGO e.g.
UNESCO and a 5 star hotel group, Accor, was better than that of backpacker
forum and a 3 star hotel group, even though we already explained to them about
what professor’s opinions had been given for the virtual collaboration and they
had agreed the ideas before.
At first, I chose Passive conflict
resolution by going on preparing my presentation part because I did not want to
get involved and thought that it was a waste of time and the morning team would
be better off working the problem out.
However, conflict is going to happen in Human
Relations View, so it is better to cope with it! For Interactionist View, there are functional
vs. dysfunctional conflicts. And functional
conflict is good for business and even encouraged. This view argues that conflict is essential to innovation and continuous improvement in
business. Without conflict, people can become complacent in what they do.
During the collaboration process, I actually thought the morning team did not really interpret the
pith of virtual team at a time, but when
they kept raising out some questions that let us thought more and also helped
me to clarify some misunderstandings about virtual teams after our further
discussion with professor. Actually, I would like to describe the above conflict as a Process Conflict, it is about
conflict over how work gets done and low levels of which can be acceptable.
During that annoying time, one of our
teammate, Andy stood out and put all our
focus back to the contents of the assignment. And he tried to use Win-win and Structured
problem solving method to solve this conflict. He drew out a table and put our team ideas as
proposal 1 with several important items, such as how the parties contribute to
the platform on one side and let the morning team to fill in the items on the
other side of the table as proposal 2. He
tried to use this systematic way to let all realize which proposal would be
better to achieve the goal, i.e. the virtual collaboration brings enough values
to both parties. And we then send the
agreed table to our professor for comment. Then, the conflict seemed to be solved.
Andy’s response as mentioned above let me really learn that there are many constructive responses to conflict. Such constructive responses really broadened my view and enhanced my real life experience to deal with conflict.
-We
can make sense of the situation
Our experience was just a typical example of
the conflict process in a virtual team. Robbins & Judge (2011) stated, (i) communication,
such as semantic difficulties, misunderstandings, and “noise”; (ii) structure,
such as size and specialization of jobs, member/goal incompatibility, etc.; and
(iii) personal variables, such as differing individual value systems and personality
types, are potential oppositions or incompatibilities and all can lead to conflict. This is stage 1 of the conflict process.
As mentioned above, (i) different habits and cultures of using email, (ii) the communication style, (iii) differences in the way various team members interpret information, etc. can be the causes of conflict. And conflict is going to happen in every single second, so let’s cope with it without delay!
Let’s come to stage 2 of the conflict process
where a person becomes aware of one of the conditions in stage 1
and is somehow frustrated by it. For instance, I really felt annoying
when both team members kept dragging the framework repeatedly.
Robbins & Judge (2011) reminded that a
conflict can exist without it becoming personalized. When a conflict is personalized, the person
feels frustration, tension, anxiety about it.
When facing conflict,
different people may have different methods / attitudes to deal with it. Thomas and Kilmann (1974) stated that
avoiding, competing,
accommodating, compromising and collaborating are the different intentions people
commonly have.
To me, I adopted “avoiding” to face the situation at which both evening and morning team members kept dragging the framework repeatedly.
Thomas
and Kilmann (1974) stated that the role of “avoiding” is not very helpful in
helping to resolve the conflict. And this
could only be used at situations that were seen as not very important or when
disruption could be a big problem.
As Thomas
and Kilmann (1974) described, collaboration is the best intention. These situations can be viewed as
win-win. The opposing groups sincerely
and creatively work together to reach a method that pleases both sides. That’s why once Andy put all our focus back to
the contents of the assignment. And he drew
out a table and put both teams’ ideas as proposal 1 and proposal 2 with several
important items. He successfully used
this systematic way to let all understand which proposal would be better to achieve
the goal, i.e. the virtual collaboration brings enough values to both parties. The conflict was then solved.
As Foster (2009) mentioned, “conflicts can
be resolved in a fact-based manner by gathering data regarding the problem and
having the data analyzed by a disinterested observer to add weight to the
claims of one of the conflicting parties.” So Andy just applied structured problem
solving to conflict and our professor in this case was a neutral mediator, who can
act as a good catalyst to reach an agreeable solution. All members can hence try to understand and
explain both points of view to help the conflicting sides understand each other’s
points of view.
-Conclusion
and action planning
Grounding, timing and adjusting are all
critical for successful conflict resolution. And the
best path to success
is to understand and recognize collaboration, this is
particularly true when our objective is to learn. In other words, collaboration let me find an
integrative solution when it is important to compromise the concern of both teams
and to merge insights from people with different perspectives. By going though the conflicts, group
performance can be improved, such as better understanding the concepts of virtual
teams as the functional outcomes.^^
References:
-Foster,
S. T. (2009). Managing Quality: An
Integrative Approach. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
-Handy, C. (1995). Trust
and the Virtual Organization. Harvard Business Review, May-June, 1995.
-http://rw-3.com/2012VirtualTeamsSurveyReport.pdf
-Johnson, L. K. (2002). “Does E-mail Escalate Conflict?” MIT Sloan Management
Review. Fall 14-15.
-Robbins, S. P. & Judge, T. A. (2011). Essentials of Organizational Behavior (11th
Edition). New Delhi: Pearson Education.
-Thomas, K. W. (1992). Conflict and negotiation
process in organizations. In M. D. Dunnette and L. M. Hough (eds.), Handbook of industrial and organizational
psychology, 651-717. Palo Alto, CA; Consulting Psychologists Press.
-Thomas, K. W. & Kilmann, R. H. (1974). Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument. XICON.
Appendix:
Group communication with morning team
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