The Challenges and Conflicts that May Occur in Teams - Essay Example

Management Introduction To prepare an exhibition I had to work with a team of five members who belongs to different countries. There is a different experience in working with a team rather than working with an individual. During the preparation of exhibition the behaviour of team members are very important and how they get along with me. It is really hard to say whether it is better to work with individual or in a team since both apply their ideas and decisions at individual levels. The individuals forming a team have unique understanding regarding certain issues and they try to solve it in their way (Ahuja, 2006). However, working with individual eliminates the possibility of collision of many ideas which ultimately stems into chaos. I had a great time with my team members who belong to different cultures and country as a whole. Two of the team members are from Qatar; others are from Egypt, Chad and China. Through this session of team work I have identified the characteristics of each team member and have studied them properly. The exhibition is expected to be successful since each and every team members have the capability to deal with any difficulty or unforeseen situation. The effectiveness of their decision making is high since all of them give their ideas and collectively reach a certain decision which is likely to be successful. The essay highlights my perception and experience during the preparation of the exhibition with my team members (Ahuja, 2006). Team work I have observed that people often forms a group to accomplish some but they may not work together too. However, if they work together they are called a team. A team can be referred as a group of people who first organize themselves for working cooperatively towards a single objective which is set by them. However, according to my perception effective teams cannot be created automatically. There are people in a team who pass through a phase of understanding and cohesion at the same time before they are able to do some useful work and take a critical decision (Ahuja, 2006). During preparation of the exhibition my team is formed by taking the most efficient members who can contribute positively towards the attainment of the goal. The team members are individual researchers who have helped in doing researches about the main topic of the exhibition and share their understanding regarding the same. It is very crucial for me to understand the development of the team since each and every member have different potency and different bent of mind which guards their morality and intelligence (Ahuja, 2006). Cross Culture Conflict (Challenges faced) My team is formed with such team members who belong to different culture and country. They follow their own method of solving problems and handle situations. Their beliefs are different and so is their behaviour, Thus, initially it was hard for me to get acquainted with their way of outing up their words. Their behaviours are far different from mine and they have different ways if outing up their ideas in a basket (Purcell, et al., 2003). Thus, it is very hard to manage a bunch of people and work with them in harmony since ideas are bound to clash and there can be miscommunications too (Purcell, et al., 2003). The role of individuals in forming the team and executing their work is dependent on their ability to do the work perfectly. The exhibitions are planned and my team members are sorted in a team with ne to prepare it effectively. The role of individual in the team is to find out information regarding the topic of exhibition. For collecting information, the team members went through books and articles which gave data as well as facts pertaining to the topic. Individual team members then worked as a team member in sharing the information collected by each (Purcell, et al., 2003). Information is perceived by individuals differently. The understanding and knowledge capacity of the individuals also differ from each other. Thus, before coming to any conclusion, we share the information with each other which helped us to increase our understanding and knowledge about the topic (Coutu, 2009). The difference in understanding and knowledge shaped up different questions and procedure to execute the exhibition. The questions aroused in our mind since we wanted to analyse it further for better understanding and give our best decision which will help in building a successful exhibition plan. The researches helped us to acquire in depth knowledge about the topic and encouraged us to learn more about the fact and facets of the topic (Nielsen, 2002). Here, I observed that team work is very important in executing the task of gathering information. If an individual is responsible for a task he will only focus to a particular area of the topic. Whereas, if a team is employed to do the same job, the task is executed more efficiently since each of the team members focus on different areas and ultimately they gather knowledge and share them in front of the rest (Armstrong, 2009; Cooper and Kagel, 2004). I belief that a team work is more efficient in taking any decision or solving any problem than an individual since the latter do not have enough knowledge regarding the issues and challenges. Individual knowledge is limited but if a group of people work as a team their ideas and understanding are also accumulated and thus sharing of their ideas gives shape to perfect plan. However, there are a number of challenges in working in a team but it is beneficial because the decision is accurate and it helps in building a clear goal (Beardwell, Holden and Claydon, 2004). All the team members in my team are cooperative enough to share the ideas which they have acquired by gathering information regarding the topic. The information from the team members have given us idea about what to do and how to proceed with our work. When every task was running smoothly, suddenly an issue aroused within the team which harmed the peace of the team. It became the main challenge for the whole process to continue further. The challenge was encountered due to the cross culture conflict (Debrah and Ofori, 2006; Swart, et al., 2005). (Difficulties encountered by the team) Cross culture actually refers to the interaction between people who dwell from different backgrounds in the world of business. I have read that it is a vital problem in international context since the success of any assignment or business is dependent on interaction between people of different regions and culture. Cross cultural differences are common in any organization or during accomplishment of any task where people of different cultures are assembled together. Cross cultural conflicts are hard to solve because individuals have their own belief and they stick to it. The beliefs are built in them from childhood in such a way that they do not easily wrap up the situation where they are encountered by cross cultural barriers. The cross cultural barriers can occur in