How to Work in a Diversity Group

It is my firm conviction that the fundamental key of a successful teamwork is by building trust. I feel extremely grateful that I was assigned to complete the Infographic task together with my current groupmates. They are not only very cooperative but also very helpful at the same time. According to conventional wisdom, one team must know their strengths and weaknesses of each teammates in order to better evaluate the team’s progression and performance, we are no exception.

In my opinion, diversity is the art of thinking independently together. The strength and weaknesses of each and every of our groupmate are actually deeply influenced by our cultural backgrounds. From our group, I can see the different behaviours of people who comes from an individualist and collectivist society. Xiao Chen, Nguyen, and I come from a collectivist society while Denver and Andrew are being raised in an individualist society.

The strengths that Xiao Chen, Nguyen, and I possess are we consider the needs and feelings of all of our groupmates. For example, there is this one day, Nguyen couldn’t attend our weekly group meeting as he had suffered diarrhoea in the morning of that day. He was very apologetic and worried that his absent might impede our group’s progression. As a result, he scheduled the next day to meet me personally to discuss about the meeting. This moral rectitude is highly plausible. In simple words, harmony and the interdependence of group members are valued by the three of us as we are being raised in a rather collectivism culture.

Conversely, Andrew and Denver’s strength are self-reliant and independent. They don’t depend on any of the group member for their part. They are confident in their own way of doing it, and only after completing their portion will they ask for the rest of group member’s comment. The way they do their work is very meticulous. They will always assemble us to discuss on every trivial matter about the Infographic task.

In a nutshell, I think the major strength that we possess is we are very good at time management. We did our researches as soon as our group is formed and we are always punctual to our group meeting. Nevertheless, the main weakness for Xiao Chen and Nguyen is language barrier. As a multilingual group member, I will sometimes articulate Andrew and Denver’s idea in Mandarin to Xiao Chen.