In elementary school, I loved team projects. When spending all day with the same little group of people, you get to know them well. By the time a group project came along I already felt like the whole class was my friend, I would have been happy to work with any of them. After elementary school things changed. With rotating class periods, I had less time to get to know people and I usually only had one friend in every class. If that one friend was paired with someone else, I would work with a stranger, making group projects dreadful. As awkward as it is I can see why there are benefits to working in a group, however I tend to find that I an far more productive alone.
After reading, "the Effect of personality type on team performance" I started to understand why I was struggling so much with group projects. The author explained the obvious positive effects of working in an efficient group; increased motivation, greater task commitment, higher levels of performance, ability to withstand stress, more innovative solutions, and decreased development time. But then explained that building a successful team is difficult process and what factors can undermine a team's effectiveness. For example, I like to have full control over the project. Often other group members will have ideas that completely contradict my vision. I hate to compromise, which is usually necessary during a project and I end up turning in work that I'm disappointed with. Also, I am a shy person, so when working with people I don't know well or trust I won't speak my opinion or share new ideas which prohibits me from offering any "innovated solutions."
Initially I didn't think that my shy behavior would be a problem since as I stated before, hate to compromise with my own ideas, but when I participated in the "Lost At Sea" team exercise this was exactly the case. I let the majority of the group make the decisions while I sat quietly and just wrote what they told me. At the end my personal score was better than the team score and I regretted not speaking up. Granted it was only one point better, but still better, nonetheless. I also think that I'm not generally very compatible with other teammates. When examining another person's social media account, I found that we didn't have much in common. We listen to different music, watch different T.V shows, belong different clubs, and have a very different sense of humor.
This weeks activity's showed me that in order to be the most successful and productive I should work alone rather than in a team.
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