Public speaking is a thing I neither love or hate. I have had some good experiences, some bad and some awful. However, when speaking in a seminar with my team, I thought it was a rather good experience because everyone had each other's backs and we were able to present a really good seminar.
I find that many of my good experiences have occurred when I have been able to take my time, prepare a really good speech, memorise most of it, and practice it in front of my friends or mum and dad. I recall a time about three years ago when we were presenting speeches for an assessment at high school. I had written a really awesome speech on the Banshee who is an Irish Death Messenger. I had prepared and practiced my speech many times. I even started it with a really loud horror movie scream as an attention grabber. I presented my speech to the class without a fault and felt like I crushed it. I think most of my class had trouble hearing my speech after my loud beginning. I class this moment as a good experience because I didn't feel nervous as I was well prepared and was confident that it would all go well.
I haven't had many bad or really awful experiences as such but I have had a rather awkward encounter with public speaking. This encounter is one that I cannot quote but can rather better explain it with less profanity. It all began with my best friend Maddison's mother asking whether I wanted to speak at the unveiling of Maddison's headstone on her grave. I accepted because I had already thought of writing a song for this. I wrote the song and when I got up at the unveiling to sing it but quickly realised that I would need to introduce myself and the song as not everyone there knew who I was. I only would have to say two sentences maximum, but within these two sentences I managed to forget the name of the song, swear about a total of 8 times, almost hit the neck of my guitar on the headstone and pronounce 'Maddison' wrong. I felt horrible and wanted to run away and never face any of my friends or Maddison's family again but I still had to sing my song.
Public speaking isn't for everyone and a lot of people have different opinions on it. I know I certainly have mixed feelings about it. However, public speaking is a task that many of us will have to endure in our life times and even though it is hard and nerve wracking, there is always a way through it. Even if you completely muck up, there is always someone who has mucked up worse than you have.
I would also like to take the opportunity to thank my team for keeping up with my blog posts through out the semester and providing me with some quality feedback. I have really enjoyed working with you all this semester and I hope that we keep in touch.
"What's my name again?"
Sunday, 15 October 2017
Sunday, 1 October 2017
The Inner Working of 'Lab Rats" - Week 9
Hi Everyone,
This week's blog post will be analysing the workings of my team. When I first saw that we would be working in teams I was really unsure about whether or not I would enjoy it and whether I would be able to put my shyness aside enough to present my ideas to the team. However, this team has allowed me to come out of my comfort zone and contribute my skills to our report.
We joined as a group rather early on in the semester which has played to our advantage because we were able to start commenting on blog posts really early on and were able to get to know each other relatively quickly. For the past 3 weeks we have been working on the report together. After receiving the grades for our position papers, went shared them with one another and got to work on the report.
Before we started writing, we decided to elect a leader and an editor. We decided that Jade would be our leader and Shaun our editor.
Leadership
Implementer
Shaun has come under the role of the team Implementer. He is highly reliable, efficient and is always focused on the job at hand. Even though Shaun has been working throughout the entirety of working on this report, he continues to put a lot of effort into finishing the report to a high standard.
The allowable weakness for an Implementer is that they can be a bit inflexible and slow to respond to new possibilities. This doesn't fit as he is happy to adapt to new things and always eager to help out when needed.
Coordinator
Nathaniel has taken on the role of Coordinator. Although at the beginning of the report assignment we elected Jade as the official leader of our team, as situations changed Nathaniel stepped into this role to help Jade out. Nathaniel has found it easy to step into this role because of his time with the army and we have been able to use his strengths to our advantage.
The allowable weakness for the Coordinator is that they can be seen as manipulative however this has not shown with Nathaniel. He has pushed us in a mature way by identifying talent and motivating us with his quotes. "Do the mahi get the treats."
Team Roles
Resource Investigator
I think that Ryan and Nathaniel have both fitted nicely into the role of Resource Investigator. They both had connections to resources that other teams may not have access to. Ryan has family affiliations that he offered to us and Nathaniel was able to access studies done by other army members that were on the topics we were studying. It has been a great convenience to our team to have two Resource Investigators. This helped us find a lot of valuable information quickly and we were able to dismiss the information that was not useful quickly.
The allowable weakness of being easily bored does not really apply in this case. There has been many jobs to finish and even when they had both finished their share, they offered to help the rest of the team with whatever we needed help with.
Team Worker
Jade is someone who I would call a Team Worker. She is cooperative and gets on with the task at hand. I also fit into the category of Team Worker. I have worked along with Jade in parts of our report. For our position papers, we both studied the social and physical well-being of the elderly. We were able to compile our work to create a strong section of the report.
Ryan is also a strong Team Worker. He is a very sociable and is always aware of the other team members needs. He is a great asset to our team because he is able to also connect us all on a social level.
The allowable weakness for a Team Worker is "indecisiveness" which I think everyone in the team has show at some point.
Plant
I tend to go with the flow of things and am rather laid back. I like to hear the opinions of others before I share what I am thinking. This makes me fit into the team role of Plant. Jade is also a plant. She is creative and is able to solve problems in an unconventional way.
The allowable weakness for a Plant is described as 'unrealistic' which I don't believe either Jade or I have shown.
Completer Finisher
The Completer Finisher role can only be fitted to Shaun. He is our editor and the 'job description' of a Completer Finisher is to scrutinise the work and find errors. However, Completer Finishers are said to be anxious, I have yet to see Shaun anxious.
