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Jersey Girl wrote:pirate,

I admittedly just scanned your post so don't take this as gospel. :-) Is what they're looking for the role that you assume when working as part of a team? That is to say: Are you a visionary, the one who inspires the group? Are you a follower who accepts assignments from the group? Are you the organizer who structures the group and assigns tasks?

Is that where they want you to go with it?

Sorry, if I've not been much help. I'll try to read through this carefully later.

Essay, Me wrote:How I relate to teams with reference to theoretical concepts.

The purpose of this essay is to understand and evaluate my role in a team or group via analysis of how I relate to others in my own personal experience with theoretical conceptual reference.

A team is a group of people working together to achieve a certain outcome that is beneficial to each person in that groups’ needs, in whichever state of being relevant to the individual participating thereof.

A ‘psychological group’ according to Schein (1988), is a group that is of any number of people that interact and are psychologically aware with and of one another and perceive themselves to be a group. [1]

A good team is a team that works as one and to its strengths. The team as a whole is striving to achieve one goal and puts the desired outcome before individual interests. It is well structured and clear. Each person in the team makes the most of their qualities and use them to the strength of the team and to share those qualities with other team members. A good team respects and includes members and makes effort to praise that which has brought prosperity and allows all views to be shared.

This team however might be either functional or dysfunctional, I shall attempt to describe using theoretical concepts what it is that makes a team work and what hinders the productivity of such a team.

Tuckman (1965) – Stages of group development. [2]

According to Tuckman the following stages are how groups are developed and how I relate:

• Forming (How I fit in).
I work best as a group leader. I am generally quiet until I am comfortable with my surroundings. Once settled I am often seen as predominant within the group or team.

• Storming (What is my role here).
I feel it depends on the goals of the group. I like to be in a leadership role, but if I am not competent with the task at hand or I feel someone will achieve more whether for their own personal benefit or the teams personal benefit, I will often take a step back.

• Norming (What do others expect from me).
I should imagine that each role is different and has different expectations. And one should work to fill those expectations appropriately. According to Hackman [(1987) – Creating effective teams; (leadership)] [3] there are four qualities of an effective leader, or what should be expected of them;

1. Aware of the conditions, (Knows some things).
2. Knows how to do some things.
3. Has emotional maturity.
4. Has personal courage.

I think the most important of these attributes is that of having personal courage. It is important that the leader of a group is able to make the team feel strong and able to carry out the tasks at hand and that cannot be done if the leader isn’t strong and/or has self belief.


• Performing (How can I best perform my role).
It is best to play according to ones strengths. To make good plans and follow instructions given by those in more authoritive positions. Belbin [(late 1970’s) – Belbin team roles.] [4] came up with ‘9 clusters’, “Balanced teams work better”.
Having filled a questionnaire in lecture I have discovered that I mostly follow the characteristics of a ‘Plant’ and ‘Resource Investigator’ with a bit or each of the rest. This tells me that I am an extrovert and am creative. I am the type of person that comes up with ideas and explores opportunities. My weaknesses according to this are that I lose initial enthusiasm quickly and am over optimistic. I feel I agree with these descriptions. I often come up with lots of ideas and am very enthusiastic, but often lose the motivation to carry out these ideas after a while, usually due to other’s negativity. For example, I was given support and managed to get together a small team of students to help me make this idea a reality. I was not very wise in my choice of team because it was a spur of the moment idea. At the first proper meeting, I invited a friend along to observe (partially to prove that I am capable of being serious). This persons presence threw me completely and they took over the meeting. I lost my ability to lead the group quickly and the group fell apart, especially when my idea was criticised. I still have one team member out of three that is still positive with the idea, but there is a lot of work with the idea and will take too much time.

• Adjourning (What is next).




Steiner (1972). [5]

Steiner suggested performance is dependant upon three variables;
• Task demands,
• Resources ,
• Process.

Task demands; What is the task? What is needed to fulfil the task? How should the task be carried out? And how should the total process be managed?

Resources; What is available in the team members? What knowledge, skills, abilities and tools are available within the team? What roles are needed?

Process; What steps are taken when confronted with the task? To what extent is the collective behaviour of the team corresponding with the task demands?

Formula; Actual productivity = Potential productivity (minus losses due to faulty processes).

I will talk about “Faulty Processes” by Steiner in the section of drawbacks.

Steiner suggested that there are three divisions in which tasks can be processed.
• Divisible Vs Unitary,
- Split into sub tasks which can be fulfilled by different team members.
- Some tasks such as reading a book make no sense to be split into sub tasks.
• Maximising Vs Minimising,
- Maximising (Optimising) – Quantity; such as how much work is done, how quickly, number of ideas etc. – Quality; the accuracy involved.
- Minimising, doing as little as possible.

• Combinability of.
- Additive tasks.



