Blog #5: Collaboration, baby!

I think that individuals find it challenging to collaborate with others because it is often difficult to find a group of people with the same exact vision as you. In order to collaborate and get something done, the group has to agree on working toward the same goal. Otherwise, you are wasting your time in round about conversations trying to tie together everyone’s ideas together. I feel that the things that are most difficult to engage in with collaboration is that often times people are unwilling to give up their initial ideas and mesh them together with others. From my experience, I feel like some people are just too egocentric to admit that another idea may be better than their own. Or, people may be so narrow minded that they cannot seem to detach themselves from their own ideas and accept others. Successful collaboration can occur when there is trust, delegation, and open-mindedness. From my experience, I feel that these three elements are necessary, and without all three, it will never work. More importantly, all members of the group must be engaged fully for it to work successfully. If one or more members are not on the same page as everyone else, it staunches the process and brings the entire group morale and effort down.

Diversity in an organization is beneficial because it brings in new perspectives. It lessens the chance of narrow-mindedness and keeps a group in check in the sense that they would have multiple perspectives to rely on. From my experience, I see that competition is the most important factor behind collaborative efforts. This may be a bold statement, but I feel like in things like Greek week, sporting competitions, etc. this is the time when a group truly comes together to buckle down and get the job done as efficiently and accurately as possible. Competition is often seen as a negative thing, but I feel it can bring out the best in people as far as getting things done and working efficiently. It motivates people to want to be the best they can be.