Collaboration In your career it’s likely you’ll be required to work on team projects, including writing. This presentation covers team management, conflict prevention and resolution, successful communication, group creativity and productivity, responding to others’ writing, and ethics in collaborative work.

greater knowledge and skill base division of workload advantages time management greater knowledge and skill base division of workload increased creativity disadvantages time management ethical abuses (groupthink, intimidation, taking credit) disjointed document conflict Collaboration has its advantages and disadvantages. Time and management fit in both of these categories. Working together can make a project less time consuming by dividing the work, but it may take extra time to think through and delegate the project as well as to communicate with others. Having a management plan prepared before working on the project can help you stay on task and prevent missing steps. But working under management restrictions with others can hinder flexibility and limit individuality. An advantage of collaborative work is having a greater knowledge and skill base. If you have to write a report, you may be limited by your knowledge background and skills, but if you work with others, they may be able to fill in where you lack and vice versa. Another advantage, then, is the division of the workload. Everyone is assigned their own responsibilities which come together in the end to create the best outcome possible. Having several people work on a project can also increase creativity. Developing ideas works best when you get feedback from others and you can give them feedback as well. Like most things, collaboration also has its disadvantages. For one, ethical issues such as groupthink, intimidation, and taking credit can occur without proper checks. Also, working without a clear plan and without finalization by the group or by a designated leader can create a disjointed document. Finally, interpersonal conflict can occur. To handle these situations, the group members need to plan from the very beginning how to overcome these problems.

Project management Appoint a group manager Define your goal(s) Decide on the proper document for your goal and assignment Delegate the tasks Create a timetable for the project, meetings, and progress reports Establish procedures for the group: communication, file-naming, interpersonal problems, decision making, evaluations Produce a documented plan recording these decisions It is important to have a management plan for your group. In order to manage your project, first appoint a group manager. This could be a colleague with authority, the one who prompted the project, or a peer with great managing skills. Next, define your goals. What do you want to accomplish together? Decide on the proper way to communicate your goal and task. If you and some colleagues want to persuade the department head to change a policy, will you write a report? A letter? A memo? An e-mail? Delegate the tasks. Decide in your first meeting who will do what. Create a timetable. Set the schedule for the project and include at least tentative dates for meetings and progress reports. Establish group procedures. How will you communicate (e-mail, meetings only)? If you will be working electronically, how will you name files? How will you deal with interpersonal problems? How will your group make decisions (majority vote, manager’s final decision)? How will you evaluate everyone’s contribution? When you’ve answered all these questions, document them.

face-to-face meetings Conducting meetings Have an agenda and ask everyone to come prepared Designate a leader and a recorder Begin with a summary – of the project, the last meeting, etc. Encourage participation Stay on task Observe, guide, and listen Summarize before deciding outcome Begin and end on schedule It’s likely that you’ll experience different kinds of meetings – face-to-face, online, or via the telephone. These guidelines apply to any meeting. When your group meets, have an agenda prepared and make sure everyone else is prepared – bring all possible materials and documents. Designate a leader and a recorder. Have someone who keeps the meeting going and who in the group keeps track of the events of the meeting. Begin with a summary of the project and the last meeting. Choose someone to lead the meeting. This is often the project manager, but could also be whoever called the meeting. Make sure everyone has a chance to be heard though. Encourage participation. Listen and speak up. Stay on task. It is easy to get off track, so it is everyone’s responsibility to stay focused and get the necessary work done. It is disrespectful to waste others’ time. Stay engaged. Observe, guide, and listen so that you can add something worthwhile. Summarize any important points before deciding an outcome. Begin and end the schedule on time. face-to-face meetings online conferencing teleconferences

conflict Conflict is a reasonable result of working with others. The key is to be able to prevent serious, debilitating conflict and to work through any disagreements.

Interpersonal differences Cultural differences Gender differences Sources of conflict Interpersonal differences Cultural differences Gender differences Managing conflict Hear each party’s side Take feelings and opinions seriously Disagree? Use constructive criticism Find areas of agreement Create a group solution Aside from professional disagreements, conflict can arise from interpersonal differences, cultural differences, and even gender differences. Sometimes people have trouble getting along. Different cultural backgrounds can sometimes lead to disagreement and conflict. Even gender has been indicated as a potential for conflict. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t work with people we don’t like, people who are different from us, or different genders, but we should be aware that problems may lie in these areas and prepare for dealing with them. It’s important when managing conflicts in groups to hear each party’s side and take their concerns seriously. It’s okay for whoever is mediating the conflict to disagree. Use constructive criticism when repairing the conflict and try to find areas of agreement. It is important for the group to come up with a satisfactory solution.