Steiner on group size;

Additive & Disjunctive tasks;
• As the size of the group becomes larger so does the performance of that group. I remember reading the other night about an experiment done on behalf of the size of group in respect to how much performance was done, I will just express my thought in brief as not to get carried away. There was a tug of war taken place and the results had shown that more people as a whole perform better but as number of people increase the efficiency decreased. I found this interesting.

• Efficiency of the team declines as group size increases.

Conjunctive;
• Performance decreases as size of team increases.


I find that often, I prefer to study in a smaller group of two or three when revising. When in labs, I work better, faster and more focused when working on my own.

Hackman 1987 – Creating effective teams; Leadership.

Hackman suggested there are four qualities of an effective leader;

5. Aware of the conditions, (Knows some things).
6. Knows how to do some things.
7. Has emotional maturity.
8. Has personal courage.


Drawbacks within teams: [6]

• Social facilitation.
• Social loafing.

It is hard to believe that some people go out of their way to destroy teams, I guess most would do it unconsciously.
There is a lot of theory regarding teams and team roles, I never knew that people actually studied team work. I found that somewhat interesting. I am now going to express some examples of when I was in a team and how I reacted.

RAF Fylingdales work experience 2006.

I was asked to work in a team of six including myself. Our goal was to prepare a presentation on any subject by the end of the week. There were different characteristics within the group. Clearly, dominant leader type people and also followers. I was not as dominant as some team members and not as recessive as others. I was well known for asking lots of questions and leaned more towards leadership than a follower. During the week we were split into two groups and were asked to interview a person for an imaginary job position. We were each given a role and I was given the role of HR, I was not in a managerial position and so to me, I felt I was not leading the interview. I allowed those that were leading to take control of the interview. It was scary to interview someone. The strange thing was that I did end up taking over the interview because the other two in the group sat silent. I looked at them for a bit, I guess they didn’t know what to say. I felt a little bad that I did take over and at the end of the week at the debriefing I was told that sometimes in life we do have to take over whether it was our job to or not. The hardest part of the week that made me realise that I was more comfortable being a leader was when we were planning our presentation. We were discussing ideas, eventually my idea was chosen. I found it difficult to work with the group as there were clear dominant figures that made me feel uncomfortable.

Peer Mentoring System 2006 -2007.

Having been given permission to set up a peer mentoring system I spent most of my time working on that. I set up a committee and created links with suitable staff members that were able to help. The ultimate goal was to lay the foundations and have the system running. I was surprised at how long it took just to get the system started. It involved making and presenting presentations which were presented to both staff and student, communicating with various people, arranging training, finding and interviewing applicants, organisation and leadership skills. I could go on, but it was basically like setting up a small business. I found it stressful when often I was working on my own because I didn’t have full backing or support. The ultimate goal kept me going and kept me trying to focus my team and get this thing to work. I was so happy when in August 2007, having left College to come to University, that the system had increased substantially and was heading in a positive direction. The system had finally started running just as I had left. We got the foundations in place. It was a good feeling to have made a large change that would be remembered in time to come. I am widely known in College because of the work I have done and it makes me smile when friends tell me of things that are happening in School that are positive.

Working with the ropes in practical.

When working in this practical, some of my friends suggested I go up, they see me as confident and not scared to do anything. I took a step back. I felt someone else should have the opportunity. James suggested he do it. We all agreed. I felt James was a good team leader for our group. He was straight to the point and very clear. I was a little saddened when he wouldn’t let me express my ideas, but I guess a lot of people are sick of hearing me. This made me step further back into a recessive position and I had become a follower. Although I like to be a leader, I will often fall into the position I am forced or expected to be in. I will only be strong when the boundaries are clear and the roles are formal, otherwise I will mold into the role I feel most comfortable in which is usually affected by the other team members and their attitudes. After a while my confidence was beginning to build again and I talked a lot more. I felt if people took me seriously and listened to me I could have helped, but that wasn’t my role and I have to be careful to stick to the role I have been given. Often I was shouting things and no one took notice. I felt the drive for our team to succeed was competition. We wanted to do better than the other team and we did. Hehe. James was also a good leader at the end when he complimented us on our team work and pointed out where he felt we went wrong and then we discussed it. The only thing that made me uncomfortable was his wavering back and forth between complimenting and down grading. Like a see saw. Otherwise, he was the best option for the role and did a good job.

To conclude, I feel most comfortable leading depending on the circumstances but will often fall into the role expected of me and am pretty much capable of working in that role, however daunting it may be. I feel I am full of energy and like to be involved.

2138 words.

200701488


[1] Lecture slides “team3rd2008” taken from Blackboard. Slide 2.
[2] Lecture slides “team3rd2008” taken from Blackboard. Slides 4 and 5.
[3] Online source, report written by Hackman of Harvard University.
[4] www.belbin.com
[5] Leeds University lecture on Steiner.
[6] Lecture slides “team3rd2008” taken from Blackboard. Slide 20.