The article, “Writing “Eyeball To Eyeball”: Building A Successful Collaboration” by Rebecca Ingalls discusses why collaboration among people is important. One of the reasons that Ingalls points out about the importance of collaboration is it gets you ready for the higher-stakes collaborative challenges you’ll face in the workplace. For example, careers such as education, architecture, or even engineering demonstrate work of collaboration. These fields collaborate in communicating with clients, bringing about positive change, and giving employees a voice. Collaboration is an important skill to learn especially as an adult as well as stepping into your field work.
Although Ingalls’s point is correct in that aspect, a question I have in mind is what if you’re stuck with a group that barely does anything? What if you’re stuck doing all the work? I believe that in this scenario collaboration wouldn’t be as pleasant as it seems. I can relate to this because when I was in grade school my teacher would assign group work and group projects. I would dread this because, in a lot of these cases, I would be stuck in a group that doesn’t do anything at all or does the bare minimum. I would be the only one who would pick up everyone’s slack in the project.
But, Ingalls made one point that can be helpful when it comes to collaboration. For instance, establishing a contract. I believe this is a great idea because everybody in the group will know what part they have to complete and say. With this everyone is satisfied with what they have to do and no member of the group feels overworked or they barely contribute to anything. Lastly, each member of the group can express their thoughts and ideas and bring them to the table.
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