Ang Jing Shun and Koshae Tan
Word count: 1512 words
Legend: JS – Jing Shun, K – Koshae
K: Hello! What do you think about our Action Class that happened a few weeks ago?
JS: Hey! I thought the Give and Take framework would be useful in helping students better understand their personalities, and also provide them with a framework that would help them succeed in their workplace in the future. What do you think?
K: Yes, while I would say that the idea and action of giving were slightly intuitive to me, I believe it was a worthwhile message to present to our class… however, did you feel there was any area for improvement in terms of our delivery of the class?
JS: There seemed to be quite a bit of resistance from the class when we got them to do the online assessment for their partner. That was quite unexpected for me as I did not expect that that would arise as a cause for concern. What about you? What do you think?
K: Me too actually! While I think the class got our key message that we should strive to be givers, I thought the way we delivered and created the “reflection” element could have been more thought through.
JS: What do you mean by that? Where do you think was the issue?
K: I think we thought about the “reflection” activity a little too simplistically. For instance, our reflection activity involved asking the class to discuss in groups what they thought about the concept of Give and Take, and how they think they can become more of a giver going forward. While these questions seemed to make sense as “reflections” during our planning stage, it led an awkward silence…. And remember Han even asked how our class helped him to reflect?
JS: Yes…
K: To be honest, I felt a little discouraged when he said that. However, thinking about it now, the type of answers these questions encourage would probably be too straightforward. It made me think more deeply about what reflection really meant……. Anyway, enough about me. You also mentioned it was different from what you imagined it to be. Why did you say it was different from what you expected?
JS: I did not expect some of our classmates to raise that many potential points of contention in our presentation as they had done. One thing I learnt was that the basis of reflection relies on the learner themselves, in their own merits, coming to reconcile the gap between their ideal image and the actual reality of who they are as a person.
K: What do you mean by that?
JS: The give and take framework had the limitation of categorising people into different boxes. Being categorised as takers might put some people off because of the attach negative connotations a lot of us attach to being a taker. That put people on a defensive mode, which makes it very hard for them to accept the outcome of the assessment and use that as a basis for reflection.
K: Right, that’s true. If I recall, I think those classmates like Louie and Han who had more points of criticism were actually typed more as takers! Haha 😛
JS: Through this experience, how should we have conducted the class? Also, on a deeper level, has it further clarified your understanding of what reflection entails?
K: A reflective activity would probably need to begin by helping the class recapture their experience, which we should have done before getting the class to do their self-assessment. It would have been better getting the students to put themselves into the experience and explore different ways of understanding the action that we undertake.
JS: Was there any example from the past few classes that you think managed to help us recapture our experience?
K: Hmm.. taking reference from the other Action classes, I think Louie and Darren’s, as well as Ye-Min and Han’s made us “reflect” quite well. Unlike the other classes which had similar open-ended discussions as the main reflection activities, these two pairs made us literally chat with one another in pairs. I thought that in so doing, we really had to very consciously think about the qualities of a non-human bot (as in Louie and Darren’s class), and the reasons we felt anger and jealousy (as in Ye-Min and Han’s class). What do you think?
JS: Right. For me, I felt that Han’s class was quite useful in terms of helping us to reflect and understand our emotional states. I remember in his class, when it was my turn to share an event that made me really angry, I said that I do not really get angry often, only disappointed.
K: Haha how did the other person respond to that?
JS: He asked me what if someone cheated on me! To which I agreed I might feel angry in that situation. By engaging in that dialogue, I realised that there is in fact anger that accompanies my disappointment. However, I never recognised the anger because I tend to take a step back and rationalise a situation before anger takes over. Therefore, the activity itself made me better understand myself.
K: Great! Yes… it is the same for me. By engaging in a dialogue with another classmate about what made me angry, I came to realise that these situations which anger us normally violate beliefs or things that we value. That is why the same event which might have angered me might not have had the same effect on you, because both of us value different things!
JS: That is right. Then again, how could we have incorporated such an activity in our action class?
K: I thought that perhaps we could allow them to role play in certain hypothetical situations, in which they had to choose whether to “Give”, “Take”, or “Match”. Something a little like Mark’s action class? In doing so, that might indirectly reveal their own attitudes towards giving and taking, and in the process come to reveal their own action as “giving” or “taking”. This process might have been more effective as compared to making them do the initial personality test which segments them into narrow categories. In that sense, it can circumvent the issue of them becoming defensive, while at the same time make them reflect in doing the action. It would also provide our classmates with a specific situation which they can discuss later in class.
JS: True, that sounds plausible. This also raises another question – sometimes, our perception of ourselves might be different from how others perceive us. How can we reconcile that? Is that even important to address?
K: Yes I guess so. I believe it is important to be aware of the difference between our own and others’ perceptions of ourselves. If we only believed our self-perceptions, we could very well be deluded!
JS: That’s right. As a whole, I think all the action workshops have helped us to reflect by reassessing our thoughts, personal biases, personalities and interactions with the world around us. In a way, these are ways in which we can come to better understand ourselves as individuals. From an engineering standpoint, it’s equivalent to how an internal combustion engine can only be operated successfully if we understand the assembled engine. However, this is contingent on understanding each individual part and how they operate in relation to each other.
K: Glad that you could draw some links between this and engineering then! By extension, from a business point of view, I guess it applies to how organisations should work effectively. An organisation would not work well if different department did not understand their respective roles and to see how they can fit and work with one another. Also, it does no good for an organisation to be so inward-focused that it does not take into consideration external trends and stakeholders. This is one of the key reasons why huge companies are challenged by seemingly unassuming disruptors and fail.
JS: Interesting insight from a business standpoint. It was great that the workshops were conducted in a setting like this as it allowed the conglomeration of diverse thoughts and ideas from the pockets of experience that everyone brought to class!
K: Yes. I enjoyed finding out about what were some things our classmates held dear to them and also their interpretations of reflection in the process.
JS: With all that said, how do you think we fared?
KT: Given that it was both our first time delivering a workshop in this format, I think we did not do too shabbily! We got the key message through.
JS: Great! I think we did not bad too 🙂
K: Nice. It is quite interesting that both of us had different takeaways from the planning and conducting of the same workshop. To be honest, having this conversation with you in itself also made me glean more insights than what I initially had. I guess you could call it a reflective piece in itself! 😛
JS: Good! Seemed like this reflective piece is a “meaning-making” process. Professor would love this piece! 🙂
K: Hehe!