To Team or Not To Team
The first activity that we did was read the articles. The first article I read was titled, “The effect of personality type on team performance”. In this article, the author described that some personalities work better with others. The author used the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, MBTI, to demonstrate the different personalities. After reading this article, I decided to take the test myself. The result of my test, on 16personalities.com, was that I am an ENFJ. This means that I am an extrovert, intuitive, feeling, and judging. According to the article, “Team 1’s intuitive (N) leader may have been in favour of the team concept, but unable to transfer that support from theory into action.” I also would prefer to be the leader of this project because I would be able to plan everything out. If being intuitive means that I have a possibility of being incapable of being a good leader, then I wouldn’t want to risk bringing everyone else’s grades down too. The second article I read was titled, “Songwriting loafing or creative collaboration?: A comparison of individual and team written billboard hits in the USA.” This article stated that working with a group could cause social loafing. As stated in the article, social loafing is “the likelihood of individuals contributing less when working on a task as a part of a group that when working on a task alone.” Working on this project also means that there is less work for me to do to get the same result as if I did the project alone. This is proven in the article because the article stated, “Social loafing generally increases with group size and decreases with task importance, potential for evaluation, uniqueness of individual contributions, and complexity of task.” So, as a result of less work, there is a risk of putting less effort into the project as a result. And as I had previously stated, I do not want to lower anyone else’s grade and I also don’t want anyone to lower my own grade.
The second preparation that we completed was a Social Media Peer Account activity. In this activity, a student follows others on social media. They follow the fellow classmates on all the social media apps they have. As a result of this, the students can get to know more about who they possibly would work with. I friended someone on both Instagram and Snapchat, and in the past week she has yet to post anything. Therefore, I have concluded that working with a partner(s) means that I must be patient. I must gain their trust and they must gain mine. To earn someone’s trust, even if it is just for a project, can be very time consuming. And depending on when we begin working on this portfolio project, time could not be something to waste.
The final activity was a building activity. The lost at sea building exercise had one person fill out a paper about what would be most important in order to stay alive at sea. Then, that person would get in a group with others and fill the paper out again. The last step is to compare their results with an answer key. During this activity, I found that I did better as a group than individually. I also discovered that, when filling out the sheet the second time, nobody talked or participated very much. I think less than half of the participants in my group unmuted themselves. One student even misunderstood the directions of this activity. As a result of this project, I would say that working individually would decreases the risk of miscommunication and increase the amount of effort given.
In conclusion, working independently would be the best option. When working individually, I am relieved of many stressful tasks. I do not have to worry about bringing everyone else down, I do not have to worry about time, and I do not have to worry about miscommunication. For those who do not worry about these tasks, then working with a group is an ideal decision, but as for me, I don’t think overstressing would help me in this project either.
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