Community Service Project: a Reflective Report

Introduction

Our community service project is to deliver Excel knowledge, we seperated our project into two parts, the publication of Fun Facts about Excel and held an Excel Workshop. My name is Lee She Yun and my role in this project is Team Leader, mainly responsible but not limited to plan and oversees the project, liaison between advisors and my group members, work closely with sub-group leaders to smoothen project progress, develop and implement timeline for group members to achieve objective, delegate tasks and set deadlines, conduct official meeting and prepare performance report. In my service project essay I will reflect on my experiences in this project.

Service Project Reflection

Communication

Although being a leader of such huge group is not something new to me, but in this project, I am not only need to meet expectation from lecturers, but I also need to be always prompt and provide correct instruction to my fellow teammates. I learnt that being a leader is not only what you know, more importantly is to ensure every single teammate know their role. This is where communication comes in picture, during our project, I received messages from a teammate that bypass their group leader because he is frustrated and lost direction on what to do, his tone is quite unfriendly. I calmly explain to him what we want and point out some points that he might missed during discussion with his team leader. From here I learnt that one day when we going to the work field, never bring personal emotion in work, always calm down and try to communicate.

Teamwork

I also learnt that despite being a group leader, it will be impossible for me to micro-manage everyone on what they do, I will need to corporate and trust my fellow teammates with some necessary supervision and guidance instead. Therefore, I learnt to give higher level instruction to them, and let them works out the details, the result turns fine as they start to unleash their creativity. This skill will be greatly beneficial to me for my future career, in work field we will require joint effort across multiple department in some project, different department have different expertise and scope, learning how to set and meet expectation of different stakeholder is definitely something valuable to pick up.

Problem Solving

No plan is perfect, and no problem is unsolvable, having a problem-solving skill will help us to tackle all obstacle that we encounter. During initial stage of project proposal, our project once rejected by lecturers due to several reason, but I didn’t give up and try to solve the problem by starting to understand the reason of being reject and how to work around. After some modification, our project approved. For me, problem solving is all about the spirit of never give up and always try to find solution. In our future career, problems and obstacles comes one and another, we need to target ourself to become a problem solver but not a problem creator.

Time Management

I have set a strict timeline to our project, sometimes we need to jive between our midterm, other’s assignment, and this project, hence time management skill will be crucial. By breaking down big project into multiple smaller piece, set deadline to respective piece and delegate respective piece to each teammate will greatly increase our efficiency. This skill is very beneficial as our future bosses will expect a speedy delivery from us, having a good time management skill will help us meet their expectation in the same time save us from being flood by increasing workload.

Leadership

For me, being a leader is to have the vision and the ability to show and guide. From this project, I learnt to have rough idea of outcome before I set expectation to my fellow teammates, hence I am able to give clear instruction to them. This skill is beneficial to our future career. At some point of time, we will have subordinate, this skill will enable us to guide them and help them to achieve their goal.

Creativity

Due to pandemic, we couldn’t hold most of the community service that requires face to face interaction, therefore we need to be creative on method to deliver community service and avoid face-to-face interaction at the same time. This is why I comes out with the idea of Excel workshop by leveraging modern technology. We equip our target audience with office survival skills before they go into the workforce. From this project I learnt to be creative, not bounded by previous practice but to think outside of the box. In our future career, modern society requires modern solution, by thinking creatively, we can come out with multiple solution that can achieve our objective.

Willing to learn

A leader doesn’t mean he/she knows everything. I learnt to be always humble and learn from someone who knows better, he/she could be lecturer, friends or even our subordinate. During our project, I learnt benefits of using Google Classroom and some design technique from my fellow teammates. In working field, we all start fresh and we all have to start somewhere, having the willingness to learn will help us quickly overcome our learning process during first few years of work.

Negotiation and conflict resolution

As a team leader, I play a role of negotiator and conflict resolver frequently. One time, one of our teammate didn’t actively participate in our weekly discussion, the reason given is unacceptable, then I negotiate and explain on his attendance issue, in the end he accepted the final outcome. Therefore, I learnt that the most important things in negotiation is to stand firm when comes to principle, stay flexible when it comes to solution, negotiation is all about give and take. This skill will be a great help to my future career as most of the time we will need to negotiate to achieve our objective.

Patient and Empathy

I’ve been in the management field for 3 years before I came into this university, so when I first assign a task to my teammates, I find most of them doesn’t meet the standard I expect them to be, this would have led to frustrated and doubt whether we can finish this project. However, when I put a little bit more patient and empathy, I realize they just need times to catch up as most of them never worked as a team before, and some of them have language difficulty since English is not their native language. Having this skill set will build me a good working relationship with my future colleague.

Confidence

After we did our best, have faith and confidence that our project will work out eventually, only a positive team will produce positive result. In our Excel workshop, we are confidence that Excel is indeed an essential office survival skill and will produce great demand in the community. As a result, we able to exceed our target number of participants before our registration deadline. In our future career, we need to always believe in ourselves and have the confident that we will success once we tried our best.

Feedback

Overall, most of the teammate have positively contributed to the project, for this paragraph I would like to discuss some feedbacks to the entire project with some examples. First is attitude, having a good attitude mean he/she will actively solve problems that encountered. Sub-group leader Hing Shu Yu, Liu Yu Shann, and vice leader Chua Yong Sheng set a good example, they always strive for the best on their task given; honorable mention Lu Hankuan, despite being a normal teammate, self-volunteer to pick up uncooperative teammate’s task. On the other side, group member Sheeraz scored a low mark in this section. He requested meeting summary from his sub-group leader Lim Jin Er and shown bad attitude while asking questions. Second is time management, Liu Yu Shann and Lim Jin Er demonstrated a good example by always submit their work before due date. In the other hand, group member Ler Li Wen and Lee Hock Soon have a bad habit of being late for 2-3 days in submitting group work. Third feedback I would like to give is about leadership, while group member’s job is to finish their own task, leaders need to take extra miles to solve their member’s problem. Lim Jin Er demonstrated a strong leadership by actively communicate with two international students in her group despite time zone problem. However, sub-group leader Liew Zhi You and Winnie Liew Fay Fay lack in leadership skill when comes to conflict management, they will tend to avoid taking up their responsibility when conflicts happen and throw their problem to group leader or vice leader. Forth feedback will be stress management, all teammates perform well in this section with the exception of group member Teh Yee Hern and Lee Hock Soon. Teh Yee Hern shown uncooperative attitude to this project by giving excuse of tight schedule and he start to absent from fifth meeting, yet we failed to get positive respond from him; Lee Hock Soon shown a poor stress management by posting negative complaints on social media when team leader points out his mistake in submitted work and late submission. Lastly, openness to criticism, Hing Shu Yu, Liu Yu Shann and Winnie Liew Fay Fay willing to accept feedback from leader and improve accordingly. On the contrary, Lee Hock Soon unwilling to accept changes and mistake that pointed out by leader.

Conclusion

As a conclusion, I felt this project is a challenging yet exiting journey. Under strict timeline, we practice effective communication, time management and leadership skills to finish project before due date. Despite pandemic, we unleash our creativity and willingness to learn to came out with online workshop. Throughout the whole process, we do have conflicts and problems, with negotiation and some patient, we solve every problem as a team. In the end, always have confidence that our hard work will be rewarded. I strongly believe these skills I picked up in this course will definitely help me in my future career.