It is a good starting point. We have been one of the leading teams for the first 3 rounds. What’s more, we have been formed a positive/encouraging micro- working environment. However, we clearly could do better by avoiding some mistakes. These lessons are more worthwhile to reflect on in order to transform our behaviors into more effective leadership/teamwork experiences. From my perspective, the group communication/discussions were not effective at all. The culprit behind was “self-limit” behaviors in the group decision process that were caused by different reasons.

First, the presence of some with expertise discouraged the team participation. When team member perceive that another member of the beam has expertise or is highly qualified to make a decision, they will self-limit1). During the group-decision to choose an oversea market for global expansion, other team members “naturally” minimized contributions to the discussion after VP of Marketing presented his opinions. More ironic was that the VP of Marketing did not have the expertise in reality, but was perceived by other members that he should have been with more related oversea market information given the setting in the simulation. So other VPs did not capture the related information to project the addressable market more precisely, which misdirected us into a relatively less promising market.

Second, the group decision process was disturbed by other responsibilities associated with the team members. Team members who are assigned with additional role may find good reason to self-limit as way of reducing overload/conflict. This was also a strong obstacle that negatively impacted the group discussions in my team. When someone called for discussion in terms of sales forecast, global market entry, etc., not every team member was fully focusing on the team exercise as they were overwhelmed by other