organization or institutions where people or students work in a team. Team can be formed with a number of people with different origin, language and accent. This may a serious problem for the whole team to come to a decision quickly since communication is not lucid. I have noticed that at times miscommunications gives rise to tough situations where good relation between team members is harmed to a great extent (Barney, 2001; DeNisi and Griffin, 2005; Dessler, 2000). My team members are from four different nations: Egypt, Chad, China and Qatar. They have their own belief and habits according to their customs and rituals. I have noticed that sometimes the language has become a big obstacle for each of us. Our main language in which we communicated with each other is English but the accents are different. This accent created problem for our team members as miscommunication was built among them (Allen, et al., 2007). There is huge cultural difference between the above mentioned nations. They follow different religions and languages are different in each case. Chad is a country in Central Africa and it is a region which has diverse religions. The majority of the population is Muslim and they are following Islam culture (Allen, et al., 2007). However, there are Christians too which forms the minority of the population. The languages in Chad are Arabic, French and Hausa. Among all languages Arabic is the main language for all. Thus, my team mate from Chad belongs to Seychelles and thus has different views regarding the religious concept of the exhibition topic which was criticized by others. Being a Muslim my team mate is very religious about the Islamic culture so anything which harms the sentiments of my team mate is not tolerated and thus cross culture conflict is noticed (Bartram and Gibson, 2000). Chinese culture is conservative and highly influenced by Confucianism. There are around 56 distinct ethnic groups in China which forms the majority of the Chinese population. The language spoken by the majority of the Chinese residents are Mandarin and others Wu, Yue and Hakka. These languages are very hard to understand as the different ethnic groups stick to a particular language. Thus, it is very difficult to understand their language and accent quickly as they are not quite prominent in English. The pronunciation is different which indicates to the fact that it is hard to get the exact feeling of the person who is conversing. My Chinese team mate is a girl and she is not so proficient in speaking English to a level that everybody should understand clearly. Thus, all of us encountered this problem of understanding right expression (Bartram and Gibson, 2000). Like Chad, Egypt also follows Islamic culture. The majority of the Egyptians speak Arabic language and they are very conservation about their civilization. The conservative nature of the Egyptian is noticed in my team mate who does not converse much with us but tried to express views and understanding to great extent (Pope, n. d.). Lastly, Qatar also follows Islamic culture. Majority of the country is occupied by Sunni Muslim and other belongs to different group of Muslim. Arabica is the main language that the Qatar residents use for communication (Pope, n. d.). Two of my team mates of Qatar are quite expressive but they encountered major problem is communicating with my Chinese mate. The Chinese mate is conservative in nature and the main obstacle for understanding his decision is that English is not prominent. The Chinese mate is the only girl in the team. It is quite difficult to handle a single girl among a bunch of boys since she can become commanding. Thus, the major problem of the team is to handle the girl since any conversation against her came offend her. However, the cross culture conflict is basically observed between the Chinese girl and the Arab spoken team mates. The difference in beliefs and language became the main issue during the preparation of the exhibition (Pope, n. d.). Apart from these issues, various other problems are also observed during the meeting sessions. The team members arrived late in the meetings and there is conflict regarding the fixation of the time and work schedule. The problem of leadership raised questions that who will be the leader. We decided to make the Chinese team mate the leader since she is only girl and have the knowledge about the resources of the exhibition. We made her the leader since she is not comfortable in the group of boy. However, the decision was not accepted by all the team members since she became very commanding and did not utilise her power properly. They created issues for replacing her by identifying that she does not have the capability to understand the requirements of the exhibitions (Pope, n. d.). (How the difficulties are managed and overcome) In course of time I was worried about the success of the team work for the exhibition. It worried me so much that I had to take appropriate step to hold back the team and get the work done. I decided that there will b no leadership concept at all. The team members will allot their own task and do them responsibly and at the end of the tasks they will submit report on their findings. It resolved the situation to a great extent and it tried to eliminate the miscommunication between the team members. The language barrier was handled by allowing the team members to express their understanding and knowledge through power point presentation. The presentation helped the team members who could not understand the accent of the other team members concentrated on it and filled the gap of communication (Pope, n. d.). The decision taken for achieving the goal combined the understanding and views of all the team members. Thus, I have noticed that cross culture conflicts and leadership problems can be eliminated by giving equal responsibility and right to the team members for delivering their idea. The presentation form of their ideas helped in eliminating the communication barrier between the members (Pope, n. d.). Conclusion Team work is difficult to maintain since there is clash in decision making. Individuals are distinguished from others by their dept of understanding and knowledge. Some have th talent to lead others do not posses such quality. It is dependent on individual how he/she will react to an order. Thus, I have noticed during the team work that leadership is not always required to accomplish a certain goal. If the responsibility is equally distributed among each of the team members they are encouraged. The cross cultural barrier is also eliminated by allowing individuals to present their views through presentation. Therefore it can be concluded that team work above individual work (Pope, n. d.). Reference List Ahuja, K., 2006. Personnel management. New Delhi: Kalyani publishers. Allen, R. S., Dawson, G., Wheatlay, K. and White, S.C., 2007. Perceived diversity and organizational performance. Employee Relations, 30(1), pp. 20-33. Armstrong, M., 2009. 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