My Teamwork Experience - Essay Example

?Reflection on teamwork: This essay reflects over my experience of teamwork, in which my mates and I had completed a project recently. To maintain the anonymity of the team mates, I call them Student A, B, C, D, and E. Of these, I was student E. In our group of five, students A, B, C, and D were Australian and the only non-Australian student was me. I came from China. The cultural differences made me stand out of the group at a communicative level. The Australians fluently spoke to one another and quite often, I would feel left out. I tried to join them in the conversation. But I used to take too long to think about right words to construct the sentence, which would not only be embarrassing for me, but would also require them to display patience while listening to me, which ultimately broke the temp of conversation. I understood English sufficiently to know the meaning but found it difficult to speak with the required fluency and appropriate usage of words. Anyhow, I did not have any choice as the authority rested with majority and conversation had to be made in English. Besides, English is the course language so I had better give up any attempts to devise another language as the medium of communication. I mostly listened to my group members as they spoke. This not only maintained the tempo of conversation, but also provided me with an opportunity to improve my English speaking skill. There was a great deal of difference between the comfort I felt in speaking English between the start of the project and the end of the project. There is another positive aspect of interacting in foreign language which is that it reduces cultural differences among team members and helps in the development of strong rapport among them (Neyer and Harzing, 2008, p. 13). In week 6, we learned how to work in a diverse group. The diversity among team members can be there in terms of difference of age, gender, culture and such other factors. In our case, our team was diverse in terms of culture as we were all boys and belonged to the same age group. I learned that diversity can cause many conflicts if not handled in the appropriate manner. In order to minimize the conflicts, we needed to minimize the cultural differences by understanding one another’s culture. Therefore, we established a culture based meeting. In that meeting, I was supposed to introduce Chinese culture to my group mates whereas they would talk about the Australian culture. That meeting was specifically meant to enhance our understanding of each other’s cultures. It is possible to reduce the cultural differences between team members if “mental processes associated with national culture are relatively fluid, and can be changed and sustained by appropriate situational factors” (Leung et al., 2005, p. 367). In the culture based meeting, the specific area that required to be discussed was ethics. Standards of ethics vary from culture to culture. What actions are considered respectable and honoring in one culture may be considered insulting in another, Therefore, in order to make sure that we respected each other’s cultural ethics, we discussed ethics of Chinese and Australian culture in this meeting. This way, we handled the cultural diversity in a very good manner. Not only was this meeting very enjoyable and informative, it also helped us escape a lot of dysfunctional conflicts as we knew each other’s cultural demands and would act accordingly so that nobody’s feelings were hurt. In week 7 and week 8, we learned how to work in a team, minimize the conflicts and be successful. Teamwork is very helpful for achieving big tasks that require a multitude of competences all of which are not the property of one individual. Therefore, in a team, members benefit from one another’s competences in order to attain their mutual goals and shared objectives. In our team, students A and B had a stronger bond with each other than with the rest of team members. They would often make fuss over petty issues, and we had to be patient in order to keep the ship sailing! It is noteworthy that conflicts can only be minimized in the teamwork. They can never be altogether omitted. This is because of the fact that conflicts arise from difference of opinions which is a result of difference of nature, vision, psychology and personality traits of the various team members. Conflicts are just as natural a phenomenon as harmony (Appelbaum, Abdallah and Shapiro, 1999, p. 63). However, conflicts can be minimized and sometimes, can be made to take a positive turn by making them functional. In the eighth week, I learned that there are two basic types of conflicts, i.e. functional and dysfunctional conflicts. Functional conflicts are task conflicts useful for the team because in them, team mates discuss issues that need dialogue among them to be resolved whereas dysfunctional conflicts are relationship conflicts and cause nothing but harm and revolve around such issues as racism and abuse etc. “Task conflict would be positively related to integrating whereas relationship conflict would be negatively related to integrating” (Desivilya, Somech, and Lidgoster, 2010, p. 28). Patience and negotiation is the key to success! In the week 