Jaymin Patel

I think that a person’s ethnicity does impact communication and collaboration when working in a team environment because being an Asian-american myself, I have experienced situations like these first hand. When working together in a group or even just meeting up socially, there tends to be a certain crowd of people of the same race/ethnicity that adhere to each other. For example, when I worked on group projects in previous semesters, I noticed that communication and collaboration was a lot better when working with other people of my ethnicity and I just think that is due to a comfort level that was there when the other group members come from the same ethnic background as you. The same could be said for the ages of the people in the group because if there is a generational gap between members, they won’t relate to each other as much as if they were the same age. This was a good article and you Came up with some very good questions!

Age can definitely be a factor when it comes to social goals. For younger people I think it is easier to suggest new ideas and to have a very open way of thinking. I think also younger people are more open to being so connected with their co-workers than say their older counterparts who would rather be more private or collaborate and bounce ideas in a more old fashioned way. When looking at it this way it is clear that while social goals can keep everyone connected there might have to be a middle ground that allows everyone to be comfortable and get the most productivity from everyone involved. To do this I definitely that having team building exercises could be beneficial with the social goals, I think this would allow everyone to get their opinions and goals out to their team and to other employees, it also allows for people to speak up on ideas that they might have to better that idea. Also I think that team building exercises could also help better communication and decrease frustration people might have with their colleagues.

I believe that ethnicity play a role in communication and collaboration within the team. There are some positive and negative aspects when the team has people from different background. Many researches show that heterogeneous groups are more creative than homogenous groups. However, working with people from different backgrounds is not always straightforward. Language problem and non-language behavior can cause some misunderstanding.

Unfortunately, I think ethnicity does play a role; it really shouldn’t, because it should just be about “PEOPLE” collaborating on projects, keeping each other in the loop to make a smoother work flow. Although there is a tendency for people to connect more so with “like” people, they need to keep mindful of the fact that everyone is in it to work on a specific project, and all people need to feel their contributions are valid.
It is definitely a good idea to have employees get together on “off time” to enhance communication building and teamwork.

Social goals is definitely an interesting new norm – I am interested to hear how you all, the future workforce, plan to use social goals to “get the job done”