For my group project I observed executive and sales meetings at an office in Sunnyvale. It was a good exercise in observing groups in business and how leadership works, and how conflict arises and how its solved, and how culture, gender, age, etc all play roles in how the group functions.
I learned a lot about roles of leadership and how one must watch what they say in the boardroom, but how it is also important to speak your mind and not be too shy. I also learned that honesty goes a long way, and that it is important to be motivating in a friendly yet serious way. If you go too far reprimanding or threatening actions if people do not meet or exceed goals, then they will be scared off and not motivated to work. If you are too easy on them they could take advantage of you.
Some good aspects of the project were that I was able to apply a lot of concepts from the book easily. There were so many theories and concepts that were easily visible just ten or twenty minutes into the meetings.
As far as improvement goes, I would like to have more access to better articles - I'm not a COMM major and I found it hard to find research articles about the concepts, and applying them into the project was tough.
Interesting you said you'd change the same thing I would about the course, the article choice, I am a comm major but some of them were too hard to get through. Your observation sounds awesome and it sounds like you ran across some of the same group issues and concerns I did, Especially management needing to find that fine line of dictator and worker for lack of a better word (it's early) I see what you mean if they demand too much it can have an adverse effect on the group. In my group a few 'slackers' seemed to just be irreverent to the process and text during the meeeting, I thought they should have made the meeting more interactive, to achieve synergy. What I also think we should do to change the course is post our small group observations (if we wanted) for the rest of the class to read, yours sounds great, good luck with your major and finals week coming up,
ReplyDeleteI think it is pretty cool to have the chance to observe a executive and sales meeting. I bet you probably learned a lot of things that would be helpful in pretty much in any career. Sometimes I get afraid to speak my mind, but of course it is important way to get your opinions and idea across.
ReplyDeleteI agree that many concepts in the book go a long way when working on this project. I feel your pain on finding articles for this project. I feel like if I had access to better articles I would have stronger support in my paper.