Jingyue,
If I take out Steve's comments, the message is the same from the other two team members. If the perceived effort/contribution differs from your self-evaluation, then a good next step is to reexam how you make your participation known. I think you already sense this issue.
I would qualify your mentor's advice for different contexts. I am especially sensitive to the cultural differences. For a western team, speaking up is expected, it's an indication of interest and engagement. When I recently gave a presentation at the Korean Red Cross, when I got to the question and answer time, no one asked a question. I had forgotten that in the Korean business culture, silence does not mean people don't have important things to ask and say, they are waiting for you to call on them and ask what they think. That is the polite process. In American culture, there is often a scramble to get your question or comment in (witness the US political press conference.) Context matters.
Being sensitive to context means adapting your approach to the situation. So your challenge is: how will you change your team approach when doing work with western participants?
Ed
On Tue, Apr 28, 2020 at 6:09 PM Jingyue Cheng <jingyuec@umich.edu> wrote:
Ed,
Thanks for sending me my teammate's notes to me; I appreciate constructive criticism.
I would respectfully ask you to reconsider some of Steve's notes on my performance during this project. I believe some of these criticisms of me are greatly exaggerated to some degree. I would just like to clarify the following points:
- I did not miss many meetings, and definitely not the first one.
- I did not ask any team members to make up my work; I did everything assigned to me, myself.
Some of these issues arise from my own language problems, and due to some misunderstanding it is difficult for me to participate verbally to the same degree as other members. But I am trying my best to perform to your classroom's standards and learn from my peers as much as possible.
A mentor once told me that a quiet voice does not equal less value to a team. I try to keep my value to my team, but it is in my nature to be more introverted when in groups. It does not mean that I'm not willing to participate or contribute to the project, or reflect my attitude towards the task at hand.
Thank you,
Jingyue
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