Arctic Survival

While our team was composed of completely different preference types (as classified by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), we believe that such varying opinions led to our group’s success in the Subarctic Survival Simulation. In fact, our group boasted the highest team percentage change in the activity—43 percent. The team percentage change represents the improvements made in the ranking of survival tools through our team’s discussion from our individual assessments. The change shows how the group’s gain score (24.4) relates to the average individual score (56.4). Additionally, our gain score was the highest in the class, further showing the strengths of our teamwork during the survival simulation.
When assessing the overall effectiveness of our discussion, our team score of 32 must also be considered—it was tied with Team 5 for the lowest in the class, while our average individual score of 56.4 was second in the class ranking. When we compare our team’s average individual score to the best individual score on our team (30), we see that there is a significant difference. Clearly there was one team member who was more in-line with the expert rankings of the survival tools than the rest of the team. This difference of 26.4 points was by far the greatest spread in the class. When looking at this spread along with our team’s percentage change, we may also conclude that this person made a positive impact on our discussions by helping to improve the team’s overall score.
Although we had such a knowledgeable team member, that person did not dominate our group’s conversation. Every team member was able to speak freely and to voice his or her ideas and concerns. During the meeting, we discussed which strategy we wanted to follow (whether to stay at the crash site or to attempt to make the trek to Schefferville). This lively debate led to a C-type conflict. In “Conflict: An Important Dimension in Successful Management Teams,” Allen Amason et al., state that,