The allowable weakness stated for the Completer Finisher is unduly worrying. Shaun has not unduly been worried, but rather is conscious of due dates. This keeps the whole team on track to finish.
Conclusion
Our team has worked efficiently so far. The mix of team roles we have within the group has worked well and the strengths and weakness of all members has mixed well and the strengths currently seem to outweigh the weaknesses.
It may look like we have a lot of team roles within our group, but they have all worked well together. I think that we have the right mix of team roles. Having three members of our team fit under the Team Workers role has been beneficial for us due to the fact that the Team Workers help the whole group to gel and use versatility to identify and complete the work required. However, having too many Team Workers would potentially be a problem due to the fact that not enough work would get done, but with Ryan, Jade and I also fitting into different roles helps with this problem.
I have enjoyed the dynamics of this team and I look forward to seeing how our final report turns out after all of our hard work.
Reference
Belbin Associates. 2017. "Belbin Team Roles." Belbin.
Retrieved from:
http://www.belbin.com/about/belbin-team-roles/
This week's blog post will be analysing the workings of my team. When I first saw that we would be working in teams I was really unsure about whether or not I would enjoy it and whether I would be able to put my shyness aside enough to present my ideas to the team. However, this team has allowed me to come out of my comfort zone and contribute my skills to our report.
We joined as a group rather early on in the semester which has played to our advantage because we were able to start commenting on blog posts really early on and were able to get to know each other relatively quickly. For the past 3 weeks we have been working on the report together. After receiving the grades for our position papers, went shared them with one another and got to work on the report.
Before we started writing, we decided to elect a leader and an editor. We decided that Jade would be our leader and Shaun our editor.
Leadership
Implementer
Shaun has come under the role of the team Implementer. He is highly reliable, efficient and is always focused on the job at hand. Even though Shaun has been working throughout the entirety of working on this report, he continues to put a lot of effort into finishing the report to a high standard.
The allowable weakness for an Implementer is that they can be a bit inflexible and slow to respond to new possibilities. This doesn't fit as he is happy to adapt to new things and always eager to help out when needed.
Coordinator
Nathaniel has taken on the role of Coordinator. Although at the beginning of the report assignment we elected Jade as the official leader of our team, as situations changed Nathaniel stepped into this role to help Jade out. Nathaniel has found it easy to step into this role because of his time with the army and we have been able to use his strengths to our advantage.
The allowable weakness for the Coordinator is that they can be seen as manipulative however this has not shown with Nathaniel. He has pushed us in a mature way by identifying talent and motivating us with his quotes. "Do the mahi get the treats."
Team Roles
Resource Investigator
I think that Ryan and Nathaniel have both fitted nicely into the role of Resource Investigator. They both had connections to resources that other teams may not have access to. Ryan has family affiliations that he offered to us and Nathaniel was able to access studies done by other army members that were on the topics we were studying. It has been a great convenience to our team to have two Resource Investigators. This helped us find a lot of valuable information quickly and we were able to dismiss the information that was not useful quickly.
The allowable weakness of being easily bored does not really apply in this case. There has been many jobs to finish and even when they had both finished their share, they offered to help the rest of the team with whatever we needed help with.
Team Worker
Jade is someone who I would call a Team Worker. She is cooperative and gets on with the task at hand. I also fit into the category of Team Worker. I have worked along with Jade in parts of our report. For our position papers, we both studied the social and physical well-being of the elderly. We were able to compile our work to create a strong section of the report.
Ryan is also a strong Team Worker. He is a very sociable and is always aware of the other team members needs. He is a great asset to our team because he is able to also connect us all on a social level.
The allowable weakness for a Team Worker is "indecisiveness" which I think everyone in the team has show at some point.
Plant
I tend to go with the flow of things and am rather laid back. I like to hear the opinions of others before I share what I am thinking. This makes me fit into the team role of Plant. Jade is also a plant. She is creative and is able to solve problems in an unconventional way.
The allowable weakness for a Plant is described as 'unrealistic' which I don't believe either Jade or I have shown.
Completer Finisher
The Completer Finisher role can only be fitted to Shaun. He is our editor and the 'job description' of a Completer Finisher is to scrutinise the work and find errors. However, Completer Finishers are said to be anxious, I have yet to see Shaun anxious.
The allowable weakness stated for the Completer Finisher is unduly worrying. Shaun has not unduly been worried, but rather is conscious of due dates. This keeps the whole team on track to finish.
Conclusion
Our team has worked efficiently so far. The mix of team roles we have within the group has worked well and the strengths and weakness of all members has mixed well and the strengths currently seem to outweigh the weaknesses.
It may look like we have a lot of team roles within our group, but they have all worked well together. I think that we have the right mix of team roles. Having three members of our team fit under the Team Workers role has been beneficial for us due to the fact that the Team Workers help the whole group to gel and use versatility to identify and complete the work required. However, having too many Team Workers would potentially be a problem due to the fact that not enough work would get done, but with Ryan, Jade and I also fitting into different roles helps with this problem.
I have enjoyed the dynamics of this team and I look forward to seeing how our final report turns out after all of our hard work.
Reference
Belbin Associates. 2017. "Belbin Team Roles." Belbin.
Retrieved from:
http://www.belbin.com/about/belbin-team-roles/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)