Exploring Service User Perspectives And The Role Of Health And Social Care Professionals In The UK

Analysis

Conflict Management

Conflict happens where there are contradictory & divergent interests & it’s a usual part of the team & group existence (Schwarz, Davidson, Carlson & McKinney, 2005). Mostly people put efforts so that conflict can be avoided. However, if it can be assumed that conflicts are the normal part of the team life & it is significant to deliberate how these conflicts can be managed. Healthy conflicts are “focused on task problems, genuine dissimilarities in opinions regarding the work, variances in perspectives & values, & different prospects regarding the effect of decisions.

Whereas unhealthy conflicts are regarding competition over resources, rewards & power; conflicts amongst group & personnel goals; badly run meetings with team; past personal grudges, & broken communications (ACAS, 2011). Conflicts changes over a group’s development. Primarily there are fewer conflicts & then there are conflicts over status issues, roles & norms. When the team concentrated on work, there are conflicts on how the task should be competed (Tuckman, Bruce & Jensen, 2007).  

There were many conflicts which took place in our team; majorly these were the healthy conflicts. Most of the conflicts were over legitimate differences of opinions regarding the work, differences in perspectives & values, & different expectations about the influence of decision. On few events there were tensions in the group when individuals were concentrating on their own solutions & apparently not eager to contemplate substitutes. There were few paths in which these problems were fixed (Belbin, 2010). One way that tension of conflicts were reduced were that time passed & members of the members of the team (possibly after doing some reflections) were okay to drop their ideas & be open to deliberate other ideas. The other method which actually appeared to assist on the spot was to shift the focus from solutions to interests & ask the individuals of the team to enlighten their intent & reasoning behind the solution they were supporting (Muchinsky, 2007).

I also observed that there were few conflicts over power. The leader that we appointed for the team was quite directive in her language & often she used the authoritative voice. This was a challenge for me (it applied for the other three as well). I found myself retorting & getting defensive & this caused certain tensions in one of the assemblies. The way of working was quite different from the way I used to work, particularly in a group where all were considered as equally contributing (Gopee & Galloway, 2017).

Group Process

As per researchers there are various kinds of powers: soft or personal power & harsh or positional power (Mullins, 2010). Harsh or positional power originates from the official position of a person in the company.  Soft power is derived from the characteristics or personality of an individual & comprises of referent, information & expert power (Barr & Dowding, 2012). The maximum effective power use is when the members in the team are provided with more control & power over their work & is known as empowerment. Employees that are a part of empowered jobs have higher motivation & job satisfaction; they have higher confidence in their capability of performing the task (Brooks, 2011).

As per my views the leadership in our team was less facilitative & more autocratic, I felt that my perspectives were given less respect & also less motivated to contribute. In one of the situation while working in the team, I felt that the leader of our group had intent of taking the decisions & providing directions in the motive of gaining efficiency (which is an implication). She even had not explained her thinking, nor was consultation taken by her with the team to see if there were opposing ideas or views. For taking a small decision it had not mattered much. However, few decisions that were taken were like which created an impact on the complete team. I observed that sometimes the language was unilateral or perhaps even strongly directive in nature which resulted in reduced motivation & energy in the group (Kenneth, 2012).

Later, when the group discussed several of our processes, we discovered that the reason for such expression was the contribution of the culture & possibly was not intended the way I initially thought. In her mother language & country, it was common expressing things in the authoritative although significant how it’s been said. About this state in my own reflection, I discovered that I was making high level inferences because of the application of language & did not test my inferences. As an outcome I reacted defensively & there were unintentional negative outcomes which impacted motivation & energy in the group (CIPD, 2011).  

Decision Making

The decisions made with the complete group are superior to the decisions made by an individual, when the resources of the group are combined to solve an issue or take decisions.

The decisions by the groups are made better by sharing resources when the group has diverse point of views, good communication & problems or tasks which are too complex for a person to handle (Huczynski & Buchanan, 2013).

Conflict Management

There are various approaches team can rely on to take decisions. Mostly there are three main approaches that a group can utilize for decision making: consensus, democratic or consultative. These ranges from decision made with full team participation to those made by the leaders. In constructive decision making style, the leader consults with the teams & then makes the decisions (Henwood, 2014). In democratic decision making style there is the rule of voting with majority and in consensus decision making style the participation is full. It is significant to adopt the decision making rule which develops the commitment level that is required. The chief standard for selecting a decision making approach are acceptance, speed & quality (Gersick, 2008).

In our group, decision making was mainly taken by consensus. Sometimes when there was a time constraint or when decisions were simple, consultative decisions making approach was adopted. A particular instance was when the project draft was ready, the group decided that I’ll be doing a final run through the check for connectedness & flow & then I will be handing it over to the other people of the group for final formatting & editing (Lawson, 2009). Then, if the person doing the final formatting & editing had any question and she had time, she can call me & check. Once the final copy is completed, she’ll be sending it to the complete team for a speedy review. This appeared to work well for the condition, except for the team member who was absent from two of the meetings, she felt like, she wanted to contribute more (Smith & Berg, 2012).

