Good Collaboration

         After watching the members of IDEO creating a completely new shopping cart in four days that would make our lives easier, you realize that you need great collaboration skills to do such. We saw this video at the beginning of the year in September, though we watched it again today so we could remind ourselves what good collaboration skills mean.
         Good collaboration could help in numerous ways. When applying many jobs, having good collaboration skills is very important. It tells the boss you can work well with others, and accept other ideas, not being selfish. We all build on other people's ideas to create new, better ideas.
         An important point in good collaboration is to not insult other people's ideas, but to accept them. We all make mistakes, and we all learn from our mistakes. Don't judge someone by their ideas - they're being unique and they're putting themselves out there. It already takes a lot of courage for some people to speak up, so if you insult them, it wouldn't make anything better for them. I think that this is the main reason of our class being so quiet in discussions : we're afraid to put our ideas or thoughts out there. We're afraid of being wrong, being insulted, being judged by others. So encourage all ideas, and build on them. Give people second chances, because no one share the same mind, and that is what makes each and everyone of us unique in our own way.
         Another important point about good collaboration is to not order people in numbers by how "smart" they are, or what they're capable of doing. No one should be better than another because we all have flaws. It may seem nice to be number one in a list of people, but what about the last person? They'd feel insecure, and their self-esteem would drop, thinking that they're not "good" enough. We should all be equal. There shouldn't be leaders or followers in a group. We all have the feeling deep inside of us that wants to be better than everyone else, to be recognized as a leader of a group, but we can't let that overtake us.