A residential trip was organised by the university in the month of October 2017. The core focus of the trip was in promoting teamwork. By means of reflective writing, I shall be elaborating on my overall experiences that I had during those days. I shall focus on how that trip has influenced my perception of teamwork and the challenges that I faced at that time. I shall be also sharing my personal feelings that had changed eventually al-through that residential trip, correlating them with some theories, models and researches.
However, during the trip I learned the most through the business simulation task as I faced several challenges while doing the same. As I came from to an entirely different background; there I had never engaged in any business operations or ventures. Therefore, It took me long to understand the task. Finally one of my team mates explained me the entire content that we were expected to do. I understood the entire assignment but then again I found problems in the practical. I was not having any idea on how to deal with the same. As I have not experienced in any business trip before, I thought that I need to join this trip, but somewhere I was afraid. I felt that if I cannot articulate my view properly and if that result in wrong direction of the task, what shall happen then? During my undergraduate degree, I got a group project. While doing that project, I and one of my group member was engaged in a conflict due to a difference in our opinions, but I failed to make him understand my view-point and that had resulted in incompletion of the project within the given deadline. It was the time when I realized that I fail to arrange my words while speaking to others in proper way and therefore, they misunderstand me. Upon reflection this habit came from my childhood, I love dancing but when asked to perform I could not overcome the fear and with that I developed fear of speaking my mind. As said by Mindi (1998), motivation and willingness to participate plays a very important role in encouraging man in doing certain task. I was thinking I need to do it perfectly and if I couldn’t do it good enough so I did not try to do because of other people felt embarrassed about my performance that make me felt bad about myself. I am still struggling with this issue as I worry more about the outcome than participating and this inhibits me. Furthermore, I learnt that teamwork is all about taking the concern of each and every members of the team while decision making (Katzenbach and Smith 2015). I understood the importance of it and benefits of a team work. I learnt that a true leader is the one who takes a decision which involves the acceptance of all his team members (Smith 2014). This task was very simple. We just had to carry out the business by completing various tasks. Though most of the tasks were based on teamwork, but there was one task, which I had to carry out all by myself. It was the pamper pole task. In this task, I had to jump through a pole. As this task was related to height, my natural fear against height came out. I wanted to give up, but after seeing that everybody else is doing it, I thought it would be shameful if I quit. So I started preparing myself for the jump. I was so afraid that I told one of my group members that I will be going after everyone finishes their parts because I wanted to observe them doing it so that I can analyse the risk and final result of the task.
Actually I am not good at confronting new challenges because of the constant fear of failing and this is the feeling that makes me give up easily, every time. As stated by Morgan and Sisak (2016), the fear of failure alone has the potential to prevent a man from achieve in goal. So, the same goes for me as well. It is within me since my childhood days. Whenever I was confronted with a challenge like I always performed better in the mock exam than actual exambecause mock exam does not carry as much pressure as actual exam so fear of failing makes me perform below my expectations. On the other hand, in the situations where I had confidence within me that i will surely succeed in this, made me attain success. This makes me believe in the thought of De Castella, Byrne and Covington (2013), who stated that the fear of failure stops us from the doing the things that could help us in achieving our target and to move forward. However, not only my atychiphobia was making me nervous at that very time but I was afraid of the height as well. In my past days, I have tried many times to overcome my fear of height by diving into a swimming pool, but I had failed every time, as my fear has always made me quit. Meanwhile, my turned has come and everyone started cheering me up and encouraging me. Then I got more tensed to do the task and started thinking of quitting the game. I knew I would not be able to overcome my fear. However I motivated myself thinking that Mark is watching and I wanted to complete it in front of him, so I finally motivated myself and took a deep breath and finally made the jump I saw that I finally was able to push myself out of my comfort zone to jump towards the objective. Although my fear factor was acting as a barrier to my success, I decided took it as a challenge to attempt this task, as I remember that this fear has always made me to step back in life. Therefore, I was determined that this time I will overcome my fear. Though I did not achieve the expected result from that attempt, I am happy that I finally took that step. Now I can understand how important it is to work in a team to achieve a difficult task. As according to the theory of Erhel and Jamet (2013), motivation always plays an important role in achieving targets. If I did not get the motivation from my team, or the push from Mark, how I would have been able to jump from that pole? As stated by Baumeister and Leary (1995), in his belongingness theory, the desire for death is usually caused by experiencing failure and by failed interpersonal processes. I think their motivation has helped me a lot in moving forward to jump from the pole, neglecting all my fears
Before climbing up the pole, my perspective was to win the game by jumping and touching the target. But after I reached on the top of the pole, my target was to just overcome my fear and not make Mark think I am stupid.This was very important to me as I wanted to impress my teacher and make him feel proud of me. He waited for so long for me to complete the task and I did not want to let him down.
