Essay Example on Working in a Team: My Experience and Critical Analysis

Introduction

Working in a team within an organization is essential for communication in life. Things that people experience at the workplace can be a path for their communication improvement with one another, whether they come from a different cultural background and many other factors (De Boeck & Dries, 2016). Therefore, in my paper, I want to critically analyze my personal experience with work being led by someone in a group from different aspects.

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Over the period I have been working, I learned a lot of things that were equally advantageous to me and will help me in the future. The first time I joined the organization to work, I found that teamwork was embraced within the organization. When I joined the team, I was assigned to work with, it was very awkward for me, and I bet for them as well. We were some kind of introducing ourselves to one together. As time goes by, I established to get to know each other more, enhancing my communication skills and getting through the awkwardness. In the team I joined, we managed to even exchange emails and phone numbers at the end of our first meeting.

My team members were very friendly, and we got to know more about everyone. It made it easy for effective communication and worked within the group to attain success jointly. Being a new member of the organization, I had the fear that my lack of experience in different aspects would turn to be one of my largest cons, and it would as well interfere with my group. Consequently, I gained courage and managed to surpass fear I had focusing on making good expressions.

The organization where I was working had well-defined objectives that were to be achieved by working as a team. There was also a team leader whom I observed Working to ensure that team was productive. The team leader embraced enough personal attributes that matched his authority. Thus, it was a good and constructive organization that I enjoyed working with.

I came to realize that leadership is a critical factor within the organization, and it can result in either success or failure. Leadership is a skill that can be learned, but I realized that it takes internationality. To influence the team members to achieve a common goal within an organization required someone who has good and enough leadership skills. A person can only be termed as a good leader by his influence but not by behavior, trait, or position.

To accommodate new understandings and contexts, it is essential to look at some leadership theories and get to know-how leaders. Their followers or teams interact with each other within an organization. Some leadership theories are discussed below:

The Leader-Member Exchange Theory (LMX)

The LMX theory tries to give an explanation that in any organization or group, there are out-group members in-group members. The out-group members are not well compatible with the leader; they may not be willing or less willing to take extra tasks, they may possess personalities that are clashing, or they may hold the dissenting opinions. In-group members are those that work very closely and well with the leader (Arena & Uhl-Bien, 2016). They are always willing to take extra tasks, and their personalities fit with the leaders. Therefore, for a leader, the theory is offering a greater challenge because, to make the team more productive as possible, it will mean finding ways of turning out-group members into in-group members and continue to motivate the in-group members.

Transformational Leadership Theory

The transformational leader connects with the team members in a manner that increases the level of morality and motivation. Morality and motivation are essential aspects of leadership because it will demand that the leader becomes committed to a collective good. Therefore, the transformational leadership theory describes a leader as someone who stretches the team member to think deeply, innovate and challenge assumptions, a leader who uses words to inspire actions and encourage others and a leader who show concern and care for individuals and possess an idealized influence (Arena & Uhl-Bien, 2016).

The leader who led the team provided instructions, guidance, direction, and leadership to the team intending to obtain the key results or the group of aligned results. The team leader, as I observed the way he was operating, he monitored the qualitative and quantitative achievements of the team and reported to the top manager who was in charge of overseeing the multiple teams. The leader was always working within the team, as a member conducting out the same assignments but with the additional responsibilities of a 'leader' as opposed to the top management, which usually has a separate job role altogether (Arena & Uhl-Bien, 2016).

The person who led the team strived for the successful function of the team by motivating the team to employ the use of their skills and knowledge to obtain the shared goals. As a result, we as the team was able to work in a goal-oriented manner. My team leader was also capable of driving the performance within the group of people; the leader utilized his peers, expertise, creativeness, and influence to formulate an effective team.

Motivation is a very critical aspect of an organization that enhances and boosts the morale of employees. From experience I had from work, I observed how my manager motivated teams, and it was very effective, and productivity was also high. Some of the ways which were used by the manager to motivate employees include (Hughes, 2018);

Creating a friendly work environment - since most of the time was spent working inside the office, the manager ensured that the office was looking appealing and friendly, and it motivated employees to be more eager and willing to go to work every day.

Acknowledging the achievement of employees - Every person always wants recognition for anything they have done, no matter it was for personal or work achievement. I observed my manager acknowledging the good job, which was done, thus promoting the employees to continue working extra hard with a feeling that their efforts are recognized and appreciated.

Using rewards to motivate employees - Sometimes, it might take more than just a pat on the back to motivate employees. My manager used to employ simple incentives to reward employees if a monetary reward was not adequate all the time. For example, providing free parking space at the office for one week.

Using positive and constant communication with the employees - Communication is the key to success in every organization. By communicating, employees will feel that they are recognized as they can easily share out their needs and ideas. I observed my manager communicating with the employees by spending a shorter time every day to discuss things that concern employees and their tasks. It made employees be happy and always become ready for any task.

Not making employees bored at the workplace - Often, in every organization, there will be some employees who usually have a short attention span. Therefore, it is the work of the manager to keep them active all the time and throughout the week. I could observe my manager from the organization I worked hosting a bake-off cupcake, calling for the lunches together every Wednesday in the office and allowing different to run the weekly meetings, thus breaking up the dreariness.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, when working towards getting what can motivate employees best, a manager should always have in mind that there is a need to make changes and adjustments to discover what is working and what does not work (Hughes, 2018). From the experience I had from work, my manager always perfected his strategy for motivation by getting to know individuals through teams in the organization. The result was a positive perspective for the future of the organization and a greater dedication to work.

The changes I would suggest to the leader at my place of work to enhance successful teamwork is by setting a long-term vision, providing support to unleash the ideas of the team members and promoting interaction among employees across the organization. Furthermore, a leader should allow online communication inside out, bottom-up and top-down, with no need of waiting for the approval from the management, a leader should facilitate faster decision making within the team, training everybody to CARE for their team and ensure that every individual is connected to the needs of each team member and the customer needs (De Boeck & Dries, 2016).

References

Arena, M. J., & Uhl-Bien, M. (2016). Complexity leadership theory: Shifting from human capital to social capital. People and Strategy, 39(2), 22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orgdyn.2016.12.001

De Boeck, G., & Dries, N. (2016). The personal experience of untapped potential in the work domain as a temporal perspective on meaning-making. In Symposium on Meaningful Work: Prospects for the 21st Century, Date: 2016/12/02-2016/12/02, Location: Auckland (New Zealand). https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/ambpp.2017.15850abstract

Hughes, P. (2018). Practical ways to motivate your employees: managing for profit. Farmer's Weekly, 2018(18046), 28-28. https://journals.co.za/content/journal/10520/EJC-124afbbd7c