Two Skills I Learned from My Core Team

As my second semester here at Fisher is starting to ramp up, I set some time apart to reflect on some of the lessons I learned during my first semester and more specifically that I learned with my core team.  During the first semester, we got paired up with some of our classmates based on many factors like personality traits, skills, and background. We had the chance to work together on a couple of different projects from case competitions to accounting projects.

I believe to have been lucky and got paired with some awesome people who regardless of our many differences were able to form strong bonds and dive deep into the learning process that business school is. Below I am listing some of the skills which I believe I developed thanks to them.

Listening

Many times throughout my life I have had the chance to work alongside a team. But out of all those times, none of the tasks at hand were as complex as the projects we have done so far in school. These projects forced us to navigate through compiled information together but also to be able to think out loud and flush out our ideas together. By doing this I learned that it is best to question people and really listen to their reasoning. This way we can find any loopholes in our train of thought learned from each other’s experiences, and overall come to better conclusions and find common ground for a project.

Transparent Communication

As I mentioned before, some of the projects we worked on were complex and therefore required a bigger time commitment from all of us. This meant meeting late at night, early in the morning, or simply on days were each one of us had a lot on our plate. By communicating what our expectations were during a meeting and bringing attention to some of the things that were not work-related, we were able to work efficiently. Sharing some of these things allowed us to build trust within our team and be more understanding of each other. If one of us was not in the best mindset, we could simply pick up some of each other’s work and give the other person some room to work on less material.

Overall, while there is still a lot of room for improvement in both soft and hard skills, transparent communication and active listening were two of the main things that helped our team be successful and build on the relationship we had while also being able to complete our work. Fisher College of Business puts a lot of thought into building these teams; my hope is that by working your way through different program applications you consider the big impact teamwork has on your professional development and consider Ohio State as a great place to develop this skill.