Miscommunication

Hi everyone,

Hope you like the cartoon strips, just came across them when I searched for miscommunication.

As we learnt in class, the key reason that causes miscommunication is because we fail to apply the 7Cs of effective communication. I would like to share this experience where I felt that me and team members failed to apply the aspect of coherence in our communication with our professor.

This semester I am doing an engineering core module that is 100% project based. A team of 8 members are grouped together to create a new product as a representative of a MNC company. We have a professor who is our supervisor and we meet him once a week to keep him updated on our project. Since there are 5 IA (industrial attachment) students in our group it is rather difficult for us to meet him during normal school timings. However the professor was accommodative in the timings and allowed us to meet him in the evenings. However, on one occasion when none of the team could make it for the meeting we mailed to ask a change of date to Tuesday early morning for the following week. However, he had replied on Thursday that week, that he would be able to meet us on Friday at 6pm. Our grouped was ok with the timing and prepared for the meeting that was to be held on Friday the following week. However on Friday on the present week we received a mail from him saying he was waiting for a long time and we never showed up. Hence it was natural for him to be angry with us. However, my team had assumed the meeting to be on the following Friday since we had initially asked for a Tuesday meeting for the following week. We were lucky since this professor is a rather understanding person and hence no harm was done, I feel that it was a good lesson for me and my team members. Since then we put in the exact date and day of the meetings in all our mails.

Cheers,
Keerth