team management

1. Team DevelopmentMy team in marketing was formed by the professor. We have four group members, two Chinese, one Canadian and one Nigerian. At the beginning of forming the team, team members were not familiar with each other, so we were silent and hid our true personalities to some degree; we usually assented to others and hid our own opinions while this behavior could affect team performance negatively. In the first meeting, we discuss our assignment and how shall we finish it. I point out that we will read the topic today discuss it on the next Monday. The rest of the member agree with my ideas. I suggested we should have meeting every week for two hours, this suggestion was favored by my group members. I also illustrate that we should assignment the task to all the group members. After the discussion, Caitlin elected to be our team leader and the rest of us were in charge of other jobs. These is considered to be norming stage in our team development.As Four difference members come from three different places with different cultures and growth environments, which we have to use various skills to response the conflicts and misunderstanding. During our meeting, I and Taiyao come from China, and Asian people could not express his true thoughts or feelings even though he had great ideas, which identified as the incongruent. I used to express my ideas indirect and give some ambiguity feedback when I have different opinions. Other team members think I was not a hard worker as I cannot provide clear feedback, and I was hurt by Peter’s aggressive expression. Consequently, the problem was sometimes it would make others misunderstand and then rigidify to provide positive feedback for each other. W e sunk into disputes that we could not combine everyone’s differences should be emphasized. Without it, we could not move to the final stage, so we back to our forming stage to see what we can improve in order to slove our problems. During the discuss, we found we should use collaborating method for our conflicts. So we decided, when we have different ideas we will set together to discuss about the problem and try to avoid the personal prejudice. ake my group for example, we were from different countries and influenced by different cultures, so we learned tounderstand each other. I changed my avoiding style to collaborating style under the effective communication. And I started to cope with the Peter’s direct talking method.I analyzed everybody’s talking style, provide d feedback of each other and gave suggestions. I learnt that my previous method is avoiding, and it can not really avoid the problem but bring our group to endless disputes. By building a supportive communicating environment, I was able to develop the team and enhancing relationships among team members which was target when first formed the team. However, I found our is not really use collaborating method, but we also use a certain degree of compromise method. Compromise is the second best method, it can avoid conflicts within a group, but also lose some creative ideas during the compromise. I think collaborating is very difficult to reach in our group as our members are so afraid of conflicts. A s Anthony Robbins suggested, “…we must realize we are all different in the way we perceive the world…”, and “use this und erstanding as a guide to our communication with others”. It is difficult for me to totally adjust the different talking method, however, as we realized the problem during the storming stage and made the improvement, we have a good performance in the storming stage. I think our group is at the ending of storming or the very beginning stage of performing but not totally reach it. Our group is a some kind of effective group but still have space to improve.2.Team Roles2.1 Task-facilitating RolesDoctor Belb in said that “A team is not a bunch of people with job titles, but a congregation of individuals, each of whom has a role which is understood by other members. Members of a team seek out certain roles and they perform most effectively in the ones that are most natural to them.” Belbin Team Roles are used to identify people's behavioural strengths and weaknesses in the workplace.I suggested our group divided the task by the advantage and disadvantage of our group members. Our task-facilitating roles were kind of ambiguity at the starting level, and I analyzed the strength and weakness of our group members. I am good at organizing, so I am in charge of making the schedule and booking the group meeting room. One of our group member is good at analysis, so he is in charge of taking the meeting notes and send it to all the group members. By my analysis, our group members were clearly about which part suited for them, so the role of task-facilitating became organized.I recommended priority and delegation for process analyzing. Priority and delegation will help us finish work in a more efficient and effective way, which can save time for the most important part of work. When group members started to prepare the presentation, we could not manage our time efficiently and debated for the usage of every word, the result was spent a lot of time with low productivity. I suggested that the team should prioritize our work and focus on the outline and ignore the grammar mistakes at the very beginning. After prioritized the work, everyone had a clear trend and segmentation of our project. My suggestion helped our group have a long term working strategy which was focus on the important but not urgent. Priority can reduce work overload and eliminate time stress environment. Our final presentation was our ultimate goal, and the unexpected thing was urgent task, I learnt to ignore some urgent task to make sure the whole project can work smoothly. And the method I adopt can help monitoring and urging our group’s working process.2.2 Relationship-building RolesThroughout the course the team learnt how to communicate more effectively and openly with each other. Our team’s vision is to be successful in improve our skills while our mission is to provide a high quality project. Our ultimate goal is to finish our presentation, so all the work we have done is to support our final job. In our weekly meeting, one of our members thinks his ideas was not adopted by us. So I toldhim that we should finish the outline first, then if you think your ideas were not adopted, I will add them in to our presentation. He agrees, the result was, most of his ideas were adopted in the different parts of the presentations. So we finish our presentation efficiently under a harmony environment.Our team is not only a high performing team but also a harmony team because I tried to