Friday, January 22, 2010
Being a member of a uniform group in my secondary school days, I have had my fair share of problems dealing with communication and teamwork with my squadmates. I lost count of the numerous times information failed to be transmitted to everyone in the squad (or team),or when the squad failed to agree on an issue. And these are all common problems that exist in many organisations. Regardless of whether it is a bureaucratic company, a CCA, or in a project, the moment people need to work together to achieve things the largest obstacles they can face are miscommunication, and the lack of teamwork.
I truly believe, in order to have a great team that is able to not only accommodate each other's shortcomings and work well together, communication is vital. My experience has shown me how inefficient things can become when miscommunication occurs, and when conflicts are not resolved amicably. It affects everyone's emotions, sometimes causing a general frustration, which causes more incompetency in dealing with the problem at hand. Therefore communication and teamwork is important to me.
Good communication not only allows people to forge strong bonds with each other, it allows them to work more cohesively, thus eliminating the problem of having conflicts that were badly dealt with. And similarly, having good teamwork and cooperation further enhances communication within the group. So teamwork and communication goes hand in hand in many circumstances.
However, with the increasing modes of communication that are invented in this modern society, it seems that it is increasingly difficult to communicate efficiently. As humans are overly exposed to too many forms of communication methods, which also serves as distractions, it is difficult to communicate properly and get the message across. For example, when a group meeting is held, it is not uncommon to see members of the group individually distracted by a mode of communication; one can be checking their email while a group member is talking; one reading or replying an sms, etc. These are all disturbances that people now face in dealing with effective communication. It is no longer about the delivery of the message itself, it's about how concentrated the listener is when the information is being processed.
Below is a comic illustrating how difficult it is to communicate in this modern context :
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
hello. testing.
I agree with you totally that good communication enables a team to be more productive and boned. Whereas miscommunication is a vicious cycle that can further sabotage a team's synergy and morale.
However, we cannot blame the various modes of communications that are available to us as distractions that keep us from communicating efficiently. Instead, the blame lies on the individuals who lack the basic social ethnics of giving the person due respect when he's talking.
Perhaps in such a situation, a set of rules can be introduced and made sure it is strongly adhered to.
Hi Cherlia
Firstly, I agree that communication and teamwork is very much needed in today’s society. Nothing much can be accomplished just by an individual alone, as most projects or research and development are done in teams. Without teamwork, the team will not be able to progress well. Communication is important as well, as you have mentioned, problems will arise with miscommunication and this will impede the team’s progress. Therefore, communication and teamwork are both vital in today’s society and we should learn more to polish up these skills.
Secondly, regarding the increased modes of communications, I agree that it can be distracting, but when viewed in a different perspective, they can be good as well. Increased modes of communication can be good, as there will be more ways to reach a person. Compared to just having phones and letters, it will take a long time to get a message across, and important issues cannot be dealt with promptly. As for the distraction part, if a person is not interested in the meeting at all, even if he is unable to check emails or reply text messages, he will still be unable to concentrate to the person speaking and may just daydream. Conversely, a person that is interested will listen attentively, regardless of how many forms of communications available to him. Therefore, I feel that increased modes of communication is good, as long as we know which platform the other party is using to send the message. In the comic you posted, if the mother checked her messages and knows which platform her son is using to inform her his plans, the miscommunication would not have occurred.
To conclude, communication and teamwork is important. Both skills are needed in today’s society to do well. Knowing which mode of communication is being used is also part of communication. Before we use it to send our message across, we should inform the receiver that we are using it, so that they know where to get the information sent.
Leonard (C06)
Hi Cherlia,
I like the examples you used to explain how teamwork and communication in relation to you. I can’t agree with you more that effective communication is vital for a team to work efficiently.
Since both teamwork and communication are abstract concepts (ie. different people may have some slight variations of what it means exactly), it will be better if you can start your blog entry with the definitions and principles of teamwork and communication. This will in turn help readers to know the scope of your discussion.
I do not really understand what you meant by “increasingly difficult to communicate efficiently” when more modes of communication are invented. Isn’t it easier to send a message to the other party when we can choose a wide variety of communication channels to send our message across? Why will it serve as a distraction? Suppose if A wants to inform B of the message X, A can choose to send a text message to B. If B do not understand A’s message, B can also call A via phone to clarify. I felt that it is the multitasking nature of humans nowadays that cause the distractions, rather than the increasing modes of communication. Without the invention of online chatting messengers, teammates can still do other things during a discussion.
