Survival Exercise Leader: Abdulhamid Albakoush Present: All

Survival Exercise

Leader: Abdulhamid Albakoush

Present: All Members

Absent: None

The first group exercise we embarked upon was a 'survival exercise.' The group was given a hypothetical life-and-death situation in which we all had to work together to make effective decisions to benefit the group. All of us had a mutually shared objective (survival) even though we may have had differences about the best way to achieve that objective. The group exercise thus began with a common focus, a necessary component of group formation.

The hypothetical situation was that we had just crash-landed in the Canadian wilderness. First, we had to list items that were most useful to take with us to survive on an individual basis before coming together to reach a consensus as a group about what we should do. Much like the situation would be in 'real life' we began as a group of disparate individuals, but then had to establish leadership positions and get to know one another in the context of the larger whole. Abdul was appointed the leader and then we had to decide if we should stay at crash site or attempt to find help. We decided to leave the site, after which Abdul began to delegate authority. Two members with knowledge of wilderness survival were given the status of resident expert leaders as we discussed our various challenges, including our group list of things to bring.

We devised a system of 'rating' each item on a scale of usefulness of 1-3. Having a rating system which everyone could use individually before pooling our results had the effect of giving the more introverted and quiet group members a way of participating. Working individually as well as collectively enabled us to avoid 'groupthink' or mindlessly following the first suggestion of one of the group members. The different participatory strategies to elicit input from each member also discouraged social loafing.

Connections Project 2: Richard Branson and the Big Five

Leader: Abdulhamid Albakoush

Present: Matt Caroll, Siwei Chen, Abdulhamid Albakoush

Absent: Abdullah Alsaidi, Sean Allen

Given the relatively small size of the group, this session began more informally, with everyone reading the case study and then discussing their findings collectively. The focus of the case study was the unusual yet charismatic CEO Richard Branson, head of Virgin Atlantic. Together we composed a list of the 'big five' personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism) and rated Branson based upon these traits.