"

Chapter Review

Key Takeaways

  • Lifelong learning is the ongoing, voluntary, and self-motivated pursuit of knowledge for either personal or professional reasons. Lifelong learning is a workplace necessity for most employees.
  • Employability skills are the skills you need to enter, stay in, and progress in the world of work, whether you work on your own or as part of a team. Some of the most important employability skills you will need are the ability to work well with others, be a productive team member, and communicate well with others.
  • The SQ4R reading system is designed to help you study your textbook and apply reading and notetaking skills. The letters in SQ4R stand for five steps: survey, question, read, reflect, recite, and review.
  • Learning styles refer to the different methods of learning or understanding new information, the way a person takes in, understands, expresses and remembers information. There are four predominant learning styles: Visual, Auditory, Read/Write, and Kinaesthetic.
  • Your GPA score (Grade Point Average) is a cumulation of the grades across the courses throughout your program. To graduate, your institution will have a minimum GPA score you must achieve, and should you wish to further your education in the future, your GPA score may factor into whether or not you will be accepted for enrollment at specific colleges or universities.
  • Academic integrity is a commitment to acting with honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility in academic work and studies.
  • A citation style dictates the information necessary for a citation and how the information is ordered, as well as punctuation and other formatting. Popular citation styles such as APA and MLA provide guidelines to authors on how to format documents for professionalism, for crediting other people’s words and ideas via citations and references to avoid plagiarism, and for describing other people using inclusive, bias-free language.
  • The book entitled “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” written by Stephen R. Covey, is based on Covey’s belief that the way we see the world is entirely based on our own perceptions. In order to change a given situation, we must change ourselves, and in order to change ourselves, we must be able to change our perceptions. The 7 Habits are: 1) Be proactive, 2) Begin with the end in mind, 3) Put first things first, 4) Think win-win, 5) Seek first to understand, then to be understood, 6) Synergize, and 7) Sharpen the saw.
  • Time management is the practice of planning and controlling how you use your time to be more productive and efficient. It involves prioritizing tasks, setting deadlines, and avoiding distractions. The goal of time management is to complete important tasks on time while also balancing your personal, professional, and academic responsibilities.
  • Stress is a physical, mental, and emotional response to a difficult event. Stress management offers a range of ways to help you better deal with stress and difficulty in your life.
  • Students can gain work experience while studying through volunteering, internships, co-op placements, freelance projects, experiential course projects, leadership opportunities, participating in workshops and lab sessions, getting involved in student-run businesses or start-ups, and utilizing online platforms to learn new skills.
  • Business etiquette is a type of social and business behaviour that team members (whether at school or work) are expected to exhibit. It includes how people communicate, dress, and conduct themselves in meetings and social events.
  • Professionalism is a broad concept that includes a person’s attitude, work ethic, and conduct. It also involves being punctual, dressing appropriately, and having a positive attitude. Business etiquette is a key component of professionalism.
  • A team is a group of people with certain skills who share a common purpose, approach, and performance goals. There are seven characteristics teams share: clear leadership, defined goals, assigned roles, open communication, collaboration, trust, and conflict resolution.
  • Task-facilitating roles help the team accomplish goals.
  • Relationship-building roles help team members understand their roles, support them in their roles, and maintain or improve group cohesiveness.
  • Teams are a critical aspect of business. A team is a group of people with certain skills who share a common purpose, approach, and performance goals.
  • Team cohesion is the strength and extent of interpersonal connection existing among the members of a group. It is this interpersonal bond that causes members to participate readily and remain motivated to accomplish the set goals.
  • Team skills needed for success include communication skills, technical skills, decision-making and problem-solving skills, and interpersonal skills.
  • Team conflict is the breakdown of interpersonal relationships between members of a team. Common reasons for team conflict include misunderstandings or poor communication skills; differing opinions, viewpoints, or personalities; biases and stereotypes; variations in learning and processing styles; and perceptions of unfairness. Resolve conflicts by seeking to understand the other person and moving toward win-win outcomes.
  • Factors that erode team performance include groupthink, lack of motivation and frustration, unwillingness to cooperate, lack of managerial support, and failure of managers to delegate authority.

Download the “Chapter in Review” for
Chapter 1: Habits for Business Success and Teamwork [PDF].