build the resiliency when we met stress. For example, when we decided the order of our presentation, everyone wanted to be the first and avoid the last speaking. My method is we choose a group leader, and if we have conflicts, the leader will lead us to vote. We will follow the majority of the vote for the next step. This method solves the conflicts within our team and reduces all the tension. We feel equal and fair in our group, and we have a harmony relationship within each other.3. Personal and Interpersonal Skills3.1 Personal SkillsProblem solving as the core ability plays a quite significant role in our team development. Team members can solve problems in two ways: analytical problem solving or creative problem solving. When problems are simple and members have previous experience, analytical problem solving usually is adapted to get rid of problems. In contrast, when problems are complicated and members do not have relative experience, creative problem solving should be applied to generate some new approaches to solve problems. Thinking creatively is very effective in solving problems because the positive relationship between successful organizations and creative problem solving can be illustrated by a large amount of researches (Kaufman & Sternberg, 2010). Accounting to the Competing Values Framework, creativeproblem solving includes four dimensions: imagination, improvement, investment and incubation (DeGraff & Lawrence, 2002, pp. 6-8).I was the most creative person among our group; I had many creative ideas during the group work and gave others a lot of inspiration. At the beginning of the establishment of our group, the biggest problem for us was how to set our goal for this report. After two meetings, we still had no clear directions. During the following weeks, I provided my creative thinking and the positive attitude of risk taking for our group. For instance, I used markers to list the alternative solutions of our goal on the board. Then our group discussed them and evaluated them one by one. Finally, we generated our goal as “team development”. In addition, I suggested to use PREZI instead of PPT to provide a more vivid presentation to the audience. My suggestion was adopted and was highly praised by our marketing professor. He thought our tools make our presentation interesting and clear. In relation to our team daily work, even though we had a clear process to move forward our mission, we did not have a systematic approach. Sometimes we did not know the purpose of some meetings before the meetings were held. Therefore, the dimension of improvement was our weak aspect. For the further group development, we needed to focus on this profile in order to achieve better group performances.Most of us have difficulties in solving problems creatively because of the presence of conceptual blocks which are “mental obstacles that constrain the way problems are defined, and inhibit us from being effective in any of the four types of creativity” (Whetten & Cameron). The four types are constancy, commitment, compression andcomplacency. Our group have more constancy style, we want to follow the traditional styles and afraid of knowledge. My creative thinking of Prezi make our group presentation style more creative. I try to avoid these four styles and help our group to be more creative. Those concepts help me to learn how to copy with personal stress, develop self-awareness and solve problems. Also these skills can benefit our team development during the assignment.3.2 Interpersonal SkillTo some degree, our team is characterized by harmony and consensus, but a friendly team does not mean an effective team. When people have disputes because of the interpersonal differences, they will lead to negative emotions, block communication and increase negative stereotyping. On the other hand, issue-focused conflict needs to be created to generate successful strategic decisions and solve certain situations (Eunson, 2012). This kind of conflict can actually stimulate creativity and encourage interpersonal improvement since new perspectives and information can be gathered from the other side, so better decision making, problem solving and changes can take place. Managing conflicts appropriately and communicating supportively can establish a positive climate and bring positive change to the team. In other words, an effective team is built based on positive results of managing conflicts.There were some conflicts among our team working; however, the problem was the way we made decisions amidst disagreements. It seemed like that team members weremore interested in keeping peace than in solving problems and accomplishing tasks. In order to keep harmonious atmosphere, we chose to compromise a lot and all team members tended to use compromising method during the group work. It indicates that when conflicts occur, we all tend to avoid it and make a compromise. Compromising is not the best way to manage conflict. For instance, we had a group meeting to discuss the case presentation. We were confused on what kind of presentation Professor was asking for because the information was ambiguous. We argued about if we needed to prepare PowerPoint slides. I proposed that PowerPoint was not necessarily because Professor was looking for a different presentation and he preferred not having one. Others suggested that we needed PowerPoint because it was clearer to have points on the screen rather than orally spoke it out or wrote on the blackboard. I hold a group meeting with our team members to discuss about the advantages and disadvantages of PREZI presentation. Finally, we decided to show a PREZI WEBSITE with only some questions to the audience on it. It turned out to be a great idea because PREZI was so creative and shows our presentation better.In order to become an effective team, we made some changes about our group meetings. We tried to use collaborating approach and this is the only win-win strategy in terms of managing conflict. For example, we decided to create the environment of openness, directness, and equality in the brain storming section. If everybody feels free to give advices, the best solutions would be generated during the discussion. One ground rule has been implemented that every team members must focus on issues and problems rather than focusing on the personalities. Based on the ultimate goal offinding the best solution, we started our meeting of the final management project. Every team members came up with their own points of view in order to find the key learning of this course, and finally, we found there were connections between our ideas. It is the team development that connects our learning together and it is the