Tier 3 Reflection

One concept that stuck with me regarding Tier 3 was the Hedgehog Concept. This is an idea to an ancient fable that a hedgehog is good at only one thing, but excels at it.  This concepts takes into account what we are passionate about, what we are good at, and how we can combine the two for efficiency. I and my two group members were each drawn to the DSA for our own personal reasons: I've witnessed the injustices towards the community, one group member was a disability studies minor who wanted to pursue a career in helping disabled peoples, and another group member had a brother with Down syndrome that was helped by the organization. These were are passions. As for what we were good at, the group member who's brother had Down syndrome was great at building websites while I was good at public speaking, communication, and proofreading documents. As such, I was tasked with being a liaison to the DSA  while the group member designed our Facebook and Yelp page. This allowed for us to put our best skills to work for a fulfilling, high-quality project.

Early on, my team was struggling with one of the five dysfunctions of a team, which were discussed in Tier 2. The foundation, an absence of trust, was starting to bleed into our group dynamic when one group member was struggling to make deadlines, keep up with communication, and come to team meetings. We began to lose trust in each other and friendliness started to fade. However, while I would've stayed quiet before BHLP, I decided that action was necessary to prevent any more deterioration. We had a group meeting and discussed setting deadlines, created a group chat, and promised to remind each other of tasks frequently and offer help when needed. This allowed us to rebuild our trust in one another and finish the project on good terms. Letting problems within a group fester will only cause them to worsen and ruin the project. By encouraging active, sometimes uncomfortable, conversation, this can be prevented.