Teamwork Drives Success - Free Essay Sample

Introduction

As the popular saying goes, if you want to go far, work with others, but there is always a catch that such collaboration may limit the pace of arriving at the desired goal. The saying has never been so meaningful than after meeting my new team. I have come to realize that with discussion and teamwork, tough concepts are easily understood while the flow of ideas makes the work easier. The team has been great in forging the way forward and ensuring we meet the targets for the project. The team members have made one crucial point clear; no human has a monopoly of ideas or solutions. However limited or weak a suggestion may look like, approached with conscious and in-depth analysis, it can be refined or improved to become a great idea.

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Significant Challenges

The going is smooth and fruitful, although the team faced significant challenges at the start when people were getting to know each other. I came to recall that we as a team we're going through the five stages of group development and at that time we were past the forming stage, and into the storming stage. The storming stage is where team members start to get unsettled after learning each other’s strengths and roles in the group.

I have learned a lot about myself as mainly in regard to being a team player. I have never doubted myself as a team player, but group dynamics always pose a different challenge to members as they mitigate challenges at hand or pursue the team’s agenda. Of late, I have come to appreciate myself as a good group leader and often taking the role of the critical appraiser in the group initiations. The role of a critical appraiser or evaluator is essential since it helps reduce risks associated with rushing into implementing suggestions without undertaking evaluations to seal possible current or foreseeable loopholes.

Team Process

The team process is also a frontier that has offered significant interest and room for learning. Among the issues I have learned include the importance of field experience. The collaborative effort requires tackling challenges with the project or tasks assigned. Such solutions must be feasible in terms of precision, execution, measurability, and reasonability. These attributes are often inspired by experience as opposed to theoretical understandings. However, understanding the theory is equally resourceful in team collaboration since it is a foundation upon which ideas are vetted.

There is less to complain about team collaboration, but one of the challenges that seem not to be work well is time management. The members are taking a lot of time before agreeing on a mutually agreeable meeting time when all are available. It appears that most of the members have competing interests and responsibilities making it challenging to agree on date and time. Also, I feel members are wasting a significant amount of time discussing non-academic or unscheduled agendas, especially politics and gossips which may be limiting the quality of time spend on discussing pertinent issues on matters of academic and project progress.

Conclusion

As a way of supporting the team’s development, I am hoping of suggesting we set agendas every time we have a meeting so that other issues can only be discussed after the day’s agendas have been exhausted. Also, I have noted that some members get quite a during group discussion and not for lack of contribution points, but due to the fact that some of the members dominate the group discussions. As a response, I am proposing to discuss with the team members to agree on a strategy that fosters a platform and environment for every member to contribute during meetings. Also, we need as a team to embrace the virtual meeting technologies so as to improve the number of meetings we have and increase convenience in a team with members having a myriad of responsibilities. All in all, I am sure the team collaboration will continue to improve and enable the team to realize the set expectations.