Social Change Model: Collaboration

Collaboration is an important aspect of Civility, Citizenship, and Common Purpose. Collaboration is important for goals to be reached and new ideas to be implemented. Collaboration involves being flexible, comfortable, and willingness to change to get a goal achieved.

What?

We all do things we don’t necessarily want to do at first but we realize that we do these things to achieve a common goal with a group of people. This is a part of collaboration. If there’s one thing you learn in a group project is there is either a lot of collaboration or none at all. Unfortunately, many of my groups in college have been revolved around little to no collaboration. As in, one person doing all the work or everyone goes radio silent and completes their work with no communicating. Obviously, both of these outcomes are not ideal and usually resulted in an ok grade. The groups that had a lot of collaboration was the leadership groups, which didn’t surprise me. After seeing groups that did and didn’t collaborate, I realized that collaboration is the main element in any group.

So What?

I realized in these experiences that collaboration actually isn’t necessary to get a job completed. I guess, it technically is since we all opted to do work in the group which is a form of collaboration. However, collaboration is important in almost every type of group that exists. It is the willingness to cooperate with each other, accept unexpected change, and the willingness to take on new challenges and obstacles. In collaborative groups, I’ve noticed that I am more comfortable, trusting, and accepting of others. This is also an important part of collaboration. Collaboration builds reliability and trust between members.

Now What?

Collaboration is the backbone of a group. It is the fuel that drives the group to accomplish tasks. In the future, I plan on emphasizing collaboration in certain groups. Keep in mind, not every group needs collaboration as much as others. To implement collaboration effectively, I will put an emphasize on trust, our common purpose, and mutually beneficial relationships. These will help encourage collaboration between group members where it is needed.