Intra-Team Dynamics

As per my view point, the intra-team dynamics of our team comprised the components of feedback, empowerment, full participation, trust, open communication & support (though a team member was absent from two of the meetings, but she provided her complete support and she was available over phone). Though in starting the trust level was not too high since we didn’t knew each other much & had not worked together, so there was interdependency & dependency was little. But there was an interest to perform the best possible, willingness to fully participate & openness to learn. As we started trusting each other, we also started to empower each other to handle the responsibilities for our individual tasks. This empowerment resulted in greater interdependency & a higher intellect of group accomplishment & identity (Adair, 2013).

Decision Making

Inter-Team Dynamics

As per my judgment, the degree of inter-team dynamics was not too high. Some of the members of the team seldom reported on what other teams were doing in their projects. Since our work was quite different from the rest of the groups, this affected a bit of hesitancy in our team. However, we kept staying on our track that we have chosen. I also didn’t notice any negative intention or attitudes or overt competition with rest of the teams. Though there was no clear sense of having competitions, the only presence of other groups seems to be a fundamental motivation to make higher efforts to execute effectively, particularly when it reached to the classroom presentations (Ellis & Barch, 2014).

Leadership

It is the process by which an individual influences the progress of a group towards achieving an objective that is not essentially resting with just one individual. When a leader is elected or rotated, they generally have restricted power & work majorly to ease the group process.  

The teams where a single leader is not designated, then there is an option of having self-managed teams (Belbin, 2013). In such teams there is no particular leader with authority & decisions are taken by consensus. The leader serves to facilitate the process of decision making rather than team management (Mullins, 2016).

As a measure of our initial planning, there was mostly a nominal role of the leader, and the actual team working fits more into classification of self-managing team. According to tasks the leadership was also transferred. If a person had a keen interest in a task, then she was given the responsibility to complete it or at least providing a draft, so that rest of the group can review. There was an intellect of mutual accountability, responsibility & purpose that was taken seriously by each of the team members & had resulted in having a positive impact on the team morale (Levi, 2007).

Challenging facets of working as a project team

One of the utmost challenging sides of working with others on a project was handling the stages of forming & storming, where the individuals in the group had lack of clarity regarding the goals & roles & we were not familiarize with each of the group members. It became more challenging when conflicts situation raised & we didn’t had the guidance of grounded rules & principal beliefs of the approach of a skilled facilitator & inclined to function in a more independent way.

My Role as the Member of the Group

I consider role for me was serving to facilitate the group process and also offering alternative analysis & perspectives on the facets of content. Though initially I was quite shy and anxious, when I got to know I need to work with others at a team. However, over the period of time, this anxiety & nervousness was vanished and I started feeling confident. In one of the instances, I was asked to lead a topic in project, it was quite challenging for me because the intent of the other team members was to just complete their tasks, whereas my intent was to focus on process. I tried to view that each fellow of the group had an opportunity to be heard if they want to present their opinion. I again became little anxious & felt a little pressure to provide an orientation to the task to the group members, but then I also realized that it was significant to reach consensus on the decision taken by us affection our directions, that we consented in our charter that we’ll be trying to attain as much as possibly, particularly the decisions which were important. (Lilley, 2013) 

There was an instance when one of the members of the team gave an idea & the other members promptly said that it was a vague idea, without understanding the intention of the member of the group. When I probed her to share and explain what was her intent behind this idea, the other members of the team because quite surprised and seemed to realize that they were wrong in developing a quick opinion and we applied that idea in our project.

Initially I felt like a deviant or outsider since my interest was more on having an efficient process along with our project’s content, but the other team member intents were quite different. However, over the period of time, aw we got to learn more regarding skilled dialogue & team dynamics, my role also shaped to facilitative from intervening manner(Belbin, 2010).

Lessons learned which can be applied to my work setting

Few of the crucial points which I have learned about working in the project team was that it significant spending time to plan & have a clear roles, goals & purpose & put all these in a project charter. It is significant to have social relations & not only the useless time spent, though there should be a steadiness with task. It is vital to understand that team progress over the time & that there are various ways to look at team development. It is supportive to have explicit values and also as grounded rules & group norms. Having conflicts in the group is normal & could be healthy & might bring high quality decisions (Tuckman, 2015).

Changes in my assumptions, values or beliefs about the function of purpose & function of teams & groups

The primary assumption which I had regarding working in groups was that it is unhealthy & negative to have conflicts in the team. However, I now realize that conflicts could be healthy and have positive impact. Earlier, I had an intellect of the value of teams & groups, however now I am having a quite clear picture of the key factors & aspects which impact the effective operations of groups & feel I can carry this quite more easily to rest of the people (Kenneth, 2012)

Conclusion:

I enjoyed the experience of working together in a team to complete the project and as well as the complete curriculum. I believe it would be correct to say that our team worked efficiently. I have carried many of the valuable & practical insights with me. I will take the benefit of this learning while working with other teams & groups in future (Belbin, 2013).

I desire to have a deeper understanding regarding the fundamental values of the ladder of inference & gain better awareness & understanding on how I make untested assumptions & inferences. As per my thoughts in order to do this I would firstly require to evaluate the material available in the Schwarz fieldbook. I’ll also try making some efforts in order to be more conscious of my theory-in-use & reflect on significant or hard conversations which I meet to see the steps I build up the ladder of inference. I would like keeping the record of this blog or possibly the journal. I believe that often I make untested inferences, particularly in the circumstances when I am emotionally charged & as a consequence there are often unintended concerns, if I am able to become more aware of this , possibly I’ll be capable of shifting more toward using the mutual learning as a theory-in-use on the basis of more consistency (Mullins, 2010)

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