Forbidden Island Reflection Paper

The purpose of this paper is to analyze different team working experiences which emerged during the two rounds of the team game “Forbidden Island”. The experience of playing this collaboration game was overwhelming, and it gave us meaningful insights related to personal abilities and to team performance in general. Next sections of the paper contain the background information of the game and the team, analysis of team behaviour based on individual perception and based on the findings of organizational behaviour theories, and also provides a discussion on the consequences of this game, future modifications and the lessons which I should learn.
Background information
Forbidden Island is a visually stunning 'cooperative ' board game. Instead of winning by competing with other players like most games, everyone must work together to win the game. At the beginning of the term, the class was divided into several small-sized self-management teams that would be responsible to learn how to play Forbidden Island together under minimal supervision. Because this is the team that we will work together on different projects throughout the term, we have introduced ourselves to each other, but we had very limited knowledge about each other. This would be considered as our first stage of Tuckman 's stages of group development: forming. There are six members in my team. I will call them by J, B, O, P and K. Based on first impression and very little knowledge about their background, before the game, I had the following perception about the team members: J and B both are Asians, but growing up in Canada. I thought they were rational and assertive because they are from JD/MBA program, and law students are generally considered to have higher level of conscientiousness and emotional stability. P seemed very easy-going and agreeable, because she never showed any objection during our previous conversations. O was comparably quiet during our first meeting, so I made the assumption that