Question

Describe a small group situation that you have been a part of that experienced communication failures. Think critically about the experience. What was it that went wrong? How do you know? If you thought critically about the failure in the moment, could you have done something different to change the outcome? If so what could you have done differently? If not, why not? Could thinking critically about your communication and being more deliberate from the start of a project help you to avoid future communication failures? How so?

Answer 1

One of the most important thing in group projects is communication between the members. Although the project is task based and the relationship of the members are task based, it does require a small amount of personal touch in order to achieve more cohesion. If there is lack of personal touch, people will not communicate properly and this would result in the total failure of the project.

It happened once when we did a school project. We were 6 in our team and we were supposed to complete the project within a month’s time. At that point of time it was very important for us to allot different roles. Two of our friends wanted to be the team leader but only one could. So, the problem started in sharing the roles because the other who was not given the team leaders role didn’t communicate well with the other members and especially with the team lead thus causing delay in completing the project. We ended up in late submission and lost marks.

Two of the other team members suggested to give the team lead role which would have solved the issues in the initial stage and I felt that people should leave their ego at the door step in order for the team to succeed.