A Generic Term for Those Intellectual and Affective Activities in Which Individuals Engage to Explore Their Experiences in Order to Lead to a New Understanding and Appreciation

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Individual Reflection:

Introduction

Reflection can be defined as “a generic term for those intellectual and affective activities in which individuals engage to explore their experiences in order to lead to a new understanding and appreciation” (Boud et al, 1985, p.19).

My reflection will be based on a group activity and the task, which was to give a presentation on the topic of “Causes, impacts and results of Conflicts in teams”. My group consisted of four members. In this report I will be focusing on the group dynamics, my personal experience as team member, my strengths and weaknesses, key learning points and the success or failure of the group assignment.

For the success of any team there has to be proper delegation of responsibility and development of a plan for the completion of a common goal (Hughes and Jones, 2013).

Strengths and areas for improvement

In order to reflect on my own strengths and weaknesses, I would be relying on the feedback from group members and the comments from my tutor after the presentation. It is very easy to focus on individual strengths while ignoring the weaknesses. However getting feedback from your peers offers an unbiased view of your contribution towards the assignment and the strengths and weaknesses from participation.

The feedback I had received from my team members had outlined that my key strengths were my enthusiasm, communication and willingness throughout the assignment. I believe this is a true reflection of my strengths, my supportiveness was evident within the rehearsal stages in which I witnessed one team member feeling nervous. I felt the need to reassure her and related my personal experience of working in retail, and that I experienced similar anxiety of speaking to customers and that it is was very natural. Furthermore, I advised her to focus on the presentation or the task at hand instead of the audience. As for my group saying that I was very willing, this could be because I was the only male member of the team and I felt that I have to be very cooperative and collaborative so that they would not think I was chauvinistic.  

My weakness was lateness and the lack of communication. I failed to keep the team informed whenever I was getting late and that not only frustrated the team members but it delayed scheduled meetings. This I realise not only affected me but the progress of the task at hand, affecting the team as a whole.  The effectiveness of the team depends on good communication within the team failing that, there will be deviation from the common objective (Waller, Gupta and Giambatista, 2004). I had three other modules that also required group work, and I found it difficult to manage my time in an organised manner and was struggling to prioritise my work according to deadlines. I have learnt in order to become a more effective member of the team I must learn to manage my time more effectively by creating a time table in order to write down my meetings and follow accordingly.

Working as a team knowing that your success or failure may depend on other students  

As mentioned by Bruce Tuckman (1965), our group went through the stages “forming, storming, norming and performing” (Tuckman and Monetti, 2001).

Kozlowski and Bell (2003) define teams as groups of individuals “who exist to perform organizationally relevant tasks, share one or more common goals, interact socially” (Kozlowski and Bell, 2003, p.334).

I joined the team not out of choice, but as I was not present on the day the teams were formed, I had no alternative but join this group. I was not comfortable as I had not worked with any one of the team member before and I had no idea as to how capable or the skills they had to offer. This troubled me because, ultimately my grade will be dependent on their contribution and performance.  Once the team was formed there was the “norming” stage where there was conflict among the members trying to choose a topic. After group a consultation we chose the topic. Once, the agreement was reached on the topic, the group dynamics changed for the better.  There was group cohesion and a common goal to finish the task in hand.

Changes in motivation and attitudes towards the team and activity over time

Team success from a management perspective can be simply described as “successful performance on a task” (Levi, 2015). Measuring the performance of a team can be difficult due to internal and external factors. On reflection after completing the task, my opinion of the team members had changed drastically. They worked in a similar style to myself.  Towards the end of my project, I had total confidence in my group members’ capabilities and we learnt to trust and respect each other for their individual skill set. Soon after the first week I felt myself feeling highly motivated working with new members. However this was not an easy ride as there were periods of frustration and conflict occurring when trying to create the presentation with my team members. So my motivation fluctuated, depending on whether the task involved working long hours with the team members or individual tasks. The conflict was handled using a approach created by Gareth Morgan’s (2006) called the Unitary perspective, where groups are encouraged to work towards a common objective where ideas are challenged in order to find the best solution, it can lead to conflict being a positive experience. After the presentation, my motivation had risen again as on reflection I felt even though there were conflicts we came together to give a good presentation and the grade we received from the tutor lifted our team moral.

Conclusion

One of the most interesting points I have learnt from participating within my group is that each individual works in different ways, every member fell into a different category within Belbin’s (1996) team role theory. Each person had their own set of skills and knowledge which they implemented.  Their style of working could be very different to mine but the most important factor in any group work is mutual respect, collaboration, communication and patience. Conflict though unavoidable, should be minimised.  However there is always opportunity to turn the conflict into a positive, by effective communication. The necessity to be a team worker cannot be emphasised enough. In any working environment effective team work enhances the performance of the team and makes it possible to reach the organisational goals.    

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