Week 4 Tutorial

This week’s tutorial started off with a group exercise where my group members and I were placed in a straight line and were required to communicate non-verbally indicating each other’s date of birth in order to arrange ourselves from the youngest to eldest. This group exercise showed that some of us are able to communicate non-verbally whereas some others are not able to do so. The second group exercise was given to arrange ourselves in the order of the furthest country we had visited accordingly. The time we took for communication during the second group exercise was much shorter as compared to the first one as we managed to develop a certain non-verbal system to communicate with each other. Different types of communication methods such as sign language, body language, visual language (facial expression), gestures (actions like thumbs up), oral tones (such as an angry or happy tone as a word differed based on the tone of expression) were discussed in relation to the group exercise. Some people had difficulties in communicating using this method, as individuals are different from one another, e.g. some are better at communicating verbally and vice versa. Since different people/organizations have different methods of communication, teamwork would be required and it applies in achieving a mutual goal. Besides, this group exercise represents a vertical hierarchy mentioned in Fayol’s theory as the back person in the line has a bigger picture towards the goal which helps in guiding the person at the front in achieving the common goal. Not forgetting, different individuals come from a different backgrounds thus they each have different perceptions towards the same thing and different solutions will be needed in order to achieve a common goal.