Organisational Behaviour - Essay Example

?Working in a small group towards particular objectives provided an opportunity for me to explore and analyze my own behavior within that group. It has allowed me to assess the impact of my behavior on my groups overall functioning. This required us to work together and cooperate in order to achieve our objectives. The members of my group included Jake, Hala, Andy and Kaky. An important aspect of my group is that I had already met and formed relationships with Andy at the beginning of this semester and have since been friends. While organizing myself and preparing to observe another group, I was able to assess the role I took on within the group. Also, like any group, our group was affected by some minor conflicts and again this allowed me to analyze the behavior I exhibit when dealing with conflicts. A study completed by the United States National Transport Safety Board and NASA revealed that “Team members must resolve several issues and pass through several stages of development before emerging as an effective work unit.” (McShane et al, 2007). Teams achieve this effective work unit by going through the five stages of Team Development. In the journal “Building an Effective Team”, this model is discussed by Todd McDonald (2005), and begins with the Forming Stage. This is the initial stage where the group first comes together and generally has some shared enthusiasm about the task. In relation to my small group, I immediately knew who I wanted my group members to be and I feel this mainly due to familiarity. That is I chose to work with those I knew very well and had worked with previously. The next stage is storming and during this stage, we began to discuss the possibility of which group to observe. My initial thought of which group we should observe was the Leading Solution group and this is because Andy knows the group very well. I was quite set on the idea and knew that I would be very persistent if the other group members disagreed. I decided to discuss this option with Andy first because I knew he would be the one most likely to agree, as he did. Norming is the third stage of the Team Development model. I felt very comfortable voicing my opinions and ideas with my group as we are all good friends and have worked together throughout this semester. Therefore, it was easy to divide up our Team based report and get the task done. During group meetings, I feel that I played a vital role in getting the task started and allocating what each member should be researching. The next state is performing. In this particular situation, I felt that this was the hardest stage as I do not mind doing research and writing assignments but I definitely do not like oral presentations. My other group members were already aware of this and therefore we decided to practice together until I felt comfortable. I think that this shows my group was very in tune with each others strength and weaknesses and I was grateful that they helped me. In the end, I felt that my group all made a sufficient contribution, executed our presentation well and I was quite happy with our grade. The last stage, adjourning, is not relevant to my group as we have continuing relationships. There were many class activities that my group worked on together. After the formation of our group, we completed an activity within the group that required us to separately answer questions in relation to how we should communicate, how often we should meet, how we should deal with conflict and what grade we were aiming for. When discussing our answers as a group, I hold back a little bit from the beginning and ultimately I felt comfortable to answer truthfully throughout the rest of the class. I feel this is because I was confident afterwards that my group member’s answers would not differ significantly from mine. We generally agreed on our answer, this did not surprise me as we have worked on past assignments together in the past and know each other very well. When considering my past behavior, I know that if I had been in a group with people I did not know, I would not have answered all questions as truthfully. This is because I tend to be shy with new people and would not have wanted to cause any conflict or attention to be drawn to myself. During class activity, I would consider myself as an initiator. The definition of initiator on the team role preference scale is “Having a strong tendency to identify goals for the meeting including ways to work on them” (Mc Shane, 2000). My group’s relationship is a social one, we tend to chat and get distracted from the task quite easily. Therefore, when we have group meetings we are slow to start. Although, I contribute to this behavior, I usually feel a need to at least get the assignments started and delegate what part of the assignment each of us will be responsible for. In our first group meeting, I was the one who initiated the discussion about when to observe our chosen group with Andy. I was also the one who began researching and found some appropriate books and journals. I do not think I have a leadership role in the group and in fact I do not think any of other members have a leadership role either. This is because we work well together as a team and I think no one really has authority. I think that if someone did take a leadership role in the group, I would not completely accept it because we are friends and usually no one has complete authority over the group. In our group, we had the opportunity to complete the Red/Blue Instrument Personality and discussed with each other during our spare time. My result was blue which means extroverted, sensing, thinking and judging. From this, I learned that the way I perceived myself was slightly different to the ways other does. This can be explained through the Johari Window which shows that there are unknown parts of our personality. Lastly, we did a communication model. Through this model, I took charge of drawing and designing our model while discussing it with my other group members. This model has to be presented in class and we were required to share this responsibility to the class. This type of behavior is not unusual for me as I generally try to avoid these types of situations at any cost. There are many theories which describe the elements which effective groups require. One particular theory by Dorothy Marcic was relevant to my group and also my own personal behavior. This theory includes the group elements of participation, influence, styles of influence, decision making procedure, motivation, task functions, maintenance functions, group