Based on Belbin’s the nine-team roles theory, my group was dominated by certain people who took the responsibilities, such as our coordinator and secretary. The rest of us were team worker, and responsible for researching and another member did the Website. Obviously, my group member built awareness of the group’s aims and shared goals. In addition, every member also knew their established roles within the group and acted accordingly. Ideally, this should have been accomplished in the “storming’ stage” of group formation. (Martin, J, 2002, P.192)
The title of this project was “the impact of terrorism on tourism in UK.” After we had decided, the title was separated into many parts and everyone needed to do one. My task was to find out the reasons why the terrorism existed in the UK. Firstly, I did some research from the Internet, I collected some articles and found several websites that I thought may be useful for our project, but I recognised that I had absolutely no idea as there were too many details and events under this title; I did not know where to start. Then I understood it was extremely difficult to get my task finished without any clear target. Therefore, I chose “9/11”event as my topic and I found it was easier for me to do the research again. Secondly, I had also read newspapers and try to find some more information relevant.
Difficulties and weaknesses
During the process, we also had many problems and difficulties. For example it was difficult to gather all the group members, the whole team lacked the ability to sit down and plan together efficiently. Especially, it was very difficult to set up the meeting time, because some people in the group did not always show up in the regular meetings. Even some of our members I just met just once. Therefore, we needed to rearrange our meetings again and again. It can be identified as Belbin’s description (Martin, J, 2002, P.237): people do not have enough morale. This inspires me that in real business team, e.g., hi-tech research and development team, the most important thing is to bring people together. This is exactly what a project manager do. Everyone can program, but only a qulified manager can bring team players together, inspire them, and encourage them. This is also the purpose of the course I’m taking – to understand and be qulified for business management.
In addition, some members could not hand in their research on time, so the whole report was finished very late and we did not have enough time to do the PowerPoint and website well. As mentioned by Laurie J Mullins “certain tasks can be performed only through the combined efforts of a number of individuals working together”. (Laurie J Mullins, 2002, P.470)
What is more, some members were shy and embarrassed to speak out their opinion. I am a confident person, but I thought that every time I spoke out I was taking a risk because sometimes the group did not share the same views as me and they would laugh now and then, this could be very embarrassing, but nothing personal.
Challenges and benefits
I really enjoyed working as a team, and I felt I have contributed a lot, I am easily motivated and I always try my best to do my research. I felt that my confidence has increased by doing the group exercises, and I am a lot more comfortable within the group, although the performances were not as well as we expected.
As English is my second language, the biggest challenge for me was to communicate with our members. Sometimes, the English people in my group talked very fast and I found it was difficult to follow.
Learning style
During the team working, I recognise that everyone had his/her own learning style, and got different result finally. Some people, with good learning habit, grasped the ideas easily and finished their work quickly, while some people were not so efficient. This makes me realise the importance of learning style, and makes me realise the importance of education. Through education, people can train their learn styles, in order to achieve a brighter life in future. It’s just as my friend said: “When you graduate, you have learned how to study.” I am aiming to archive this during my study.
According to the online learning style test and learning style questionnaires, I could understand myself deeply; it was really helpful in this project, and made me completed the research very efficiency.
Team work
“Teamwork involves the ability to work together to achieve a certain goal, it should involve people feeling comfortable and it is up to each member to ensure that everyone feels welcome and secure in the group”. (Laurie J Mullins, 2002, P.490) I think we did great in this case. Most of us was really motivated and made many contributions.
We used face-to-face communication method, because it was easier to get instant feedback and we could carry out a discussion after that. During the discussion, we usually use “Y” or chain network (Martin J, 2002, P.208). As I mentioned before, some members dominated my group. In addition, it was very difficult to arrange the time for meeting, so we used Email instead. We needed to send our research to the secretary, and she completed the whole report.
Conclusion
I think our group did not perform very well, although we finished the project and worked as a group. In the future group work I think I will become more activity. Hopefully, I can be braver to explain my own opinion and more tending to communicate with others. The key areas for future improvement would be clearer definition of targets and objectives and time management to ensure that we can reach a higher standard of group work.
Bibliography
- Martin, J (2002) “Organisational Behaviour” Thomson Learning, London.
2) Laurie J Mullins (2002) “Management and Organisational Behaviour” Pearson Education Limited, Essex.