best solution that we can find.In regard to team development stages, our team stayed in the storming stage for a long time. After learning the importance of conflict and trying to deal with it effectively, we have achieved a little progress on team development.I learnt that team development is the fundamental job of a project, and I understand how to use the methods I have mentioned to promote the team in to development stage.ConclusionBeing a fully functioning team, it means a lot for us because it is a crucial for our success in the MBA program as well as in many aspects of life. Acquiring the key learning of team development from the course, gives our team the opportunity to learn where our weaknesses and strengths lay and how to improve our performance, and being more productive. Having an improvement in supportive communication helps us understand each other and makes it easy for our team to work in a fast paced environment. We learnt how to handle each stage in the team developing and reach the performing stage. In the team roles, we know how to combine task-facilitating roles and relationship-building roles together. This can both increase in inner andouter performance. We use prioritize, delegation and develop resiliency to reach our goal. For the personal skills, we understand the creative skills is very crucial in the team development. And for the interpersonal relationship, we use effective communication to reduce the conflicts. The dealing also shows on the score of appendix, which is align with our working method.Appendix6/7 I give the score 6 out of 7 is because our goal is not very clear at the very beginning, as I have mentioned in the paper, we spend some time on setting up our goals and objectives. I want to finish the presentation effectively, so I was book the meeting room for the team every week. I adopt the proper strategy to set our goals, it works smooth quickly. For example, I understand our ultimate goal is finish our presentation, so I focus on our goals and everybody have a clear delegation. This ensure us finish our assignment on time.1.Goals and ObjectivesThere is a lack of commonly Team members understand and understood goals and objectives. agree on goals and objectives.1 2 3 4 5 6 76.5/7 I think we are good at use resources. After we choose the topic, we delegate job and everyone starts to search for resour ces. Everybody’s idea and resources are fully recognized. We treat everyone equal in our group and have a fair working environment. For example, everybody has task in our group, and in the meeting, everybody will show the resources they have find and discuss how to adopt it in our group. And then we use voting method to ensure we treat every member equally.2. Utilization of ResourcesAll member resources are notMember resources are fully recognized and/or utilized.recognized and utilized.7/7 Conflicts are unavoidable, but our group is good at solve conflicts. When we have different ideas and opinions, we transfer the conflicts to collaboration andbrain storming. We have a trustiness and harmony group environment. For instance, we will have different ideas or confuse about other ’s opinion, we will communicate first. This will avoid the misunderstanding and conflicts.3. Trust and ConflictThere is little trust amongmembers, and conflictis evident.6.5/7 We are good at leadership, and everyone is fully participate in theleadership. We delegate our job and let everybody charge the part which they are good at it. For example, some in charge of coordinating, some dominate the There is a high degree of trust among members, and conflict is dealt with openly and worked through. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 12 3 4 5 6 7note taking. Everyone has their own leadership roles and it fairly shared by members. 4. LeadershipOne person dominates, and There is full participation in leadership roles are not carried leadership; leadership roles out or shared. are shared by members.7/7 Our group effective at procedures by delegation and prioritize. These two strategy ensure the efficient procedures to guide our group function. When we doing our job, we have clear our ultimate goal and the beginning. We set the time schedule for the individual tasks, and everyone follow the procedure. 5. Control and Procedures There is little control, and there is a lack of procedures to guide team functioning.6/7 Our communications are not very effective at the very beginning, because our group members are avoiding the problem and compromise to each other. When we realize our problem, we change it to collaborate communication as soon as possible. But I believe we still need to improve our communication. The result is aligned with the communication’s part I have mentioned . 6. Interpersonal Communications12345671234567There are effective procedures toguide team functioning; team members support these proceduresand regulate themselves.Communications between Communications between members are closed members are open andand guarded. participative.6.5/7 Our group is well-established to problem solving and decision making. The problem solving and decision making carried on by the communication and time management. We have a group leader at our team, and the rest of the member also participate equally in our team. When the problems arises, we will discuss it together and vote for the result.7. Problem Solving/Decision Making The team has not agreed on approaches to problem solving and decision making.7/7 Our group focus on creation. We try to use different ways to do things and start creative approach. For example, we adopt PREZI instead of PPT file to make our presentation more vivid. And when we doing the group work, we will try to find more than one way to do it, then compare which one is better. PREZI is a example of our experimentation and creativity. 8. Experimentation/Creativity The team is rigid and does The team experiments with not experiment with howdifferent ways of doing thingsThe team has well-established and agreed on approaches to problemsolving and decision making.12345 6 71 234567things are done. and is creative in its approach.1 2 3 4 5 6 76.5/7 I think our group use the proper concept into our group work and it alignedwith our strategy. The concepts and theories help us to modify our process tomake sure it is on the right track. Like I have mentioned, we have meeting everyweek to evaluate our working process. The meeting help our working function on the right track.9.EvaluationThe group never evaluates its The group often evaluates its functioning or process. functioning and process.1 2 3 4 5 6 7BibliographyChase, J D. et al,. 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