No, I do not own a firm. Sike! I'm a student...
My B. Tech class is participating in an office simulation project, with us being the director and the second year class being the staff. We each have 7 'employees' in our 'firms'. This is a particularly interesting project.
LEADERSHIP
Not only does this assignment develop our leadership skills but it puts on display what kind of leaders we already are, inherently. It is interesting to find out whether one is an authoritative, bureaucratic, or egalitarian leader. The response from the 'staff' generally is an indicator of what type of leader one is. Judging from the response from my team so far, I am leaning towards being the EgalitarianDemocratic Leader. It is not unusual to find half of my team merrily CADing away 15 minutes into the set crit time, without a fret in the world.
However, taking these negatives to the chin is worth the positives. One has to take the good with the bad because nurturing a creative, healthy, and productive environment is key to maintaining a great working atmosphere. If you look at it from a more positive stance though, my staff is late because they want to present the best possible work instead of leaving silly mistakes be. So far my team has been responding greatly to the project. They are enthused by the learning they are doing from doing their own research and comparing notes among themselves. They live to find out whether or not they interpreted and drew correctly whilst also eager to learn how something is actually drawn. Overall, they are interactive.
GROUP MEMBER TYPES
Now just as there are different types of leaders there are also different types of members in any group. The natural unfolding of assignment of roles in a group is there will generally be two personalities who establish themselves as leaders. We then have the member who diffuses conflicts and keeps everyone on topic. The third type is the pessimist who constantly shoots down ideas and has none to present, themselves. The last is the member who does not contribute in terms of ideas but wants to get to grinding as soon as consensus is reached, they work efficiently and diligently. This type is great to have in any and every group. The last is the type that wants to find out all the parameters and necessities so they can work within those, sort of bureaucratic.
Now I do not have all of these types in my group but I do have the leader, social lubricator, two grinders (mind out of the gutter...thanks), three bureaucrats, and then there's the guy who has not yet caught onto the 'group-think', and that is all I am willing to say on that. It is a great balance and my challenge as the leader is not to provide direction...let that sink in.
No, what a leader is supposed to do is help unlock the potential of each individual and then stitch the efforts together. Leading simply leads to everyone in your team doing things your way and the goal is not to have clones of yourself. Diversity is always better than monotony.
I do not know for certain if my leadership style is the best but it is the best for me and my personality. I avidly wait on the next crit session to help my team learn something new from every member's work and the odd occasion that I, too, learn something. Not only in terms of detailing or anything to do with drawing but leadership, people skills, and the like.
I am not one to follow cookie-cutter structures, as evidenced by my introducing myself at the very end in my first post. Speaking of Introductions...
We are tasked with looking at contemporary residences in South Africa and then producing technical CAD drawings for said house. So we chose House Duk in Limpopo by Architect Nico Van Der Muelen. It has been a challenge trying to first figure out the materiality of the building, it has taken 2 whole weeks just to do that and we are just beginning to brainstorm on the possible technologies the architect's firm may have employed to stitch the materials together.
Beautiful Architecture littered with technical details from the staircase, to it's skylights, to the false massing and trickery of material use (by Jove it took us so long to discern this...sigh)
So how long did it take you to figure out that the weight of the staircase is supported by the glass? Yeah marvel at your ignorance...just kidding.
This project is designed to help the second years familiarize themselves with lightweight construction and for us, the B. Techs, to learn how to handle projects and manage staff in an office, It is prudent to assign drawings to team members according to their abilities and strengths but it is also important to make sure that each member gets assigned drawings to do that will contribute to their learning about lightweight construction and how to detail its connections. To achieve this, I have ensured everyone in the team is doing a drawing where they are cutting through something.
I look forward to uploading the final result of what the drawings done by the whole team looks like. Adieu! Kude kubelixesha elizayo...ciao.
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