Reflection of Survival Exercise Xue Wang Team Red Trinity Western University Reflection of Survival Exercise Last week we did an interesting survival exercise in communication class. Through the game we are not only had fun in the class, but also gained a lot of enriching communication knowledge. From the exercise, I have learned how to use communication to solve problems when a conflict occurrs in a team.
I also learned that the effective way to make a decision to communicate with each other and actively listen to every team member’s opinion. Therefore, actively practicing the knowledge we learned in class helps us to remember it more vividly. The survival exercise is a game that each team chooses fifteen helpful tools to use to survive and escape from the wilderness place. When we played the game, the whole class was divided into three groups and our group included: Ashley, Frank, Lisa, William, Shirley and me.
According to the final results, our group was the winner. From my observation, the reason why our group was successful was because before agreeing on a decision, we communicated and actively listened to others’ opinions. If one of the team members had a different opinion, we would first actively listen to his/her idea and then discuss it together to make a final decision. For instance, when we were making the decision about which tool was the most important one tool our team held two different opinions.
William and I shared the same opinion: that we were facing a minus 25 degree temperature so the most important thing to do was to keep warm so that then we could escape from the wilderness place. However, our team members Lisa and Ashley believed that the compass was the most useful tool to choose because only by finding the right direction could help we get out of the place. As a result, after actively listening to everyone’s reasons, all of us agreed that to choose the cigarette lighter as our most important tool to escape from the place.
This reveals to me that asking for everyone’s opinion helps people gain solidarity and creates a harmonious working environment. Moreover, we structured our team very well and every person clearly recognizes his or her roles in the team. For me, I think I was the organizer. The reason for this is that I always carefully used my former experiences to analyze the ideas and get feedbacks from my team members. To summarize, from the survival exercise I have learned that communication is a tool that helps people building trust and deep relationships with each other.
In conclusion, playing some exercises illustrated to me that the best way to learn knowledge is to putting theory into action. Through the exercise, I experienced the amazing power of communication. The most important thing I learned is how to communicate with others next time I encounter, people who have different opinions. To sum up, communication was an art that teach people how to use the least conflict to solve problems in order to maximum the results.