Classroom Chaos Cooled

Isn't it interesting to see how different people are? Everyone had different agendas, points of views and personalities. These factors and many others contribute to why it is difficult for a large group of people to come to a collective agreement on an issue. In class, professor Kurpis stated that there were 5 ways in which people react to situations similar to that of the class. These are
1. Compete to win Assertiveness to get one’s own way
2. Avoidance Withdrawal; used when there’s “no chance of winning”
3. Compromise Used with decision making under pressure; all members are equal
4. Accommodation Seeing issue as more important to others than self
5. Collaborating Requires bargaining and negotiation among group
Multiple group insights required
Because the class immediately turned to chaos, I was convinced by a classmate to take action. At first I went into avoidance though I was aware that something had to be done to organize the class. Thanks to the concern shown by my classmate I changed my approach to a collaborating and compromising one. I wanted to let as many people be heard and to somehow get our ideas across to everyone (including the professor) for evaluation. Honestly I thought as a class, we would not be able to come to an agreement on a single solution, however to my surprise we were able to successfully come together for a greater cause. .............EVERYONE GIVE YOURSELVES A PAT ON THE BACK! You really deserve it!................=) I think the outcome would have been better if we had some more time to weigh out even more possibilities, however given the amount of time and information, I believe that we accomplished something special.

Eggs-cellent? ...I don't think so.

Hi all! Hope you enjoyed all that studying we had to do for that test...=(...anyways back to the matter at hand. Today I would like to talk to you about how I failed my group as a member and as maybe as its faux leader. If we take a look into the five steps, I can safely say that all were taken though it may not have been in class. I will explain as I continue. First of all we all knew what our objectives were. They were stated on the slides. However, because of our misconception of the assignment or lack of ability to think outside the box, we would later fail.
As for the recources and our current position in relation to the objective, we knew exactly what was going on. We had straws tape an egg and our skills to preform a task that was new to us. It was this reason that I had worked alittle on the project before class. I had a feeling that when asked to do this in class many people would either just go with the group decision or not contribute too much. So I came up with a couple of alternatives and designs to bring to class. While in the group, I asked if anyone had any ideas and as I thought, nobody really spoke up. And this is where my mistake happened. I sold my idea to my group without any opposition.
The idea seemed very solid at the time and when it came time to choose our course of action it wasn't exactly premeditated. It actually occured as we were in step 5 (implementation). As we were producing the product we were assigning tasks and coordinating with eachother. Later after our failure, the team independantly evaluated the event. Most likely many of them had the same idea as I, Teddy! argggg. I feel that everything we did as a team was a success, however if it were not for my ambition to get extra points on my test we may have come up with a better idea. Lesson learned I will try not to make the same mistake next time. Sorry guys!