End-of-Chapter Exercises

  1. Learning Style. What’s your learning style? Take this Learning Style Quiz to find out.  Which learning style was your dominant one? Were you surprised by the results? Discuss with a partner and/or your professor how you will modify your methods for learning and studying so that you incorporate your dominant learning style.
  2. Employability Skills. Download the Conference Board of Canada Employability Skills Toolkit. Do you have these skills? Which skills do you need to build? How will you do this? Discuss with a partner and/or your professor.
  3. Student Support. Research your institution’s student services and support.  Can you locate support for test taking?  Can you locate support for math tutoring?  Can you locate support for the services you require to aid you in being successful in your studies? Discuss what you learned with a partner and/or professor.
  4. APA Formatting. Test your APA style knowledge. Complete one of these quizzes: APA Style Quiz, PennState APA Quiz, St. Thomas APA Quiz, or NIC APA Quiz. Your professor may ask you to share your results.
  5. Academic Integrity. Search your college’s or university’s website and locate the Academic Integrity (Academic Honesty) policy.  What surprised you about the policy?  Was there information in the policy you were not aware of? Discuss the sanctions that may occur should you be in breach of the academic integrity policy with a partner and/or your professor.
  6. 7 Habits. Which of the “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” have you been practicing recently? Share an example of each with a partner and/or your professor.  Listen to the ways in which others are putting these habits into action.
  7. Mindfulness. Do you want to know how mindful you are? Take this Mindfulness Quiz to find out. How can you build mindfulness into your daily routine? Discuss with a partner and/or your professor what you discovered.
  8. Time Management Skills. Visit the Skills You Need website and take this Quiz or the Brain Manager website and take this Quiz to find out. Do you find you procrastinate? Do you find you often run out of time? Maybe you are not managing your time as wisely as you should. What did you learn from taking the quiz?  How can you manage your time better in the future to reduce stress and accomplish tasks by their due dates? Discuss this with a partner and/or your professor.
  9. Using a Calendar. Use Google Calendar, your school’s calendar, and your own personal calendar to review each of your courses for assessment due dates. Record each of these assessments in your calendar.  Schedule study time in your calendar as well.  If you work, include work time in your calendar.  Also, add appointments, events, and other obligations you may have.  Review the calendar one week at a time and determine which tasks you need to prioritize and how much time you need to spend to complete each task. If you need help with managing your time, contact a learning specialist at your institution. Show your calendar to a partner and/or share your calendar with your professor or a learning strategist at your school, and gather their feedback.
  10. Business Etiquette. Observe others in your college or university. What bothers you about the things other people do? Make a list and limit it to 10 items. Discuss the pet peeves you and your classmates have with a partner, the class, or your professor. Then, try to determine what you can do to improve your personal business etiquette.  You may even want to create a “classroom guidelines” list that all students in the class will follow to ensure professional behaviour and good business etiquette.
  11. Team Building Exercise. Conduct an Internet search to locate team-building exercises. Locate one you think you could do with a team of four peers. Form a team, or your professor might assign teams. Try the exercise. As a team, pair up with another team and guide them through your team-building exercise, then let them guide you through theirs. Did you have fun? What did you learn? Share your experience with your class and/or professor.
  12. Team Player Quiz. What type of team player are you?  Try taking this Quiz to find out. Review the results to determine how your team player style can better interact with other styles when working on teams. Share your findings with your team and/or professor.
  13. Team Player Job Interview Questions. Review this Indeed article about how to answer team player questions during a job interview. Partner with a peer and practice asking each other some of these questions; it’s good practice for when the day comes that you will be in a real job interview.
  14. Personal SWOT Analysis. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Download this Personal SWOT analysis worksheet [PDF] and complete it as you consider your teamwork skills. Do you think there will be opportunities for personal growth through working on a team?  With a partner, discuss your SWOT analysis and theirs.  Make suggestions to each other on how you might overcome some threats and how you might take advantage of opportunities when working in teams.
  15. Teamwork Example. Search the Internet and locate examples of how various organizations get work done in teams. What did you find?  Pick one specific company and share your findings with your class and/or professor.

Self-Check Exercise: Teams Quiz

Check your understanding of this chapter’s concepts by completing this short self-check quiz.

Self-Check Exercise: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Flash Cards)

To complete this exercise, you may need to do a little research on The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:

  1. Be proactive. Control your environment rather than have it control you.
  2. Begin with the end in mind. Envision the desired outcome and concentrate on activities that help in achieving it.
  3. Put first things first. Manage time and effort so that the required tasks are prioritized.
  4. Think win-win. Co-operative effort, so there are no losers.
  5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Listen to others first, let them know they have been heard before you speak.
  6. Synergize. People cooperating can often achieve more than one person could alone.
  7. Sharpen the saw. Take time to think, learn, and analyze.

Additional Resources

Attributions

This chapter compiles content from various Open Educational Resources (OER). For details, please refer to the Attributions page.

License

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Understanding Business Copyright © 2025 by Conestoga College is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book