Week 13 Post 2: End of the Semester

We have finished the student lead presentations part of the class and are now working on editing and putting together our final version of the primer for the class. Looking back to the beginning of the semester, I was definitely a little bit hesitant and unsure of how the class was going to work out. Having a class that is completely run by the students was definitely a new experience for me and I assume the same is true for the rest of my classmates. Now that the class is coming to the end I am definitely glad that I decided to stick with the class. The class allowed me to learn a lot of important things on the topic of organizational behavior that I will definitely use in the future, especially this summer when I start my internship. The class also allowed me to develop my presentation skills, which is one of my weak spots. It also allowed me to work with a partner and collaborate our ideas, which will be a big part of what we will be doing once we get out into the workforce. I am definitely looking forward to reading the final version of the primer, which I know all of my classmates have put a lot of time and effort into their individual contributions. The primer will be a good resource that I can put on my resume or even bring to future interviews to show the organization some of the work I have done.

Week 13 Post 1: Teams

Yesterday in class, Shayna and Logan presented on the topic of Teams. They did a great job teaching the content of the subject to the class, and I believe it was a good subject to wrap up the third section of the class because it touched upon many of the other topics we already discussed. I also thought it was a good topic to discuss because working in teams is a major part of what we will be doing once we get into the workforce, as well as this summer during our internships. The main function of teams in an organizational setting is to combine resources, skills, and ideas in order to achieve a certain goal or objective for the organization. Teams are used because it is believed that by working together with other employees more work will be produced, compared to if the individual members worked by themselves. However as many people know this is in fact not always the case. There is always one or two individuals on a team who do not do their fair share of the work and rely on the other members of the team to pick up there slack. Unfortunately it usually works for the slacker because the other members of the team don’t want to get a bad grade or fail at accomplishing a task, so they do the slackers share of the work. This is why it is important to have group performance evaluations at the end of a group project or task. These evaluations allow you to evaluate the performance of all members of the group, and this is a good time to expose the slacker of the group to the boss or upper management.