Critical Reflection

 Module :

At the beginning of this module, I highlighted a few communication weaknesses that I found rather personal to me and was hoping to improve on. They were my non-verbal communication and written skills. These skills were in need of improvement as I realized how essential they are in our everyday lives from channeling and expressing our thoughts on paper to the daily conversations we often have with other individuals, it would affect one’s confidence and outlook. In addition, due to my personality of being an introvert, I tend to avoid long-winded conversations with others and would often have my thoughts bottled up. Thus with such a habit and personality, I realized that I often struggle with body language and articulation of my words as my train of thought would often be lost in the process of speaking my mind during a presentation or when I am transferring my thought into paper for an essay. This would then be translated into my actions where I would become naturally stiff and position my body away from the individual that I am conversing with. Evidently, this would result in me feeling guilty as I felt that the intended impact with the individual was not properly delivered and that the individual would then have a wrong impression of me being disinterested and not genuine. Also, for the struggle of articulating, I would constantly re-write the same statement repeatedly as the momentum was lost, and I would feel frustrated with myself as I was not able to deliver an essay that I personally know and feel assured that it was done to the best of my ability.

However, with the current module of communication. I personally took it as an opportunity to exercise my goal of improving these skills by regularly participating in class activities and treating every written assignment as a practice to improve my articulating process. Doing so, I believe it forced me to often speak my mind and challenge the introverted side of me by exposing myself to more conversations and social interactions. With this, I feel that it helped gained better clarity of mind as the thoughts are now less bottled up and I was able to improve my awareness of my actions and body language in a conversation so that I may make the changes accordingly. Overall, I must say that the objectives have been met and that I feel proud of myself for genuinely putting in effort and reaching this far. However, I personally believe that there is more work required in order to make these skills flawless or second nature and I hope by actively engaging with my peers, and classes and keeping a journal would develop a new habit to improve my written and non-verbal skills. 

Project : 

In the project scene, I was able to contribute to the team by taking up the role of a leader where goal management and group representation were some of the responsibilities I had to uphold. In doing so, I was given the opportunity to work with various teammates of different backgrounds and personalities. Each of them was able to contribute to the group with their respective strengths and weaknesses. Some of them had a strong command of english when it came to written assignments while some others possessed charisma and confidence when it came to presentations. Thus with this diversity in skillsets, our group was able to appreciate each other by acknowledging each other’s strengths and learning from one another when it came to different assignments. And by doing so, I realized that there was a sense of appreciation between each and every member as it developed from a sense of trust and assurance that the skillsets of the other members are able to compensate for the skillset they personally lack in. Evidently, leading to a positive dynamic and outlook of the group and hence increased the efficiency of the group. Thus, through this, I have learned that by accepting our flaws and weaknesses are we humbling ourselves and allowing others to help so that we may achieve more as a team. That being said, it reminded me of a famous african proverb that goes “If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together”.

In addition, I realized that effective communication was also key to a positive build-up in chemistry between the members. This can be seen when members state observations in order to better understand the reason behind their actions instead of making judgments. Such an example would be “I realize you wrote this in the report, can I know why?” instead of “I realize you don’t like to write this way, can I know why?”. With this, it reminded me of habit number 5 of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey where one seeks first to understand and then to be understood. Hence, I believe that these lessons from my experience in this module will be able to be applied in future group works and assignments, eventually enhancing my learning here in SIT.

(843 Words)