To Team or Not to Team

My initial thought was to work by myself on the portfolio project mainly because I like working alone and I don’t like people telling me that my ideas are wrong. After some thought, I then realized that if I wanted to do the movie project, I would need someone that has that creative side to them because I definitely lack in that area. So, I chose my friend Juli as my partner because we’ve been friends since ninth grade, and I know that she has that creative side to her.  

When doing the social media activity in class I looked at Juli’s Instagram and Snapchat accounts. Her feed also shows her creative side by using clever captions and having unique outfits. Her purpose just seemed to spread positivity and share the good moments in her life. Her posts are consistent throughout both social media platforms. The only thing I derived from her posts was that she likes the outdoors because all of her pictures were outdoors.  

In class, we also did the lost at sea activity where we rated the importance of objects while being lost at sea. I teamed with Juli and another girl in our class to do this activity. I actually did better on my own in this activity, but I liked working with the other two girls and hearing their reasoning behind their decisions. There were also some things that I did get wrong by myself that I then got correct when I was working in my group. Overall, I think the lost at sea activity was pretty interesting and it showed the importance of getting a different perspective on things.  

In the Team building and group dynamics article that Becker wrote about Darci Kleindl and how she managed sales excellence and sales enablement for the Microsoft Business Solutions group. She built a group of 40 employees and the overall impact was an increase in visibility substantially, the growth of their relationship network, more succinct planning, and more one-on-one with people to explain their roles. I think that group dynamics and team building are essential in creating a successful team of diverse individuals.