Trust and Communication
– the important elements for successful collaboration
Nowadays, it is very common for business
world to adopt virtual teams and collaboration between difference businesses parties
become more essential. Since I am working for an international bank, my
colleagues are all around the world. It is usual for me to adopt virtual teams to
work. So, I guess I am good enough to handle the collaboration projects. After
completed this project, I recognized that difference situations can make collaboration
become difficult and successful collaboration should be based trust and
communication.
Communication
Our
team used the following tools to make our project done, Gmail, WeChat, Skype, Dropbox,
Prezi, mobile phone and face-to-face meeting.
1. Gmail
We
used Gmail for writing reply or request for teammates, share useful information
between teammates and morning class teammate. The morning class teammate took the
initial step to contact us on Gmail. With the help of Gmail, it created the
bridge between our team and the morning team. However, it also created problem
with morning class. It is because writing is harder to understand than listen
or speak to other peoples. Thus, we faced the problem with morning class as
well, we misunderstand both side ideas, for example, they first sent out email
to invite us while we misunderstood and sent out internal team meeting invitation
to them.
2. WeChat
WeChat
is our instant massagers used for our project. Jane helped our team to form a
Group chartroom. This tool is very useful for our project, especially we are
from difference department, Sophia and Jane are full time students who had
lesson on Saturday morning and afternoon, while I am a part time student with a
busy job. It is quite hard for us to meet together. The tool helps us to
communicate with each other without physical constraint. So we used it daily. Also,
we also formed inter-group chartroom for morning group. Before each inter-group
meeting started, we both side will inform each other to prepare stuffs for the
meeting. However, it WeChat is not working fine to our project. It is because
the nature of WeChat is to discuss a short and simple stuff. Once the
discussion getting more in depth, it is very hard for us to get back those
important details. Also, it is quite easy for to replace our cell phone or get
a new cell phone. Furthermore, I got some problem with my WeChat account which
logout my account automatically. Hence, all my chat history was gone. So it
will be better if we could summary the information from chat room and send out
email to notice each out.
3. Skype
Since
we are forming virtual team, both side of teammate cannot be met physically.
Hence, we used Skype to form our inter-group meeting and treat it as our online
voice massager. We took the inter-group meeting weekly. This is my first time
to use Skype for group voice chatting. This experience is quite good for me.
Skype can handle six people talk at the same time. During the meeting, we
exchanged our ideas for projects and pick up the most suitable idea for
project. It helped us to reduce misunderstanding of ideas and improve
information symmetry. Henry from morning class helped us to write meeting
minutes after meeting.
4. Dropbox
We
used Dropbox to share documents, useful information. I created Dropbox folder
for both my team and inter-team as well. After every inter-group meeting, Henry
kept the meeting minutes on Dropbox. Drift ideas and presentation materials are
stored on Dropbox. Dropbox improved our information flow a lot. When we have
any ideas or any things that would like to share to each teammate, we will
upload those files to Dropbox. Once teammate login Dropbox, they are able to
get the latest version of the document. If they want to get back the particular
version of documents, simply login Dropbox.com and all versions are shown to
them. This is useful and effective to our team success.
5. Prezi
Jane
introduced Prezi to our group. This is a virtual whiteboard that transforms presentations from monologues into
conversations: enabling people to see, understand, and remember ideas.[i]We
used this website for our final presentation. This collaboration tool helps us
by provide a common workspace for us to modify presentation. Prezi supports
multiple users to edit the presentation the same time. Also, the animation is
very good and dynamic which helped us to form a professional presentation and
the last thing is it reduced the chance of missing PowerPoint file because all
the presentation slide are stored on Prezi.
6. Mobile
phone
When
our team has some urgent issues or some of teammate is not available to open
meeting, we will use mobile phone to discuss our issue or ideas.
7. Face-to-face
meeting
We
first used Face-to-face meeting to discuss ideas for our team project. With the
face-to-face meeting, it is more easily for us to exchange ideas and to
compromise for the best solution. Afterwards, we used Face-to-face meeting to
discuss the details of the project, divide sub-task to each teammate, the
ultimate goals for each path and also the deadline for each part and choose for
the next meeting date as well.
Team
coordinates
I
believe that my team coordinates is good across members. Jane is the team
leader in our team. She got a great leadership in this project and solved some
of the inter-team conflict. She is also good at English and helped our team to
prove read the material before we hand in. Sophia is good at drawing, her
drawing helped to improve our presentation a lot. I am good at technology stuff
and able to solve most of the technical problem.
