On 25th April 2010, my group and I presented our problem-solving project. Though Miss Brenda complimented our group, I felt that there were several aspects that could be improved on, both individually and as a group.
Individual Reflection
I felt that my performance was below my own expectations, with the first crucial mistake being complacency. My group’s turn to present was pushed back from Monday to Thursday, and being overly-confident, i did not go through the slides again on Wednesday to refresh my memory. Though i could remember most of the content, there were times when i stumbled over my words because i had to reaffirm the content on the slides. This may seem minor and unimportant, but faults like these can be easily rectified. Henceforth, no matter how prepared i might be, i would definitely take the extra effort and run through the slides again. Better safe than sorry.
After the Q&A session, i reflected on how i performed on answering the questions with regards to our project. Initially, i was rather pleased with myself, being able to address most of the questions posed. However upon deeper thought, i realized that i was speaking for majority of the time during the Q&A, denying my teammates the chance to express their thoughts. Thus, this made me recognize the fact that there is no ‘I’ in the team, and the team can only truly shine when everyone shines together.
On the bright side, i felt that there were several plus points of my presentation, with the most noteworthy, being my ability to focus the audience’s attention. By appearing confident and being vocal, i felt that i was able to channel ‘energy’ into my presentation, and hence capturing my audience’s attention. This is definitely a strength that i would continue to exploit to aid me in future endeavors.
Team Reflection
As a team, i felt that though we had several shortcomings, we fared relatively well overall.
In my opinion, the first and foremost issue with our presentation, are our slides. To begin, our slides were too lengthy, with several slides having excessive words. Also, perhaps due to the fact that our slides were done individually before collating, the presentation did not flow well, with some slides being structured differently. Last but certainly not least, would be the several spelling mistakes which made the presentation seem really unprofessional. All these mistakes cannot be attributed to any single group member as everyone is equally responsible in standardizing the slides and rechecking them for errors. As such, i felt that we could have done much better if there was better communication to decide on the format of the slides.
On the other hand, it was apparent that every group member did their utmost to contribute as constructively to the team as they possibly can. Due to a lack of communication, we may not have performed as well as we desired. But in terms of teamwork, i felt that everyone tried their best to accomplish their individual parts for the better of the team, and to bring the team one step closer to the final objective.
I would like to end off with a quote:”Coming together, sharing together, working together, succeeding together.” We might not know if our presentation is a success, but by being able to work as a team, we have already succeeded.
