Journal

Personal Learning Journal

Isabelle O’Rorke

Our team had a very individualistic culture that was suited to the different types of people we had within our group. We had intense diversity which made it a complex procedure to establish group norms and rituals. Our main conflicts occurred early in the semester which gave us a chance to understand why we were not working properly and change this.

Throughout the semester our team experienced times of unproductiveness mainly due to being in cohesive. During the first few weeks of working on our project together there was a lack of collaboration which was mainly rooting from shyness and intimidation of being in a new team. We were rarely having meetings therefore the team was finding it hard to get to know each other. The results of this became apparent when we discovered how unprepared we were for the presentation. Meeting just an hour before we all brought separate sections that we had prepared and practiced it together; we then discovered that it was way under time and had a stressful time coordinating everybody to add more to their parts or find gaps. This showed how we were extremely inconsistent and uncoordinated we were.

This encouraged a force for structural change was implemented; we became a formally structured group. Weekly meetings were arranged and Annabelle clearly explained the way in which we would all communicate, which would be via email and all information would pass through her. Coercion was created for the group as we all had an understanding of our roles and meeting weekly gave people the opportunity to be for comfortable with each other and speak out. I found the formal structure beneficial as there was no confusion as to who I had to go to with issues and the meetings helped to also see who would show up each week and give us the opportunity to see how many chocolates had been sold.

Another conflict within our group was in relation to the website. None of the members happened to be tech...