Reflection Week 8

Start Date

24 March 2009

Reflection

Reflection
The week eight session introduced us to the theories surrounding negotiation skills. One of the first things we did was to review our Thomas-Kilmann questionnaire results so asses our management styles. The results for mine were that I got the highest for competing and avoid. The seminar leader commented on this saying how these two are almost opposites yet the questionnaire suggests I have a similar aptitude in both. I thought the competing result was quite accurate when I reflected how I have been in my various pieces of group work because I find I normally take up a leadership role. However did not agree with the avoiding, because although I try to avoid conflict I would say I prefer to do things earlier than put them off. This questionnaire did show me areas that I could improve in such as collaborating and compromising.

We then carried on to discuss the theory of ‘face’. The discussion that followed interested me for two reasons, the first being that many people were confused by this theory and did not really understand it, I think however that they are indeed aware of it they have just never used this specific terminology for it. Secondly because I found out that this is extremely important in china, which made sense in relation to Asian business etiquettes and practices.

Outside of this session I continued to check and communicate with my virtual group now had have tasks allocated to us. However things have not been progressing as much as I would like. This is for several reasons, firstly in preparation for this weeks session each virtual group was asked to comment on and edit their group rules. I however had uploaded the rules onto Wiki so was not sure what else to add in, I commented on them on Wiki about ideas for editing and prompted my group to have a look by posting a message in the discussion, but no commenting or editing was done. This particularly worried me because it raised the question in my mind about whether my group members could access Wiki because I knew they had troubles in the beginning. Secondly although the tasks have been allocated I feel the assignment is not progressing as well as I would have hoped. One of the main reasons for this is a lack of communication with Alice although Plamena says they are working together.

After the seminar I read the article given to us, I found this quite helpful in providing information which I wouldn’t have previously thought about. For example it recommends defining basic business concepts such as “meetings” to avoid complications due to different cultures expectations; something which I think could be included in the communication plan.

Plan

•   Find out if group can use Wiki
•   Communicate with group to get feedback about their allocated tasks
•   Concentrate on using collaboration and compromising the combined assignment task