I had the honor to be the leader of Team B, Enlighten Entertainment. We were a very supportive team and willing to give a 110%. The majority of the team members had the energy and the desire to win. Everyone volunteered for their assignments and did them on the scheduled time. The only one person who wasn’t as excited as the rest of the team still did a good job with his assignments.
On the first week we needed to come up with an idea for the proposal. I met with one of them at my place, another one via iChat, and there was one that couldn’t make it because of work. I understand the work situation, but at that point I didn’t feel he was committed to the team. I felt he was reading the e-mails and criticizing everything that we did yet giving nothing for us to grow. At that point I talked to Christina because there was a girl from another class who advised me that the class goes by fast and therefore I needed to deal with any situation right away. I did my investigations and I found out that two persons of the team were friends before Full Sail. Before knowing this information, I had asked another team member to be the team leader; I thought he wanted to have the power, and it turned out that he was one of the most supportive. Back to the point, the instant I was aware of this friendship, I told the guy in charge of the PTM Team Charter, I wanted to be the team leader; he answered “you’ve always been the leader to me”. After that we have been a consistent and solid team. We got the idea done via e-mails.
The way that we managed was, first, I took over the leadership of the team. I was having communication with them every day. I wanted to make sure that this would work. Second I established that we needed to progress throughout the class as a team by having a meeting every week. Monday is reading day, and Tuesday at 5 pm became the perfect day to come with our respective assignments after a week of having worked on them. During the week, I would call them and text them just to know how they were doing and if they needed any help or anything from me, also we e-mailed every step we each did to maintain communication. I read every single one of them and their attachments.
The second week we tried to have our “virtual” meeting. (What a joke it was!) We spent a whole hour trying to figure out how to use iChat. We never got to have the actual meeting. The person from the group that wasn’t as excited finally connected to iChat the hour after and he didn’t even say hi. That bothered me, and I talked about this with one of the classmates and teammates. We finished the “meeting” and I finished out sending e-mails with the assignments that needed to be done. Then we got to an agreement for the next meeting to do it at my apartment and the student from out-of-state to be the only one on iChat. This program worked out perfectly throughout the other weeks. Everybody volunteered for the tasks that needed to be done. After we finished our tasks I met with one of the team members to outline the proposal. I went to his place and we got it running, and in about three days we had most of the proposal done. We collected more information that we actually needed, so that worked for our advantage. We had more than enough material to write. But for the “virtual” team the only suggestion I have is that Full Sail should have a class on how to master Mac in general. Just learning how to use the Mac has been a challenge by itself.
We just had our last meeting, Tuesday at 5:30pm. The no-desire guy didn’t have his part done; apparently, he didn’t understand what the chores where. He got confused, yet he “couldn’t” ask. Or maybe he didn’t want to. One of the responsibilities we had was read the e-mails, check them constantly. I wanted to have the first draft of the proposal done by Wednesday so we could send it to Christina on Thursday at the latest. I hope we can still have that done. Let’s see how this week ends up.
We where able to have it revised by Friday, but Christina wasn’t able to check it before we submit it. It was late when we finished it. We where able to submit it by Saturday and it is a really good project. I’m really satisfied with the final product, but this last week was hard work.
I didn’t know this but I’ve always been a practitioner of the majority of Carnegie’s principles. Any project I’ve been involved in I’ve always started it in a friendly way; this is my way to live life, by always trying to avoid arguments. I try to keep this as one of my priorities, by simply showing respect to others’ opinions; in this class I kept my practice. I believe in a sincere smile, be genuinely interested in others. I will always praise and will always give honest appreciation. I can’t stop using encouragement. I tried as hard as I could to make the other person happy about the things I suggested, that is in the case of the person that wasn’t as excited as the rest of the group. This book has opened my eyes about who I am and who I want to be. There is something about this book that makes me want to smile and be happy all the time. With a smile in your face you will make a difference on a lot of people without even having to talk to them. From all of Carnegie’s principles Smile is my favorite one.
I’ve gained many different significant teachings I can mention right now. Christina helped me throughout the whole process of it. She really got where I was wrong and made me understand how easy it was. For the other two; when I did the revision for the test on week two I did it by myself. I sat with the test on my hands, trying to analyze what was wrong. Let’s start with the fact that I never understood the wording on the test, so I did my own version of it. Then I saw that of course my checked boxes were going to be off… I am doing my own test! I did the revision and understood the concept more clearly and learned that it doesn’t matter if you have asked a lot of questions already, if you are not clear, ask more. My “ah ha” moment with my classmate was when I thought I was in my game, knowing all of the material, explaining it to him I figured out what I did wrong and how I could have fixed it. That was the only moment that it was like, “why did I submit the test already???” Well… that is part of life.
The team project was a really positive experience in every aspect. Working as a team I thought it was going to be harder, but it came out a lot better than I expected. I love the team, the experience and every single detail of the learning process. I think that the reason that I loved it was because I got the privilege to be in a team that everybody wanted to help each other and everyone wanted the best for each of us. As the team leader I wanted to be on top of everything so it was a challenge to be able to communicate as often as I did and as I wanted to, read every e-mail with the attachments in order to talk and discuss their research and what was needed, and let’s not forget have all my personal assignments in time. It was a challenge I was willing to take and definitely I wanted to have.
These past four weeks have been a great experience, the challenges, the teamwork, the readings, the teacher and assistant. It was, without a doubt, a challenging class, but it was worth every learning experience that I am taking with me. I hope to have the opportunity to work with this team again, keep growing as a human being, and most importantly I hope to keep learning every instant, every moment, just to live life in a way that we all can benefit from it…Practicing Carnegie’s tenets.
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