Increase Team Effectiveness - Research Proposal Example

The business world needs professionals that can work together with one other in a team environment. Building team skills starts in school. need to be exposed to this environment to learn about the difference challenges related to team work and experience the virtues and advantages of it. This paper will describe the different situations the writer lived working in a team project. The project was on recruiting and selection. The team members working on this project were Mushtaq, Christian, Peter and Mike. Different aspects of team work will be analyze including planning, complications and lessons learned. The project started with an initial meeting by all members of the group. We had our notebooks, laptop computers, and video recorder to tape the meeting. It felt like a business meeting in an executive board room. Everything seemed perfect during this first phase of the project. Early communication did not go very smooth. Everybody had different ideas and we all wanted to get our point across. We could not even come to agreement during this first meeting on the different topics each would be working on. An initiative of mine that was approved during this meeting was the creation of a schedule of meetings. We made a rule that if at least 3 members were available for the meeting it would be realized, if 50% were absent the meeting would be canceled. I thought we did accomplish good brainstorming and we got to know each other. We deviated a bit from the business talk and learned about each other life’s. We got along pretty good on the personal level, but as business unit it seemed we were not clicking yet. There was no clear leader in the group and since there was a bit of a power struggle we decide it would be best not to give any member the official team leader nomination. Maybe this was a mistake. A team works better when it was clear directions. Many companies utilize the team leader organizational structure as a tool to increase the efficiency of the various teams working in different areas of the business. The importance of the team leader can be seen more clearly in the role he plays in the decision-making process. The list below provides some a list of functions the team leader realizes. The team leader decides and informs the team The team leader gathers into from the team in order to prepare himself to make a decision The decisions are based on consensus or majority voting When consensus is chosen the team leader implements fallback strategies to continue progress on the project The team leader set constrains and delegates decisions to team members (Stein). In our second meeting some important tasks were accomplished. Each team member knew what they would be writing about. We stipulated a deadline for final submission. I noticed in this second meeting the same trend as in the first one. A lot of talk about things not related to the project. I did not intervene with the different conversations that were going not related to the project, but inside I felt I should have. I simply did not own the confidence to speak out my mind and implement a little discipline within our work environment. Who was I to do such a thing? I felt I lacked authority to make such a statement; I was not the team leader. In my opinion in the first meeting it was acceptable, but all this talk was eating up a lot of our time. There were a lot of things more important to discuss. Our time management was terrible. “According to Tracy the habits, practices, and discipline that are necessary for effective time management directly contribute to success and high achievement in all areas of life” (Tracy, 2006). The team created a schedule of meeting, but we had no work plan. There were no specific objectives to accomplish in the meetings we realized. Everybody would talk about different things related to the project, but there were no clear objectives to accomplish from meeting to meeting. This is one mistake I will never make again in working within a team. I learned that it is imperative to create clear work schedules in order to audit and evaluate the performance of the team. Despite having a voice recorder, we really did not realize proper documentation. Nobody ever listened to the recordings; it was all a big show. Simple notes would have been a more efficient method. Those meeting notes could have been utilized in the next meeting creating a sequential list of the events that were occurring. The biggest mistake we made was the overall strategy of the team. We directed our efforts towards the writing too much. I remember sometimes we would be reading what each other wrote and making irrelevant criticism of some part of the content of a teammates’ writing. The proper strategy in my opinion for the writing feedback aspect was to fixed grammatical errors and let the teacher decide if the writing is any good. It is a learning experience and each of us needs to improve their writing skills. They only way that will occur is through practice. Our strategy failed because we barely dedicated any time to the presentation segment of the assignment. There was no coordinated team effort towards learning each others work. We became four different individual working on separate projects, instead of a team unit working of separated parts of the same project. Our obligation was to learn the entire material. Nobody cared about what each person was going to present to the class. The class presentation was a disaster. We were not able to meet the 15 minute time requirement. The team failed by approximately 20% to meet the requirement. The reason this occurred was because of lack of preparation. If I had it to do all over I would have created a plan to make a proper presentation. Everybody would have a four minute skid ready and the last person five minutes of materials available. If you add all the minutes up there would be 17 minutes of material to discuss. Each team member would have a stopwatch during the presentation to measure exactly how much time they have utilized while presenting. A rule would stipulate a maximum of four minutes per person with a three minute minimum utilization requirement. The best player would go last. This person would adjust his material to provide an exact 15 minute presentation. I learned a lot of things during this team project. I feel that these types of exercises are great and it should be a learning technique utilized more often in classrooms. I learned that communication is extremely important when working with other people in a team environment. It is important for everyone to freely speak their mind. It is important to be organized and to create a work plan of the different tasks to be realized with exact deadlines for delivery. A team leader is needed to bring direction and leadership to team. If the selection does not come from consensus among your teammates the best thing to do is to randomly pick a team leader. Place some numbers inside a box with the names of the people interested in the position. I learned that members of a team need to leave their egos on the sidelines, and speak truthfully and accept constructive criticism from your co-workers. The project taught me to separate business and pleasure. When a person is in a work environment the person needs to realize that he is getting paid to complete a work, and despite the fact that a little joke may help relaxed tension one must understand that excessive personal talk in the workplace will lower productivity. Another thing I learned from this project is that preparation is very important when a team has to present information to other groups or to your bosses. If the presentation is a team presentation all members of the group must be on the same page. Their minds and frame of thought must be aligned to accomplish a consistent message delivery. The best way to accomplish an excellent presentation is to practice it various times with the members of the team. Contingency plans must be created to be prepared for unforeseen circumstances. For example if the team has a PowerPoint presentation prepare the team must be prepared for a power outage. Creating printed handouts can provide the information for the audience to follow your presentation. Have index cards with the same information that is shown in the PowerPoint slides. The team can avoid mishandling time management errors within the presentation by having real-time time tracking devices during the event. Overall the recruiting and selection team project was a great training exercise. My teammates all put a great effort and everyone was dedicated towards achieving excellence. Overall participation was great, everyone was motivated. We each learned a lot from each other. I felt with more practice this team unit would become more effective in the long run. We had our struggles, but the learning that took place outweighs the minor obstacles we faced. I am very proud of what this team accomplished. If all team tried as hard as we did to make things happen they would be very productive. A little more experience and better guidance is what we realize we needed to be better workers. I know I’m a better person because of my participation in this team project. References Stein, J. Using consensus to decision making to increase team effectiveness. Retrieved June 14, 2007 from http://web.mit.edu Tracy, B. (2006). Time Management. 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