Li Hua
Greetings Cherlia,
The use of your personal experiences is very relevant for this posting. Being also from a uniformed group during secondary school years as well, the amount of difficult situations, arising from a simple miscommunication as well as lack of teamwork, is both amusing and depressing. Amusing because of the realization of such a simple error, depressing because of the magnitude of the conflict or problem caused by it.
No doubt it was a great experience, and I guess you have learned alot from it. The examples used in explaining the concepts are relevant and with a personal touch, which all the more makes it credible. The importance of both communication and teamwork is constantly highlighted throughout the whole post, well done!
As for the paragraph depicting the idea of increasing modes of communication leading to further problem, I feel you need to give a balanced and not an overly one-sided argument. Modes of communication are invented for a purpose, and by completely ignoring their usefulness you does seem to do them an 'injustice'. A fair argument would be more appropriate and gives reader food for thought, rather than them dismissing it as an overly-biased piece of writing.
Last but not least, it is a posting well done!
Hi Cherlia,
Even though I was not from a uniform group in school, I have had similar experiences in army. The instances of miscommunication are simply uncountable and frustrating; however I shall not dwell on this.
I feel that you have brought out a good point about communication and teamwork going hand-in-hand. Many people underestimate the importance and difficulty in conveying the correct message across. Many a time we may be thinking of one thing but saying another, furthermore, what we say may be misleading or offensive even though we did not mean it that way. Such unfortunate incidents usually occur because we did not think before we speak. Several implications of such careless speech would include conflicts and misunderstandings amongst the parties involved, therefore, we should always be conscious of what we say and be more sensitive to others who are of different culture and gender.
I find the comic strip you provided very amusing and educational at the same time. It certainly brings out the irony of the many methods of communication today. The sheer amount of communication methods makes it confusing for us at times and instead of making us communicate more effectively, it provides distractions and interruptions during our communication unless used with reasonable responsible care.
Another good point you brought out would be the power of teamwork. I feel that the power of teamwork definitely does not follow a linear relationship as compared to a solo worker. A team with a good leader would be able to bring out the best in every member of the team that makes the power of teamwork exponential as compared to an individual worker.
Many people underestimate the power of teamwork and the importance of communication therefore I hope we can improve as we progress on our NUS journey together.
Regards,
Jay
I had been through similar circumstances in my secondary school days since I was also a member of the uniform group then. Indeed, communications and teamwork are very important. I remember when I was holding the role of instructor; I had to form groups with the other instructors to plan the training program schedule. Many problems occur and conflicts are not uncommon due to miscommunications during meetings. We were not able to interpret each others’ suggestions and ideas correctly which results in poor outcome at the end.
Next, I agree with you that to have a great team, the individual members must be able to overcome the shortcomings of each other. This allows the weaknesses of the team to be minimized and hence maximizing t. To achieve this, effective communications is needed. This shows that communication and teamwork are tightly coupled. Effective communication serves as a stepping stone for achieving good teamwork.
I agree with you that in our current world, the modes of communications are indeed of a wide variety and people are exposed to too much distraction because of this. Hence, I feel that in this situation, the choice of the mode of communication is very important and different situations will require different mode of communications. There can be an online conference meeting for people at work or doing projects but depending on the topic that the team is discussing, sometimes online conference is not very effective due to distractions that members face.
Overall, I feel that your post is clear, concise and concrete supported by your own experiences which made this post unique and different from others. You may want to talk more about teamwork instead of mostly on communication. Although they are interconnected, I feel that it is good if we can distinguish them separately.
Hi Cherlia,
I really liked how you wrote this post. The words used (e.g. I truly believe) helped to drive in the point you made. Your personal anecdote allowed me to see how both communication and teamwork are important to us. I completely agree that communication is not only vital to our lives, but that it will make it more fulfilling as well. I also particularly like the image that teamwork helps to improve communication and vice versa, in the sense that it is a cycle that keeps improving itself. Perhaps, you could have elaborated upon it? It is a unique point that would have been wasted otherwise.
I also agree that in or modern world, it becomes increasingly harder to communicate. It is an irony considering that there are even more ways to communicate than before. Your comic appropriately sums that up. It seems that the information overload is causing us to become terrible communicators, something that must be rectified with utmost importance. However, the post could have included more on the virtue of teamwork as well, as they are not explicitly stated, that would have made the post even more of a pleasure to read.
Thank you for an interesting read, I hope to see more of your insights into future topics.
Regards,
Kimberly
Post a Comment