Portland Group Summary

Conflict Levels – Effective teams maintain a perfect level of negative and positive conflicts. At times disagreement is encouraged to lessen the likelihood of groupthink.

When teams are performing at their best, you are likely to find that each team member has cleared responsibility. You’ll also see that every team member needed to achieve their own personal goals in order for the team’s goal to be fully met to an adequate level. Dr Mereditch Belbin studied team work for many years and he mainly observed that people in teams tend to assume different roles within the team. He defined a team role as a “tendency to behave,

Team has to agree on the methods to which conflicts can be resolved within the group, this has to be addressed as soon as possible to enhance team cohesion and progress team effort towards achieving its goals.

During the performance, I felt very overwhelmed by the sound that the arguably small ensemble could produce. The dramatic crescendos and decrescendos really brought out the

The purpose of this paper is to discuss different strategies for team building which helps is overcoming conflicts in a working environment. Based on current strategies available on subject, it tries to figure out some leading challenges to addressed, and extracting the best strategy for team building. It covers analysis of factors and measures for building up a successful team, which serves as a common ground for a progress in evaluation of best strategy for the particular purpose.

This sometimes leads to conflicts and collaboration problems. Tuckman and Belbin’s theories helped me identify potential strengths and weaknesses within the group, overcome conflict between group members and understand and appreciate every members’ contribution in the group. Tuckman and Belbin advocated in their theories that several problems or obstacles can ruin the successful completion of a task. However, in the group task, we encountered several problems in the aspect of making contacts within group members, differences in ideas, and opinions of group members on the case study, group members not working collaboratively with other group members as well as the delivery tasks given to each members timely. However, as a group, we were able to overcome these obstacles by using diplomacy in certain areas of the group discussion, identifying each other’s potential strengths and weaknesses so that the group task can be completed successfully. In areas where a group member fails in a given task, other group members were there to provide knowledge and skills to cover up its

Additionally, Alexander would prove to be helpful in both the business aspect and music portions of the project. As a whole the team looked exceptionally strong based on their experiences and varying degrees of education in their fields. The different personalities posed a critical issue with the team but would eventually be addressed in future meetings.

Four years ago,  I joined a concert that makes a great influence on my life. The Formosa Quartet played three contrasting pieces in the concert that is a Mozart quartet, a Brahms viola quintet, and a Schumann piano quintet. The concert is impressed. Especially, when they played Brahms viola quintet, op.111. The character they make in three contrasting piece impressed me. This is the first time I knew the power of music would be. I felt that I can understand the ideas they want to convey to the audience without words.  They are a group to play music in unison. Meanwhile, each of them has their own character.  After the concert, I started to think--playing in a string quartet in the US.

52). This common belief among users of this style drives them to search for answers using all of the tools at the team’s disposal. The different dynamics of the team become assets. They see the differences that distinguish the members of the team as points of view are respected and viewed objectively. Differences like a male versus a female’s perspective, race, culture, and even social or economic status are viewpoints that give all in the team a bigger picture of the different issues they may need to consider when coming to a conclusion about how best to achieve their goal. Though this style is thought of as the best route for teams to use, it is also one of the most difficult. Even a person who has a natural talent or personality that promotes this style of conflict management has to practice to be effective using this style in a team setting. A person cannot be judgmental and must be sure not to take anything said personally. This is something that most if not all of the team members must have an awareness of. All team members have to feel comfortable with the results and with what was given up from their own personal point of view to arrive at the team’s decision. This style is also very demanding so it requires a good amount of patience. Depending on how quick a decision is needed it is not always possible for a team to achieve and some in the team may not believe that their best interests were achieved.

Among the five strategies the one I appreciate the most is competition. Competition is useful in other avenues as well as conflict management, such as academics. Although competition does require a loser it does a good job of stimulating teams to put out best efforts. Further, competition saves time when there is a deadline looming. When working in a group conflict is an inevitable matter that one cannot escape, there are varieties of conflicts; ideas, opinions, beliefs, culture differences, and desired accomplishment. Everyone have different ideas and goals in accomplishing their tasks, therefore, it might be difficult to be dealt with amongst one another if they cannot come to an agreement or have an open mind for new things. Conflict in a group could mean that there is a diversity of believes, aims, and ideas. It indicates that team members are contributing their part, sharing their different point of view and trying to make a different. As a manager, one should not look at conflict as a bad thing; instead tolerate minimum conflict in a group as a way of motivation and a development method for improvement or exchanging ideas to reach their goals. However, if conflict increase and cannot be settled in a professional or peaceful manner, as a manager, I would use the collaboration strategy method to help solve the issues. I would start to request each team members to do their own participation and write down their ideas with a

One would think that this would work against them, but surprisingly so, this never came up again and the whole team achieved superior levels of participation and collaboration because their members trusted one another, share a strong sense of group identity. In other words, their team possessed a high level of group emotional intelligence (EI) [1]. This could also have been developed due to the lack of pressure and mellow expectations on them, you can notice that their final shout was always “nothing to lose”. In fact, they really had nothing to lose because they were already tagged the bottom 8 and were part of

The dynamics of a team relies heavily on the interaction of team members during times of conflict not just during times of agreement. Often groups seek to achieve a cohesive relationship in an effort to unite the team towards its goals. Group members can make the mistake of subverting conflict in an attempt to maintain this team unity. Conflict serves a valuable role in effective group interactions that must be understood by participants of a team. An examination into the characteristics of conflict and cohesion and the relationship between the two dynamics can provide perspective to

In retrospect, another enlightenment I have gained is that, if being well utilized, conflicts and disagreements can also produce positive effects. At the primary stage of the mission, all of the team members were intentionally trying to keep a concordant relationship with each other as well as to avoid disputes and differences. However, later on we found it

People work in groups or teams everyday whether in their career, education, political organization, church, or any other social setting. Conflict while working in teams or groups is inevitable. When taking people of different backgrounds, personalities, moral, and ethical beliefs and putting them together in a group, conflict will arise. The key to achieving your team goals is to construct and conquer your goals with keeping the greater good of the team in mind. Conflict as it arises should be combated and abated through swift and thorough resolution techniques. When dealt with properly conflict resolution can give rise to a cohesive and productive team.

When doing so the other group members were active listener, by using their whole body verbally and nonverbal. Like facing the speaker and giving eye contact and try to avoided interruption. The group also acknowledges the thoughts of the speaker by giving constructive feed back. Due to the effectiveness of the group communication, we were able to build trust, respect and understand the issues and make decision for effective change. We illustrate this by coming together as a group one again to accomplish the goal we initially wanted to accomplish. Since the first organization that we had chosen was incorrect, so we had to make the necessary changes to accomplish our goals. The other effective feature is the purpose of the group. Kozier et al (2010) stated that the effective group purpose is when “goal, task, and outcomes are clarified. Understanding and modified so that members of the group can commit themselves to purposes through cooperation” (p.401). For instance, each individual was assign a task and knew what was to be accomplished. As group we all decided to meet at suitable day and time which was beneficial to all team members, because we could commit to the group and focus on what needed to be achieved.