Good Example Of Essay On Marshmallow Challenge

The underlying principle of the marshmallow challenge is to insinuate the context of teamwork and work together to achieve a common goal amidst the competition. The activity involves the team members working to create a structure out of the spaghetti sticks and marshmallows. The goal in the activity is to make the highest freestanding structure using only the given materials. It was a challenging task to begin with considering the limitations on the kind of materials to use. As a team member, my task is to contribute ideas in terms of planning how the structure should look like. The other team members took the role of managing the resources and ensure the optimization of the limited materials to create the highest possible structure. On the other hand, the professor oversees the activity and provides relevant pointers when necessary.
What’s very interesting about the activity is that it created a sense of competition between the groups in terms of two things, the group that finishes the fastest and the one that can create the best output. These two aspects of the activity became the main goal for the entire group. With the goals at hand, it fostered a sense of being able to work as a single unit where everyone do their part in order to succeed with the task. There was too much excitement because of the competition and it gave everyone an opportunity to show everyone’s best accomplishment. On the other hand, the activity also has its downside in terms limitations with time and materials, which created unnecessary pressure.
The concept of the marshmallow activity can be associated with the context of team performance, which takes emphasis on the two important aspects such as team viability or the likelihood that the team can work together in the future and team performance, which concerns about quality and quantity of the team output. Furthermore, the activity also emphasizes the concept of team process where the interaction between the team members became instrumental in achieving the common goal. This also involves team characteristics such as task independency, team size, resource management, member diversity, task delegation, and leadership. In relation to the marshmallow activity, the described aspects of team performance was simulated in the activity in terms of each member of the team contributing and communicating their ideas to the group in order to create a consensus, which is paramount in team decision-making.
There are several things learned from the activity that can be applied in the real world experiences. For example, working in a team requires the members to assume the roles that correspond to specific tasks that are regarded as important in the process of achieving goals. Enhancing leadership and communication skills are also considered as important outcome of the learning experience. Leadership is taking responsibility of the team and ensures that the conditions necessary for success are met. In the real world, the learning outcome from the activity is useful in future career in management because the job entails being a leader, a team player, and a catalyst for change and innovation. Furthermore, being in the management career involves effective communication, which was also enhanced through the activity. Lastly, I took the part of being a contributor of idea on how the spaghetti structure should take form in order to hold itself together, which when applied to the business world means being a creative innovator.