Reflective Essay on Team Building Skills

Reflective Essay on Team Building SkillsWriting a reflection is comparable to that of victimisation a Pensive, in the direction of reliving the already lived experience with the target of erudition from the past matters to enhance future performances. This reflection volition most practice (Gibbs,1988) Reflective Cycle. First full stop depart begin with a description of what happened, followed by feelings approximately that event or experience, further evaluating and analysing towards arriving at a conclusion along with making of an action plan for execute in a more(prenominal) efficient manner if a akin situation arises in the future.To begin with, in our course Managing Organization and People, Our professor helped forming the squads by a structured process, he besides encouraged to run the ice between the team members, by making us do a precise exciting team conformationing activity. Soon after, we were briefed about the incase study on decision making the job wa s to shop a presentation on the stipulation case.My team comprised of 5 members, and 4 members out of flipper were from the similar country and common native language, I was the ane who added country diversity to our team. Since some other(prenominal) four members sh atomic number 18d one common native language, with English as their second language, it appeared to me that they will be more comfortable communicating in their first language sooner than English, which was our course language.In our first meeting we had dialog around the over-all plan, which we will follow to procure the goal of making our presentation. Division of the parturiencys was done, only in that respect was no concrete discussion over how we as a team would check if individuals work is aligning with the overall schema or not.I was feeling confident to spend a penny a team with dedicated and complaisant members, although few concerns were there, which arose after our first group meeting. The conc erns were, communication, trust, fear of skirmish, drawship.At the at disposeant meeting the worries turned out to be true, instead of progressing we were in withdraw motion. The other four members preferred interacting in their first language preferably than our course language not just this, simply also everyone had a different point of fool concerning the most essential question of the case study, we were asked to state organizations problem and opportunities clearly, but no one was ready to stick out others view point, dissatisfaction was fumed and question was left unanswered.Other than Professors first team edifice activity, no other such activity was performed to better build the bloods and trust amongst the team members. In the absence of a strong confederation between team members, we couldnt debate plentiful about how we will decompose this state of disagreement and if a leader was needed to facilitateand direct us in such circumstances. The b correctly side w as that in terms of accountability, commitment, answer orient come our team seemed standing strong.I felt unruffled uncomfortable in this situation and tried taking the step of simplifying things by making everyone indulge in talks and making them to participate more. To lull the situation, we decided that everyone will stick to the chosen parts and at brook we will add individual work to arrive at a better collective result.The situation was very challenging, but taking a call of not interfering in each others work bowl we complete, seemed the best possible way to avoid disagreements. However, the study by (Clark Clark, 2015) be that team with better individual skills can be outperformed by team with more synergy, and in absence of synergy it was implied that our teams productivity was not termination to be the optimum.It is often claimed that by engaging in team create any group can transform itself into a high-performing team (S hairgripr Egan, 1996 as cited in Riene r Wiederhold, 2016) and the study by (Riener Wiederhold, 2016) conclude that members who engage in team building tasks give better efforts than who dont. Whereas our team never positioned team building activities in high brilliance ranking. We should assimi deep engaged in more team building to help us develop a skinny bonding. It was a major step missed by our team for act out as a high performing team.Advancing to other key interconnected issues related to team structure were Self-managed or leader driven, which best suited us.Avoiding arguments or shaping them to healthy discussions.Well defined by (Phillips, 2001) Whether a team is leader driven or independent higher aim of productivity and greater results are desired in a team, we as a team had the same goals of achieving higher direct of productivity and our team was a independent team with no leader present, I think with the type of team mix we had, there was a leader required to reduce the differences between tea m members to help us in achieving higher productivity.Discussing more about a leader and importance of a leader in team, as stated by (Hamlin Jennings, 2007) leadership influence both the mode of interaction and outcome of these interactions, therefore, in straw man of a leader with right approach, our team interactions which were whirling as continuous arguments, could have been shaped to fruitful debates, instead of it our arguments were gradually shaping to conflicts, again the big question conflicts are helpful or obstructive for a teams productivity. There have been different views on this,The Study by (De Dreu Weingart, 2003) tells that conflicts adds tensions, increases commotion and troubles between team members, therefore they should be treated as obstructions in any teams progress. Whereas, the study by (Amason, 1996, Cited by Brockmann, 1996)has a different view anddivides conflicts into two types. Type one is cognitive conflict, which aims at issues, ideas or proc ess, it is overbearing and useful for a team, whereas the second type is affective conflict which aims at people, emotions and values, it is harmful to a team and is destructive conflict.As a self-directed team, when we were not able to manage conflicts, a leader with positive influencing approach was required to route our teams destructive conflicts in direction of cognitive conflicts and we could have better responded to the case study question of stating organizations problem and opportunity.(Claus Langfred, 2007) suggested that Self-managing teams when cannot manage conflicts tend to reform themselves in an inefficient structure, and with higher conflicts the trust level decreases. It was substantially reflected in our response to conflict, we decided to work on individual tasks without a good deal interference and with greater autonomy we built a greater level of trust.Trust is a crucial factor for team performance (Erdem, 2003, cited by Aki Mila, 2012) and with the develo ped trust we started performing slightly better. Cooperation followed by trust is what we gained next, which also resolved the perception of imbalanced diversity that I had in my mind. (Mitchell Boyle, 2015) concluded that Professional diversity could be good for innovation if team members have nakedness, Though initially, I was bit concerned that our team is not very diverse as all members except me were from the same culture and same language group, which was different from our course language, but later I realize that we all were very diverse in our professional experiences and fields with openness to suggestions, creative thinking did prosper in our team and after divisions of task and developed trust, team members were very cooperative and communicated in English only.The five characteristics of a dysfunctional team stated in (Lencioni, 2010) are neediness of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, inattention to results, we were able to ove rcome four out of five characteristics by having a team with trust, commitment, result oriented approach and accountable members but we could never reach a stage of having a healthy conflict. We knew our presentation was not going to be the best, but it was time to feel motivated and deliver our finest with the available resources.ConclusionIf given a chance to go back to the time, when teams were formed, definitely I will make the team indulge in more team building activities for achieving a greater bonding, which would have further helped us to sensibly handle and shape the conflicts into cognitive conflicts. Although, every member of the team worked with dedication and commitment, but we failed to understand the importance of synergy, thats how collective effort could have helped us to accomplish the given task with distinction. Our team achieved the required coordination, trust, communication, but we were too late to reap the benefit of these gears, so time management is one ano ther important aspect we missed at.Action PlanThis team jump out experience is one key asset that will help me in future to grip better the alike situations, and being a traffic student such teamwork situations will certainly come again in my professional career. Learnings which I have gained from this experience are that when working in a team conflicts are essential for success, but only if teams are mature enough to be self-managed or there is a right leader appointed who can shape conflicts in a positive direction to help teams achieving the synergy. which is the most desired element of team performances. Therefore, I will never shy away from such situation preferably I will take first move to make team talk about it.ReferencesAki, S., Mila, H. (2012). Building Trust in High-Performing Teams. 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