Reflection Week 9

Start Date

16 April 2009

Reflection

Reflection
In the week nine session we had a lecture on business writing. I thought this was particularly useful as I think written manner is important as a large amount of business communications, especially with superiors, are written. Therefore the advice given to me such as to write purposefully, concisely and particularly in a reader orientated way, something which I have only really considered when proof reading not when actually writing was very interesting. We then carried out the exercise of rewording the message to staff which increases my awareness for writing in a reader orientated way whilst considering who the receivers are. I had experienced this slightly before and found if no consideration is given to the receiver miscommunication can occur. This was through text messaging communication when I was using abbreviated English to communicate with a friend whose first language was not English and therefore they could not understand my abbreviations and the message I was trying to send.

I was then introduced to Guffeys writing process theory which set out a model for communication which would be particularly useful when communicating across cultural barriers. Following this process could be a good way of reducing the risk of messages containing unintentional negative meanings. Although the exercise we undertook showed me that finding these may be increasingly difficult because different people interpreted each statement slightly differently, a problem that I suspect would be worsened due to cultural barriers.

In relation to the group rules that were set out in one of the first weeks of the assignment I think overall things are going satisfactorily. Although one team member did not show much commitment to the team she was removed and I think the remaining two members have shown commitment and no confrontations have occurred. Due to various other commitments and other work the communication is not as effective as it could be. An example of this is how me and one other member had started frequent communication a while before the third member became completely active in the discussion. This lead to the setting of individual objectives and to a degree the completion of these without equal input from all members. I feel this problem has now influenced the dynamics of the team as I and one other member have posted work whilst another, because of their late entry into the discussion, has just offered ideas for improvement without an attempt to implement these themselves. Although ideas and work have been uploaded, some group members have only posted them on the Brookes Virtual discussion therefore the Wiki software has been neglected. Also whilst communication has been mostly frequent I do not think the planned twice weekly checks of Brookes Virtual have been done which has therefore slowed down the culmination of ideas into the report.

In my opinion these small problems that I am facing are more due to the virtual aspect of this team rather than the multicultural one. I think the lack of face to face communication has led to lower commitment by members than non virtual work. I also think so far it has been shown one communication channel, Brookes Virtual in this case, is preferred by most members and the more complex Wiki ignored.

Plan
•   Meet group members face to face to collaborate ideas and produce a final report together