Team
Decision making:
Our
team decision was made by all of us. If we were facing any problem, the teammate
who discovers this problem will rise out the issue and we try to organize a
meeting for that or try to resolve it on phone. Since we are a small team with
three team members only, Consensus decision-making was applied on our team
decision making. It is a group decision making process that seeks the consent
of all participants. Consensus may be defined professionally as an acceptable
resolution, one that can be supported, even if not the "favourite" of
each individual.[ii]
With this approach, all of my teammate was able to express their opinion toward
every ideas or problems. Although it may take a bit more time for us to get
consent for decision making, it really helps our team to grow. The more the
meeting we hold, the more we understand each of us. This is very effective
especially discussing about the proposal for our projects. At the beginning of
our team project, we have to propose 3 proposals to morning teammate. Our team
easily thought of being companies served for elderly and all ideas focus on
thinking of elderly related services. We told several hours to bring out 3 proposals
to the morning class. Also, after each time of decision making, we sat a
deadline to complete the task and we also sat up goals for every meeting. So
our meeting did not take up too much time.
Conflicts:
Our
team runs smoothly for this project. However, conflicts took place when we were
working with morning class teammates.
A. difference ideas on topic proposal
Our
team focused on topics related to elderly. Our team first came with ideas for
example, a community website join operated by both Non-Government
Organizational and an IT company. Non-Government organizational can find their
volunteers on the website while IT Company can post their advisements on the website.
Community members could gain “points” from their volunteer hours and those
points could exchange for volunteer service to their parents or friends, so
this could form a win- win situation between three parties. Another idea is
health care company collaboration with an IT company to develop a tablet device
for senior citizens. The health care company can promote the device and sell to
target customer, IT Company will responsible for the hardware, software design
of the device.
For
the morning group, they proposed a Sport wear company made and sold pedometer
and other company was to provide coupons to the product. User need to compete several
targets in order to get those coupons.
Both
side thought that their idea was better than others. Hence, conflict occurred
during the first inter-group meeting. Our side believed that their proposal was
too narrow and not easy for collaboration, while their side thought that our
proposal was similar to those existing organizations and worry about the
exchange point system could be legally used or not. We all stick in the meeting
and could not move forward.
Luckily,
our teammate Sophia proposed each side need to provide one proposal for the presentation
on week 9 by next week. This gave us time to think of how to make our proposal
more attractive toward other teammate.
B. Not respected on our agreement
After
the morning group sent us their proposal, they sent us an email in regarding
for second collaboration proposal and asked us to accept it or not. We thought
that this is not respecting our previous agreement on ONE proposal for the
presentation only. We allow them to modify / change their proposal but not
proposal two proposals to us. Their second proposal is almost the same as the
first one and just changed from the other company to non-government
organization (environmental protection organizational). However, the aim was
still remain unchanged, user can only get discount coupons for Sport wear company.
There is not much collaboration between the organizational and sport company. It
looked like they were confronting toward us. Other than that proposal, they
even seek support from Frank (without showing Frank detail information). This
really made us very up sad. In order to make both side went into right track,
our team proposed that each side keep their own proposal, to proposed it on
week 9 and let Frank / classmates to pick which one is better solution for our
project.
C. Conflict on final website name
selection
After
presentation on week 9 and the advice from Frank, morning team recognized that their
proposal was not perfect for this project. Hence, they accepted our proposal
with their modification. Our side takes PsychologicalVolunteersOnline as the
name of the website, as we believe that the website is mainly for Psychological
students and professionals. But the morning class prefers hafee (abbreviated
from “holistic aid for empty-nest elders”). We both thought that the word “holistic”
should be change to “Psychological” in order to reflect the objective of the
website. Hence, our proposal was strongly rejected by morning team. As the time
limitation, we compromised and picked their suggestion.
Why conflict occurred?
Based
on the above conflicts, it is very clear that both parties lack of trust and
communication.
Trust
According to “The challenges of working in virtual
teams- virtual teams survey report -2012”, It is important to enable virtual
teams to build trusting relationships. Trust builds incrementally, requiring consistent
and continuous behaviors that encourage comfortable sharing and collaboration. [iii] As
we are from difference background, difference personality and we came together
to do the project, it is quite hard for us to build trust, especially forming virtual
teams. Nature of virtual team is virtual relationship between parties and the
relationship did not show in physical form. Human being like to setup protection
when they meet stranger. Virtual team is quite hard to form a closer
relationship to each party, due to the physical limitation. This explained why it
is hard for us to gain trust toward morning team and I believe that it is
important for us to establish trustworthiness relationship by interact and
understand more morning team. If a trustworthiness relationship was formed,
teammates will be comfortable to share what they think and what they concerned
and it will turn to a better team project at the end
Communication
Communication is important to the team.
Teammates get information from communicate with each other. Based on our conflict,
it is very clear that the communication between is not effective enough. The existing
communication looks like two-way, but the fact is one-way communication only.
In order to resolve the problem, we should improve our interpersonal skill and interact
with morning class more, by asking their interest or hobby, this can reduce the
boundary between each other and create a better atmosphere for them to express
their opinion. The more we understand each other the less chance we get into
conflict. Once we understand their concern, we can get a better solution to
them.
Conclusion
After completed this project, it showed
that communication and trust are important for successful collaboration.
Without trust, teammate may hide their concern which was important to the
project and effective communication will help to reduce lack of trust issue.
Reference list
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