Why its important to connect, by Chris Karajanneh.

Hi all, my name is Chris. I'm a student from MCAST, and I have been working with Dutch students for the last couple of weeks. I would like to share with you my thoughts on why it is important to invest in connections and team-building.

The way I see it....as individuals, we all share the desire to embrace our work and express our ideas. However, we also share numerous fearful thoughts which will keep repeating themselves in our mind.

Hence, we often find ourselves thinking “This is a no go!” ... "I can't do or say this"...

“I am not capable of explaining my current thought”. Or “I do not think that my colleagues would want to hear me speaking”. Or “I will embarrass myself, it is best to stay quiet”

(ANXIETY INCREASING)

Anxiety often occurs in our decision-making process – It is effected by the way we think. Especially, when we are to be seen or heard in front of an unfamiliar audience. The good news is, when working within a team you can easily build good connections with colleagues through a couple of effective Team Bonding activities.

Hence, increasing familiarity and therefore accumulating team potential; Ideas and Recommendations.

Us students, from different countries and different interpersonal skills have connected with each other in minutes. With the power of a simple but effective activity Mr Zeljak planned for us.

Seriously, minutes!

The Team Building activity which has ice-broken our communication with each other was, what I like to call ‘The Never-Ending Dialog’.

Normally, the duration of a conversation between two people starting to get to know each other is 30 Seconds.

Our challenge was to multiple the normal conversational duration, resulting to THREE whole minutes of continuous speaking regarding a specific topic. Such as; when was your last time you ‘cried’ with laughter, and what caused it?

The following day until this day, we have worked together with high confidentiality and very minimum fear of expressing what is exactly on our mind. Regardless, of our imperfections and failures.

That's connection for you, right there.