9, we learned about networking and mentoring. Networking is very important in teamwork fundamentally because the better we know one another, the better we can get the best out of one another. In our team, students A and B used to remain with each other and did not interact much with us. They were too difficult to talk to in the beginning. Students C, D and I realized that their attitude could ruin our project, so we needed to do something about it. We offered them gifts and exchanged funny messages with them on mobiles. This brought them near to us in little time and we were able to interact in a better way. In order to improve our presentation skills, we arranged demos. In each demo, one of us would teach his/her assigned subject. This boosted our confidence in mentoring and we made better presenters. In week 10 and 11, we learned lessons of leadership and empowerment, and also learned how to conduct meetings and decide. Leadership is something all want but few can do justice with the responsibilities associated with it. In our case, learning was the key objective. Each of us led the team on weekly basis. This makes sense because it was a project. Unlike work teams, autonomy is not linked with higher performance in project teams (Cohen and Bailey, 1997, p. 260). Every week, the leader would change. For every new leader, taking responsibility of the team is a very challenging task (Sauer, 2011). When I became the leader, I experienced that a leader must make rational decisions in order to earn respect. We conducted meetings to gain one another’s consent, and finally the leader gave the decision. Quite often, I had to face severe criticism when my decision did not result in favorable outcomes, though I remained composed in the tough times. In the week 12, we learned about coaching and feedback. In order to make good coaches, we conducted lectures. Like leadership, every week, one of the team members had to provide others with the coaching over anything he had more knowledge in. When it was my turn, I taught them software. Everyday, I would prepare slides for presenting the following day. In no more than six days, I taught my team mates the software good enough. Now they know almost as much as I do. To evaluate our coaching, we kept a feedback session on the seventh day after sic days of continuous coaching. I can tell that my team mates were satisfied with my coaching from their nice comments they had given in their feedback. Finally, we had to plan our presentation and divide our areas of presentation so that we would be able to present our project to the class in an organized manner. There were six basic areas of presentation, namely, introduction, aims and objectives, literature review, methodology, data collection and analysis, results and conclusions. We asked one another what area would each one of us willingly present. I chose to present data collection and analysis because I could do it better than any of them because of my exceptional expertise in the analysis software. Most of the other four students chose to present introduction and conclusion sections, because they are generally easier to present. However, in order to avoid conflicts, we conducted voting session, and the areas were assigned accordingly. The presentation went nice. We were able to avoid conflicts for most part of the project, and it was a great learning experience for all of us. We learned how to work in a culturally diverse team, and build strong rapport with the team members. After the completion of project, I feel that I have become a better coach and mentor and most importantly, my English speaking skills have marvelously improved. It was undoubtedly, a very good learning opportunity for all of us. References: Appelbaum, S. H., Abdallah, C., and Shapiro, B. T. (1999). The self-directed team: A conflict resolution analysis. Team Performance Management. 5(2): 60-77. Retrieved from http://www.appelbaumconsultants.com/articles/1999-00/SelfDirectTeamConflict.pdf. Cohen, S. G., and Bailey, D. E. (1997). What makes teams work: Group effectiveness research from the shop floor to the executive suite. Journal of Management. 23(3): 239-290. Retrieved from http://www.stanford.edu/group/wto/cgi-bin/docs/Cohen_Bailey_97.pdf. Desivilya, H. S., Somech, A., and Lidgoster, H. (2010). Innovation and Conflict Management in Work Teams: The Effects of Team Identification and Task and Relationship Conflict. Negotiation and Conflict Management Research. 3(1): 28-48. Retrieved from http://edu.haifa.ac.il/personal/asomech/Publications.files/Innovation_conflict_management.pdf. Leung, K., Bhagat, R. S., Buchan, N. R., Erez, M., and Gibson, C. (2005). Culture and international business: Recent advances and their implications for future research. Journal of International Business Studies, 36(4): 357-378. Neyer, A. K., and Harzing, A. W., (2008). The impact of culture on interactions: Five lessons learned from the European Commission. European Management Journal. Retrieved from http://www.harzing.com/download/culteu.pdf. Sauer, S. J., (2011). Taking the reins: The effects of new leader status and leadership style on team performance. Journal of Applied Psychology. 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