Now after completing the task, I have got a new learning experience, which will help me to face more challenges in my near future. After completing the task, my team members and Mark, both appreciated me a lot. This was the first step to push myself out of my comfort zone and I realized what true satisfaction is. I too want to be loved and respected in my social circle. I also wanted to be appreciated. Williams and Bryan (2013) stated that people always grow in an environment where they feel respected and valued, and they always confront to failure where they are disrespected and mocked at. I don’t want to be laughed at by colleagues or team mates as what I have experienced in the past. One more thing I realised from this task is that, the main thing that makes me step back from taking new challenges is my lack of self-confidence. When I overcame my fear of height and failure, I understood that the task was not that difficult I thought it to be.
As from what we see in Banduras Reciprocal Causation (1982) model, a person’s nature is influenced by his environment and behavior. Similarly, there were many incidents due to which I am lacking in self-confidence. When I was in my seventh grade, I was forced by my tutor to participate in a debate which resulted in a very big failure and embarrassment as I was unable to communicate properly. Due to improper communication skills I was struggling to express my views. Through this incident I came to know about my weakness in communication after which my confidence became very low. In that debate, my language was poor, this resulted in a very big embarrassment for me in front of my classmates. Since then I have developed a stage fear. Since this incident I have been afraid of participating in any of the group work, or in which I have to face many individuals. Additionally due to this incident, I have built up many more insecurity within me regarding my personality. Many opportunities came in front of me, but due to the lack of confidence and my fear to face those challenges, I have just been running away from them, instead to facing them. However, after these many years I got a chance to overcome my fear in my residential target task. Though I failed in it, but at least I tried my best and I developed a sense of confidence within me that if I try, I can overcome my biggest fear.
From this task, I learnt one thing- winning or losing does not matter. The thing that matters is how well did I contributed and performed (Sarton 2016).I learnt that over thinking is the one of the most negative factors within me. I understood that if I over think, then it is likely that the fear in me will control my mind and I will go blank in my thinking. So finally I have received a good experience which I will be able to apply in my further group tasks. From here I have learned how to work in a team without fearing the number of individuals and also how to organise things within the given time and how to show good cooperation in a team. I will apply all these things in my future situations and I have understood that if I remove this fear of communication inside me, then I can even lead a team very nicely (Kok et al., 2014). I realized that simply over thinking and taking tension before starting an operation has lead me achieve such personality of mine, where I get tensed, under confident and fear in confronting challenges. Now my target and focus is to work on a positive personality development. I also came to know, how time management plays a key role in each and every task. So in every situation of life I should take time very seriously and should give a lot of importance to time management.
In conclusion, I can say that I have learned many things from this residential trip such as and the most important is facing and overcoming my fears. I, along with all my team members had faced several ups and downs during this trip, but we had made through all that. The whole trip, along with the tasks that i was given to complete have contributed to improve my communication skills as well to develop a sense of self-confidence within me, which we really help me in my coming years. In this trip I have realised that I have the potential to face the problems and fears, I just need to be more focused and try my best. Truly speaking, this residential trip will remain as a golden memory for the rest of my life. This is the trip in which I have learnt the best lessons towards achieving a successful career.
References:
Bandura A., 1982, Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency, American Psychologist, 37(2)
De Castella, K., Byrne, D. and Covington, M., 2013.Unmotivated or motivated to fail?A cross-cultural study of achievement motivation, fear of failure, and student disengagement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 105(3), p.861.
Erhel, S. and Jamet, E., 2013. Digital game-based learning: Impact of instructions and feedback on motivation and learning effectiveness. Computers & Education, 67, pp.156-167.
Katzenbach, J.R. and Smith, D.K., 2015. The wisdom of teams: Creating the high-performance organization. Harvard Business Review Press.
Kok, G., Bartholomew, L.K., Parcel, G.S., Gottlieb, N.H. and Fernández, M.E., 2014.Finding theory?and evidence?based alternatives to fear appeals: Intervention Mapping. International journal of psychology, 49(2), pp.98-107.
Morgan, J. and Sisak, D., 2016. Aspiring to succeed: A model of entrepreneurship and fear of failure. Journal of Business Venturing, 31(1), pp.1-21.
Sartori, G., 2016. THE THEORY OF DENTOCRACY REVISITED. Democracy: A Reader, p.192.
Williams, J.M. and Bryan, J., 2013. Overcoming adversity: High?achieving African American youth’s perspectives on educational resilience. Journal of Counseling & Development, 91(3), pp.291-300.
Baumeister, R.F. and Leary, M.R., 1995. The need to belong: desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological bulletin, 117(3), p.497.
Smith, W.K., 2014. Dynamic decision making: A model of senior leaders managing strategic paradoxes. Academy of Management Journal, 57(6), pp.1592-1623.
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