Truthfulness Reflection Paper

During class 8, I learned about the importance of truthfulness where we have to make our working environment as comfortable as possible so our teammates are able to say about what they think freely and safely. But in reality, creating an environment which could uphold truthfulness is not easy. Al stated that there are many circumstances that make an individual to not telling the truth such as afraid to hurt other teammates and etc. So in class, we do a little exercise in which we all have to close our eyes and think about our product or task team and held a discussion about what our thoughts to our task team.

When having a discussion about the level of truthfulness in our task team prior to the exercise, my team member personally think that

Additionally, I also agree with my team that we are quite similar in terms of personality. However, after I did the exercise in class I started to feel differently and questioned about the level of truthfulness that my team has. When I closed my eyes, I thought to myself; since we have the same type of MVS which is Blue-Green we may end up reluctant to tell the truth to others since as a blue MVS, we are very concerned about others’ feelings and tend to avoid to take actions which could harm others. This might be the main reason why I prefer not to shared what I thought in previous exercise to my task team. It was very frustrating for me since I know that it is an important issue which could create barriers to creativity and effective problem solving on my team but on the other hand I was afraid that I might hurt my teammates’ feeling. In addition, I also scared my thought during exercise could influence my team which results to unconducive working environment. Afterwards, I felt guilty and regretted my decision because it undermines my team’s

Additionally, from radical collaboration book, I found that the content or wording which I choose in expressing truth plays an important role in determining others’ responses. Words are powerful double edge tools which could build trust and relationship with others, however It also may reduce the truthfulness level in teams. Given that reason, I promise to myself to be more careful in using words specifically when telling truth to other people so they do not feel offended. For instance, rather than saying “you are lazy person, I do not like working with you”, perhaps I can express the truth about his/her attitude by saying “I think you should work harder so we could achieve success together”. By choosing better words, I believe I could reduce the consequences of telling the truth to others thus lead me to become more open to my team on or outside BUS