atmosphere and membership. According to Bloisi (2007), “Motivation is defined as the conscious decision to put more effort into one activity than another for whatever reason”. Motivation puts each team member into action to accomplish goals, has increased level of efficiency within the team work and built friendly relationship. Through each of these elements as stated above, I feel that I played an important role to my group. In relation to participation, I think that my participation within the group was high as I talk openly with all members and attended almost all of our group meetings. However, at times I have quiet moment when I do not really contribute much. This has no relation to my group, it is purely related to my mood and I was concerned how my group members perceived me during these moments. In our group, I do no think I had particularly high or low influences and I did not perceive any of the members to have higher or lower influence than me. Also, I do not think there was a real struggle for leadership and perceived that we were all the same level. In regards to styles of influence, I think that any influence I did have often been democratic but in some circumstances autocratic. I think this because the majority of the time i try to find a solution which suits everyone and I am open to criticism and feedback. Contrary to that there are rare occasions where I can be very autocratic and closed minded. When considering this behavior, I had to think about the context of the situations where I am very stubborn. Usually, I only act this way if the decision affects something very important to me. The decision making process always included all members, that is no decisions were make without every group member being consulted first. Therefore, my role in the decision making process was also central. In relation to task functions, we decided our individual parts very early and decided when to do group observation. My main role is for this element was deciding which group to observe. I was very set on the group I wanted to observe from very early. Therefore, I discussed it with my group from the first day I heard about the assignment. This allowed us to have direction and understand our task from very early. Considering maintenance functions, I think that everyone had the opportunity to speak out and the other group members would listen and not interrupt. I felt that I was always allowed the opportunity to get my ideas across and they were taken seriously by the other members. I also think that I allowed the other members to do the same. In regard to group atmosphere, I think it was friendly and laid back, however we always got our work done eventually. I feel that I definitely contributed to the laid back attitude but as mentioned I was the one who initiated the work. The membership element was not a concern for our group as we chose to be in that group. I never was made to feel outside the group and I do not think I made any of the other members feel the same way. Despite all my group members being friends, we still had our share of conflicts. ‘There are two different types of conflict, depending on the source of the discrepancy; task related disagreement (task conflict) and personal disputes among members (relationship conflict).” (Gamero et al, 2008). The only conflicts my group experienced were task based. The main issue we had was deciding what part of the team based case study we would do. Firstly, we decided how to divide the tasks up and then we discussed which part we wanted to do. As mentioned previously, I always felt comfortable to speak out in my group and therefore, I told the other members I would prefer to do the introduction and conclusion; however Andy and Kaky also wanted to do this part. We discussed this but could not come to a conclusion, so I suggested that we split the section and choose a random one. This resolved the solution in a fair way. My behavior in this situation was confirmed by my result of the “Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument”. My result was compromising which is defined as “intermediate” in both assertiveness and cooperativeness. The objective is to find some expedient, mutually acceptable solution which satisfies both parties. By completing this team based case study, I was able to learn more about my behavior in group situations. Although, I have done many team based assignments before, this particular task pushed me to look more in depth into my own behavior. One particular aspect I would like to develop would be learning to work in groups with people I have not previously met and develop power and politics through implementing adaptive change and create behavior towards team members. According to Richard Nixon, “The great leader needs…the capacity to achieve…Power is the opportunity to build, to create and to nudge history in different direction”. Through power, I will be able to manage relationships, make priority decision, manipulate the flow of advice to influence choices among team and ultimately create a strong culture that connects all team members to personal aspirations and goals References: IBIS World 2009, Armstrong, Terry R. (2006), ‘Revisiting the Johari Window: Improving Communications through Self disclosure and feedback’, Human Development, Vol.27 Issue 2, P10-14, viewed 1st May 2011. Bowyer.E, (2005), ‘Compendium of Games for Organisation Behaviour’, Pearson Education Australia. McShane.S & Travaglione.T, (2007), ‘Organisation Behaviour on the Pacific Rim’, 2nd Edition, McGraw-Hill, Australia, P.275, viewed 28 April 2011. IBIS World (2009), Gamero.N et al, ‘The influence of intra team conflict on work teams’ affective climate: A longitudinal study’, Journal of occupational and organizational psychology, Vol.81,P.4, viewed 25th April 2011. Marcic.D & Seltzer.J, (1998), ‘Organizational Behavior, Experiences and Cases’, 5th Edition, South Western College Publishing. IBIS World 2009, McDonald.T (2005), ‘Building an effective Team’, Aspen Publishers, Vol.15, Issue 2, P.3-4, viewed 1st May 2011. McShane.L & Glinow.M (2000), ‘Organizational Behavior: Emerging Realities for the Workplace Revolution’, McGraw-Hill, Australia. IBIS World 2008, Oshikawa.S (2006), ‘The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance and Experimental Research’, Journal of marketing Research (JMR), Vol.5, Issue 4, P.429-430, viewed 1st May 2011. IBIS World 2009, Gamero.N et al, ‘The influence of intra-team conflict on work teams, affective climate: A longitudinal study’, Journal of occupational and organizational psychology, Vol.81, P.4, viewed 1st May 2011. Read More