Adjourning

This week you read about the five stages of team development: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. Consider the adjourning phase for several of the groups in which you have been involved. Think about which aspects of the groups made for the hardest good-bye.

Are high-performing groups hardest to leave?

I think that high performing groups are hard to leave. However, when a project is complete and it is successful, you want to move on to the next task and be just as successful.

Which of the groups that you participated in was hardest to leave? Why?  

One group that I participated in was very hard to leave. The atmosphere was almost like a family. We knew that we could depend on each other and we all supported each other in every aspect of any project that we  were working on. Because of this, we were successful and it was hard to leave this environment.

What sorts of closing rituals have you experienced or wish you had experienced?

I have experienced going away parties/celebrations that were nice because they celebrated all the great things about me as an employee as well as all of the group contributions. It is nice to be recognized for working hard.

How do you imagine that you will adjourn from the group of colleagues you have formed while working on your master's degree in this program?

I think that we will write a blog post to thank our colleagues for sharing their stories and their wisdom and we will wish them well in their future courses with Walden.

Why is adjourning an essential stage of teamwork?

I think that adjourning is essential because it allows for time to reflect on projects. The team can see where they made progress or if any mistakes were made. They can discuss ways to do things better or differently the next time.

 

 

Managing Conflict

Lately, I have been facing conflict at work. I have tried numerous times to explain how I feel about it and why to my supervisor, but my efforts have not really been successful. Through course readings, I have found that one strategy that I started to use and will use more often, it is a challenging strategy. I think this strategy would work best for me because most times, I just try to avoid conflict altogether. Because avoidance was my usual managing technique, I never felt as though my issues were resolved, they were just suppressed. Along with the challenging strategy, I would like to use probing as well. I need to ask more questions if there is a misunderstanding. I believe that these two together will help me to manage this conflict more effectively. I believe this because at times, the atmosphere is one where I am supposed to do a task without question. Many times, this can cause conflict within myself because many times, I feel like an explanation would be okay. 

Does anyone have any other suggestions about how to deal with conflict in the work place?

Evaluating Communication

The thing that surprised me most about how others evaluated me is that I seemed to be harder on myself than they were when answering the questions. For the most part, I ended up in similar groups when evaluated by others and myself. I think that this surprised me because I tend to be harder on myself than others tend to be.

This week, I learned that we communicate by how we perceive things. In order to avoid a negative communication encounter, we must be aware of how we perceive things, ourselves and the people that we communicate with. In the early childhood field, it is important to be aware of these things in order to have effective communication.