Critical Incident - Nayef's Natufit Pitch

The objective of this post is to deploy a critical reflection upon an episode of our Residential Weekend, where we shared a common feeling and, as a group, wanted to learn and get the best out of one of the members that until that point was not fully engaged into the activities. I will use the the Learning Cycle Model of Reflection to organize and better expose my ideas.
Bibliography

The residential weekend provided the group the opportunity to get to know each other and spend time together performing a lot of team building activities where every member would have to be exposed and get out of it’s own comfort zone to represent the team.

Since myself and Adesola had already made our share on public speaking activities, Martin and Nayef were the only one’s eligible for the next task, which was to perform a pitch to win rights to explore a new country with the Natufit product. That task would evaluate one’s ability to speak in public with time pressure (within two minutes) and competitor’s, evaluate the group's ability to build the speech and align the messages as well as provide constructive feedback to the speaker after the first attempt.

As appointed on a personality test, Nayef is an Introverted, and was eligible for the task. As Martin and I were fully focused in writing the speech and defining our strategy, I realized that Nayef was not paying attention as he was more concerned about being picked by the staff than being prepared and contributing to fully understand the groups approach for the speech in case he was selected. It was obvious, the facilitator's perceived that and Nayef ended up being picked to perform the pitch. 

Well, the speech came significantly different than what we planned, since Nayef was completely blocked to understand what we were proposing as his fear to be picked took over his mind. I experienced that before and understand his reactions. It was clear that he was not comfortable with the speech because it was not on his words, as well as he was not comfortable with his performance and his competitors watching him perform right beside him.

Although the group had the opportunity to change the speaker for the second trial, we provided Nayef with constructive feedback. During this conversation he explained his frustration with his performance and made it clear that it was affected by his concern for being the one selected to take the pitch.


With that in mind, as a group, we decided that he should do it again, so he could gain extra confidence and perceive that the group not only supported him, but trusted on his capability to do it.
He not only accepted it, but asked us some time off to think on his own strategy and words to take the second trial. Although I did not agree with that exemption from the next task to redo his speech, I was sure that this behavior had a logical explanation and we all agreed to give him the space needed.

According to (Myers, McCaulley, Quenk, & Hammer, 1998) those who prefer introversion prefer to reflect, then act, then reflect again. To rebuild their energy, introverts need quiet time alone, away from activity. And this is exactly what happened, Nayef spent time by himself writing his own words and concentrating for the next trial. 

The dots connected even more after we took personality tests and answered to Kolb's Learning Cycle questionnaires. We found out that not only our personalities but our learning styles were very different and yet complementary to each other.

It does make sense if we take in consideration our great diversity: we all came from different countries and have different professional and personal backgrounds. 

According to (Brainmac, 2011), Adesola is a PRAGMATIC, she's always ready to work and very down to earth, so doesn't matter the task, she likes to go straight to execution and put things in practice. 

Martin and I are ACTIVISTs, we need different and new experiences and deep challenges to keep us motivated and engaged, so we were having a blast during the entire weekend with a wide variety of activities. Nayef, in the other hand is a REFLECTOR and needs to observe the group to form his own perceptions as well as draw his own conclusions over reflection on past experiences.

With that in mind it was obvious that Nayef would not perform as we all expected, including himself, since he did not take a important role during the discussion for the speech (he was not comfortable with the content), it was not written in his own words (reflectors need that) and he was supposed to perform a role-play, which according to Kolb's learning styles, is when reflectors do not get their best out.

To conclude, Nayef took his time off to write down his own speech based on the groups ideas and feedbacks. He spent the next hour by himself quiet for the second trial.
As a result, Nayef had a great performance, which was recognized not only by us, but by members of other teams. Nayef not only felt more confident about his role in the group and completely changed his behavior by participating with more energy on the future tasks, but the whole group thrilled with the feeling of achievement, of being a unit, a team, where supportive behaviour would strengthen our laces up for furthers tasks and assignments.

As a reference for this event, I recorded a video in which Martin is explainig Nayef the structure of the speech that both of us developed during the five minutes we had to write it, when Nayef could not place focus due to his concern to be picked.

Brainmac. (2011, November 24). Learnstyle. Retrieved March 30, 2012, from Brainmac Sports Coach: http://www.brianmac.co.uk/learnstyle.htm

Mumford, A. (1997). How to manage your learning environment. Peter Honey Publications.