To Team or Not to Team

 My decision is to work with a partner for my portfolio project. I don’t want to have a big group because I feel as if that can cause confusion, miscommunication, and arguing with having so many people in the group. Personally, I feel like working with just one other person will benefit me the most because there can be shared ideas to help make the project better and get it done more productively. In class we participated in a few activities like the “Lost at Sea” team-building activity, and the “Social Media Peer Account” activity that helped me make my decision.  

 

For the project I have chosen to work with Peyton Rajzer for many reasons. She has many personality traits that are what I consider to be important when working on a project like this one. She is very creative, smart, productive, and is great at communicating which would make the project easier. Our Place in the Universe: The Importance of Story and Storytelling in the Classroom states “The Four Cs of critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity go hand in hand with storytelling projects in the classroom,”. Along with this I have experience working with Peyton in the past and we work very well together. She has all these traits so she would be the best fit to be my partner. 

 

One thing I realized is that having a team to work with can help to cover for any of my weaknesses. The team building activity “Lost at Sea” contributed to my decision because it helped me see how much better I can be with more input or help from a few other people. While doing the activity, I found that my score improved a lot when I did it with a team rather than just myself. Team building and group dynamics: creating and fostering a culture of teamwork requires trust, collaboration, and accountability states “The facilitated sessions help teams to comprehend where they fall within five distinct pillars of teamwork: trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, and results,”. Having more people helped me consider the other factors of the activity that I didn’t think about when doing the activity by myself. 

 

Personality types of your partner and looking at the type of person my partner might be our big thing to put into account when looking at group projects. Knowing about your partners personality, the message they try to portray every day, and their perspective is important. Team building and group dynamics: creating and fostering a culture of teamwork requires trust, collaboration, and accountability states “They shared personal backgrounds to learn about one another's perspectives and how they might relate to their colleagues in ways beyond work,”. The “Social Media Peer Account” activity that I participated in class allowed for me to investigate my partner in this way. The effect of personality type on team performance states “Three characteristics of productive teams that are strongly related to individual differences seem to dominate: effective leadership, intra-team communication, and group cohesion,”. Personally, I feel like if you look enough into someone's social media, you can see if they have these traits to help you build your better team.