Reflection On Teamwork: Role, Analysis And Recommendations

Analysis

1.What symptom(s) in this case suggest that something has gone wrong?

a. Symptoms

b. Other issues

c. Performance indicator

2. What are the main causes of these symptoms?

a. Main issues of these symptoms

b. Analyzing the situation

c. Addressing the issues

3. What actions should Treetop Forest Products executives take to correct these problems?

Reflecting upon the past experiences for an individual is one of the best activity. Reflecting one’s own experience helps in providing the people  complete analysis regarding their individual capabilities, talents, strengths and weaknesses (Torrente et al. 2012). This essay is based on a teamwork done by us, where we had to perform some  strategical framework for a particular company. This group work has helped me by developing better communication skills, overcome conflict thoughts, maintain unity and with the motivation of performing better.

This paper aims at reflecting the role that I had played in the group. It will provide with a critical analysis of our performance as a team as and as an individual. It can be confidently said, that our team had performed quite well in overcoming the hurdles of the firm, yet with some better organization skills, the results would have been more fruitful (Tims et al.  2013). The paper aims at commenting upon the team dynamics, communication process as well as some recommendations in order to improve any future group work.

Our team comprised of four people, where we all had been given a particular role within the group. My  role was of being a supervisor to the production process of the company. At first , I was not sure regarding my responsibilities and regarding the probability of performing well. When real life personality traits are aligned with the role played by an individual in simulation, it generates positive results (Nancarrow et al. 2013). For me, on of the challenges that I had faced during the process was to communicate with the individual workers of the company, thereby maintaining the effective work in the firm. Sometimes, I felt very uncomfortable in being abided by the motives of a team, as the other team, as each one had their own perspective and compromising was a prime challenge for all of us. This is one of the critical challenges that I had faced. Whereas, by performing these duties, it helped me to overcome my hesitation and made me realise that I can overcome these hurdles quite efficiently.

Conclusion

One of the vital traits that I had to maintain while playing my role, was that of maintaining good communication skills. According to Mäkikangas et al. (2016), It is quite important to maintain an effective communication system within the members of the team. There are times, when open agendas are presented within the team, while taking any decisions. By communicating each other ideas and views regarding a particular issue, resolving matters would be quite easy and successful in nature (Angell and Bolden 2016). My communicative style had been up to the mark. I had tried my best to maintain a good communicative approach with my team members. Our group had exchanged information with each other, quite efficiently. Most of the team, we had achieved our targets by maintaining a good effective dialogue, understanding and working as one team member, rather than being segregated.

The second trait that I had maintained throughout my term as  a member of the team was that of reliability. One can count on their reliable team member,  that provides them with the scope to build in trust within the team framework. When there is unity among a group, various hurdles can be overcome easily. One can count on the other member, only when the other one is reliable enough. I our team of four members, we had to look after various aspects of the organization. I was considered as one of the most reliable team member, where I had to maintain all the record and statistics related to the schedule of our work. I had always been keen on achieving ideas and views that were based on mass knowledge. I never took any decisions that would be against the ethics of the business, or against the dignity of any member of our team or the organization. I had maintained the records and statistics with utmost importance and had provided the team with every single detail that had been prevailing within the firm. This gave me the scope to build the trust for me among my team members, where they found me reliable enough to be dependent upon my decisions.

As stated by Costa, Passos and Bakker (2015), Cooperation and flexibility among the team members have been considered as one of the most important traits of the members. I have learnt that how flexibility in a group would be acknowledged by all. One should not focus only on the tasks that has been allotted to oneself. It is quite important to be an active member of the group, thereby taking part in all the discussion that has been taking place (Gido and Clements 2014). This  helped me to learn more regarding the objectives and perspectives of the organization and of our team. these attributes helped us to frame an efficient framework that would be helpful for the future performance of the organization.

