Reflection On Teamwork

There are many problems that hinder good group dynamics. We don’t usually have the luxury of picking who we are going to work with on a team; dealing with different personalities and personal agendas are common challenges in working within a team. Other commons challenges like, poor leadership, bad communications, and lack of focus can be helped or eliminated by establishing team roles.

To further understand Belbin Team Role Theory, I, together with four students formed a team and simulated as being authorized by the Songjiang Government Bureau to investigate into the current situation and the prospect of the higher education industry in Songjiang District. Through unremitting team efforts, we successfully demonstrated our findings and recommended several ideas via a formal presentation. Reviewing the three-months-long process of cooperation, I really found this experience of learning meaningful and fruitful. This reflective essay is a conclusion of my sympathetic introspection of the

Reflect critically and individually on the experience of producing your presentation as a shared piece of work, and discuss the implications for collaborative working as an underpinning principle of health and social care policy. At its simplest concept, collaboration infers that people from different professional and academic backgrounds form a working relationship for the purpose of enhanced service provision. (Audrey, L. 2003). The SCIE (2013) suggest that because issues within health and social care can often be complicated and service users may have a multitude of needs, collaboration is extremely important in health and social care as it allows practitioners to share ideas and develop their knowledge.

As a leader within an organization, teamwork is such an important quality to possess. Teamwork allows the employees to operate together, forming a cohesive bond. In fact, with teamwork, tasks are done efficiently and in a timely manner. Teamwork is so important especially within the healthcare world because healthcare providers and employees have to work together in order to provide the patient with the highest amount of quality of care.

The team leader’s ability to identify, understand and correct any dysfunctional teams is also an important process to stay productive. There are three types of dysfunctional teams (MCMANUS, 2014) the “war zone” team is an environment where everyone is watching their backs and jockeying for position behind closed doors. There is usually a struggle for power and is generally a very completive environment between team members. The “love fest” team is heavily focused on

Traditionally teams are built by putting a group of people together without considering many traits or characteristics about those people, then expecting them to work together in a productive manner. Often times this does not work well at all, particularly if the person in charge is unfamiliar with the team concept themselves. Teams have to be cohesive in their ability to make decisions and handle projects within their organization. Sometimes cohesiveness causes team members who are not adept at working with others to push back at the team and this causes friction within the team. Team building models have been developed over the years to make teams work.

Without trust among team members and having fear of conflict due to the ability to engage in unfiltered debate leads to no commitment in the team. Without these first steps team members have no base to hold each other accountable for their actions. Causing team members to put their individual needs first.

Teamwork is the joint action by a group to complete a given task. This was displayed by group 20 as each member contributed their individual knowledge and skills towards the team as well as the course objective.

In this essay I am going to reflect on my experience working as part of a team and the preparation on an oral presentation I had to do in class with people from different courses, as part of the Foundations for Practice in Health and Social Care module. Reflection is educational and is used as a means of self-knowledge and to develop using a process of feeling and learning by thinking about what happened and what could have been done differently. (Rolfe, 2011, p.8-12) I will be using the Gibbs (1988) Reflective Cycle to do this. In this model there are 6 different stages to look at to help structure reflection, the description of the event, your feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and an action plan. There is more than one model

1- What role did you play in team meetings or discussions (online or face-to-face)? What ideas or. work did you contribute? Consider your verbal (vocal or written tone, etc.) and nonverbal communication (body language, facial expressions, etc).

Teamwork can be complex and challenging given task and interpersonal issues, level of group motivation and expected performance standards. The concrete experience spoken about in this reflection piece is in reference to the effectiveness of myself as a group member and the group, working to write a report outlining the organisation and structure of Volkswagen. Dennison (2009) applies Kolb’s learning cycle (1981, 1984) which suggests that learning moves through a continuous cycle, between having an experience, and then reflecting on that action. This cycle has been developed from Lewin’s (1951) model for experiential learning. Reflection termed by Boud, Keogh and Walker (1985) ‘is a forum of response to the learner to experience’(p. 18). On reflection, the early set group dynamics was a defining factor in the experience, and how the team conducted themselves throughout the task. Meyerson, Wick and Kramer (1996) note that ‘such rapidly converging groups require methods for developing “swift trust”’ (p. 8), which can explain why initial group dynamics are so important. I took on multiple team roles, including group leader, which could be translated into the team not performing collectively on a high level, however, I could view this as a personal ineffectiveness of my leadership style.

“Group work is a form of voluntary association of members benefiting from cooperative learning that enhances the total output of the activity than when done individually”.

I am the second team member. On my part, I am a senior instructor analyst with

A further disadvantage of teamwork may be that the team has existed too long and inspiration of new ideas has expired. This idea is discussed in Fincham and Rhodes (2005). There is a risk of team members becoming too friendly with each other and that friendships and professional relationships may be difficult to distinguish. If this occurs, team work is affected as it may be easy for team members to become distracted by personal issues rather than focussing on the task set. In this way team work may become less effective. It is important that team members remain professional when working in

Despite the advantages associated with a shared leadership approach, some disadvantages also exist. One disadvantage originates from individual interpretations of teamwork (Baghai & Quigley, 2012). In other words, not all people in a work environment view working together the same, posing a leadership challenge to clearly delineate the organization’s concept of team. Other disadvantages arise when workers chose to bypass or overlook some team members, or when an individual lacks the confidence to exhibit leadership skills resulting in organizational loss of leadership potential (Pearce, Wassenaar, & Manz, 2014).