Working together While working together has some challenges, it has great benefits as well.

Creative collaborative thinking Teamwork allows for greater creative thinking. In groups, some great ways to come up with ideas are: Brainstorming allows everyone to have their ideas heard and to provoke others’ thoughts with their own. Make sure someone is recording all the ideas because they pour out swiftly during brainstorming. Let every idea be recorded. Even bad or mediocre ideas can prompt great ones. Mind-mapping or idea-mapping is another great way to come up with ideas. Start with a main focus and branch out ideas from there. This works like brainstorming except that is written, so the record is made automatically. This may be an easier way to develop ideas when you must collaborate from afar. Storyboarding is a more linear way to work out ideas, but it’s flexible enough to work great for groups. If you’ve ever used notecards to write a research paper, you know how storyboarding works. Each element is available to be moved around, edited, or removed. This is especially great for visualizing a process.

Dealing with others’ writing revising editing accurate, appropriate, useful, and legal content material organized for the reader’s understanding clear, easy-to-read, and engaging style effective visuals and page design rephrasing or reorganizing sentences clarifying topic sentences choosing a better word or phrase correcting spelling, usage, or punctuation, and so on mechanical correctness ≠ good writing understand the limits of editing Focus first on the big picture When you read and respond to the writing produced by your teammates, remember to begin by reading the document twice. This helps you thoroughly grasp the content. Be honest but diplomatic. Don’t just say something is crap. Explain what the problem is and offer suggestions for fixing it. Make your recommendations specific. “Bad transitions” is a vague assessment. Explain what you mean – do the transitions fail to capture the relationships between ideas? Do they suggest mistaken relationships? Or are there no transitions at all? Revision and editing are two different processes. If you revise your teammate’s work, you look for accurate appropriate, useful, and legal content. You check to make sure the material is organized for the readers’ understanding. You read for a clear, easy, and engaging style. You assess the visuals and page design for effectiveness. Focus on the big picture. If you edit your teammate’s work, you focus on sentences, phrases, words, and mechanics. It’s important to understand limits when editing. You don’t have to fix every comma (unless you and the group have agreed that it’s your job), but you can point out if the author has trouble with comma splices. You can show once or twice how to fix it, then let them do the grunt work. Read the entire document at least twice before you comment. Be honest but diplomatic. Be critical but helpful. Make specific recommendations for improvements.

ethical abuses and miscommunication in collaborative work Groupwork can fall prey to ethical abuses and miscommunication in collaborative work can lead to trouble for the whole project.

intimidation hoarding information taking credit Unethical behavior in group work often comes from the conflicting values for working together and rewarding individuals. Ethical abuses often occur in group situations when a person feels intimidated. An intimidated person may feel pressured to keep a disagreement to him or herself. Or that person may feel compelled to behave in a way they wouldn’t normally because of the social pressure. Taking credit for another’s work is always wrong, but it’s especially easy in group work. You can see the temptation to accept credit or its opposite, deny responsibility, in the reality competition shows on television. Here’s an example from a cooking contest show. Four group members are required to create a temporary restaurant and serve one meal. One person becomes the restaurant manager and the others take over the cooking. If the cooking is really great, but the manager didn’t do the best job, he or she may take credit for the food when the judges ask who was in charge. Hoarding information is another way that a group member could behave unethically by focusing on individuality. A person may hoard, or gather and keep, information in order to gain power or self-importance.

cultural codes & references humor, slang, idioms social cues When communicating in teams, it is important to understand and recognize where miscommunication can happen. This is especially significant when we consider working together over networks instead of face-to-face and working with people of different cultural backgrounds. Computer-mediated communication prevents us from experiencing social cues. We miss body language and tone when one is speaking. Humor, slang, or idioms can be confusing not only with globally different cultures, but even those within our own culture. These terms and phrases can depend on a number of factors: our geography, our age, our affiliations, etc. Cultural codes and references work the same way. Do you understand the cultural references of Cheezburger cat, PC & Mac, and “Penny! Knock knock knock! Penny!”? cultural codes & references

teamwork conflict communication management ethics creative thinking reviewing/revising/editing As you work in groups this semester, use these guidelines to help you manage your group and project, avoid and deal with conflict, communicate effectively, create successfully together, assist each other in the final stages of writing, and work together ethically.