Communication Leads to Strong Collaboration by Sydney

Communication Leads to Strong Collaboration by Sydney - December 2017 Scholarship Essay

I believe the ultimate strategy for success on a school project is collaboration and communication. Communication is the foundation of effective team-work. One must be able to structure the goals of the group in a way that all members understand how to contribute. I have completed my associate’s degree, and am returning to college to further my education. While obtaining my associates degree, I had to work on a large-scale group project. Half of the members were at one University, while the other half at a different location. During this project I realized how communication affected the overall success of the group. We utilized Google Docs to collaborate in real-time on multiple devices. Each limited face-to-face meeting that was held we established a guideline and a timeline of our goals. These strategies ultimately led us to be successful. Other groups tried to utilize group text, which easily becomes disorganized and chaotic. It also doesn’t allow the use of tone, which is normally used in face to face conversation. This caused turmoil and resentment within the group. You could see the goals of the group project were not clearly established beforehand, and led some groups to fail.
In my work environment, I find that communication is important to overall success. Working in a school system I need to collaborate as a group with the counselors, principals, Directors of Special Education and students. The only way I am able to juggle all of these individuals and be successful is through my use of communication. When I am given a task, I listen intently at what they are asking me to complete. I will write down what needs to be done, and repeat it back to them. Once my task as been completed I follow up to let them know I have done my job. This eliminates any confusion. I think students could use this in a group work setting.

I have been successful in group projects in school and in the work environment due to my value of effective communication. Any individual has the opportunity to utilize strong communication to better collaborate in projects, or with family and friends for overall increase relationships. One can practice effective communication by taking the time to listen fully, repeat what is being asked, and following up on what was done. Life is a large scale group project, and the people that are successful are the ones that can collaborate and communicate effectively.