Reference

Another important that had been experienced by working under a team, was the opportunity to correct the issues within the team, that could help in decreasing the inefficiencies at work (David and David 2016). It helped in reflecting upon the challenges that were faced while formulating the strategies and how could these issues be resolved. Effective allocation of tasks and time management seemed to hinder the teamwork. It was noticed that, the team often found it difficult to allot the tasks to the team members. This was often due to conflicting routines, workloads and other necessities that were performed. This was considered as one of the basic drawbacks in our team work. It is often considered that allocating tasks to all the team members, makes the management of work easier and effective in nature (Schwalbe 2015). Yet, in our case, it was seen as just the opposite. In addition to it, it was noticed that the members were facing various problems of time management. There were various disputes that were prevailing within the association of our group, like meetings schedule, undertaking simulation activities, allocation of tasks, and successful completion of the tasks. These were the challenges faced by all the member of our group.

Experiencing the issues mentioned above, provides me with an opportunity to recommend few ways of overcoming these hurdles, in order to have a successful team work in future. One of the ways of overcoming the problem of time management is to plan a routine beforehand, as that would give ample opportunities to decode upon the time table of each work to be carried out. Before implementing the plans, the members must sit together in order to make a routine of all the action plans to be taken into consideration (Costa, Passos and Bakker 2014). To overcome the problem of task allocations, the major traits of each member must be considered. Tasks must be allotted to the, members depending upon their source of interest. This would help the members to perform their duties with greater efficiency and accuracy. When they would be made to do a task in which they have personal interest, it would not be difficult for them to undertake the actions under the tasks adjoined (Kerzner 2013). These two recommendations can provide the future team work with the enhanced structure of performing a well maintained an organized group work.

Conclusion

Team work is one of the most important experience in an individual life, that helped the person in acknowledging their traits with regard to the responsibilities and sociable characters (Boud, Cohen and Sampson 2014). Reflecting  upon the role that I had undertake  during the group activity project, has taught me with valuable lessons and experiences that has confronted me with my strengths and weaknesses. This team work has provided me with a new set of knowledge and aspiration that would help me in my future projects. This project has taught me the true value of communication, reliability, flexibility and cooperative character, which has provided me with amole success during the simulation of the team work. Though I have been through various drawbacks of working in a team, but, with little support and hard work, all these drawbacks can be overcome. This project has helped me to overcome not only my individual attributes as a person, but has also enhanced my discipline – specific knowledge. 

Reference

Torrente, P., Salanova, M., Llorens, S. and Schaufeli, W.B., 2012. Teams make it work: How team work engagement mediates between social resources and performance in teams. Psicothema, 24(1), pp.106-112.

Tims, M., Bakker, A.B., Derks, D. and van Rhenen, W., 2013. Job crafting at the team and individual level: Implications for work engagement and performance. Group & Organization Management, p.1059601113492421.

Nancarrow, S.A., Booth, A., Ariss, S., Smith, T., Enderby, P. and Roots, A., 2013. Ten principles of good interdisciplinary team work. Human resources for Health, 11(1), p.1.

Mäkikangas, A., Aunola, K., Seppälä, P. and Hakanen, J., 2016. Work engagement–team performance relationship: shared job crafting as a moderator. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology.

Costa, P.L., Passos, A.M. and Bakker, A.B., 2014. Team work engagement: A model of emergence. Journal of occupational and organizational psychology, 87(2), pp.414-436.

Angell, B. and Bolden, G.B., 2016. Team work in action: building grounds for psychiatric medication decisions in assertive community treatment. In The Palgrave Handbook of Adult Mental Health (pp. 371-393). Palgrave Macmillan UK.

Costa, P.L., Passos, A.M. and Bakker, A.B., 2015. Direct and Contextual Influence of Team Conflict on Team Resources, Team Work Engagement, and Team Performance. Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, 8(4), pp.211-227.

Kerzner, H.R., 2013. Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

David, F. and David, F.R., 2016. Strategic Management: A Competitive Advantage Approach, Concepts and Cases.

Schwalbe, K., 2015. Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.

Boud, D., Cohen, R. and Sampson, J. eds., 2014. Peer learning in higher education: Learning from and with each other. Routledge.

Gido, J. and Clements, J.P., 2014. Successful project management. Nelson Education.