My experience of working in groups

University Degree Business and Administrative studies

MY EXPERIENCE OF WORKING IN GROUPS

Jie, Huang, BA Human Resources

Student No: 05991814

It is said that human are ‘social animals’, so get along with others is an important issue in our life. Ability in team working attracted lots of attention in recent years as group working has been more and more popular. Many scholars have worked in group topic, while two of the most influential theories are Belbin’s GROUP ROLE MODEL and Tuchman’s STAGES OF GROUP DEVELOPMENT MODEL. In this essay, I am going to briefly review these two models and using my own group working experience to explain how these can be related in practice.

BELBIN GROUP ROLES MODEL looks into the differing roles people work at in-group situation. Belbin believes that ‘teams with similar personalities did not perform well’. All groups create roles, even those very small groups where an individual need to take on many roles, and each role need different personality and competency. Properly allocating of roles can help the group to work together effectively. Belbin identified nine roles that cover the types of individual behaviour at work in a team –

Plant: giving new ideas and strategies on major issues and looking for solution of problems.

Resource Investigator: exploring ideas, developments and resources outside the group.

Co-ordinator: making the best use of team resources, recognising the team’s strengths and weaknesses and ensuring the best use of members’ potential.

Shaper: shaping the way in which the team effort is applied.

Monitor Evaluator: analysing problems, evaluating ideas and suggestions.

Team Worker: supporting members in their strengths, underpinning members in their shortcomings, improving communications between members and fostering team spirit generally.

Implementer: turning ideas into practice; carrying out plans effectively and efficiently.

Completer Finisher: helping the team avoiding mistakes of both commission and omission, searching aspects need improvement.

Specialist: providing technical information, giving professional suggestion on subjects.

To effectively assign role for each member, it is necessary to analyse everyone’s strengths, weaknesses, approaches to the work, prior knowledge, prior experience, and resources that can be used. For example, a Monitor Evaluator suppose to be someone ‘sober, unemotional, prudent’ person, with positive qualities of ‘judgement, discretion, hard-headedness’, and weaknesses such as ‘lacks inspiration or the ability to motivate others’ are acceptable. On the other hand, a Team Worker should to be able to promoting team spirit.

While Belbin’s work aimed to improve team members’ corporation and enable maximum use of each member’s competency and potential, Tuchman’s STAGES OF GROUP DEVELOPMENT MODEL on the other hand try to recognize those distinct phases any group need to go through before they achieve maximum effectiveness. He suggested this process can be subconscious, although an understanding of the stages can help groups reach effectiveness more quickly and less painfully.

Stage 1: Forming

Everyone in the group try to be accepted by the others, and avoid controversy or conflict. Serious issues and felling are avoided. But individuals also gather information and ...

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Stage 1: Forming

Everyone in the group try to be accepted by the others, and avoid controversy or conflict. Serious issues and felling are avoided. But individuals also gather information and impressions about each other, and about the scope of the task and how to approach it. The avoidance of conflict and threat means that not much actually gets done.

Stage 2: Storming

Important issues start to be addressed. Members’ patience break, and minor confrontations will arise but are quickly dealt with or glossed over. Some may think it is good to get into the real issues, whilst others still prefer to remain in the comfort and security of stage 1. Depends on each group’s situation, the conflict will be more or less suppressed, but it is there.

Stage 3: Norming

After Stage 2, the group will establish the ‘rules of engagement’, the scope of groups’ tasks or responsibilities are clarified and committed. Members get to understand each other better and appreciate each other’s skills and experience. Individuals listen to each other, appreciate and support each other, and prepare to work together as a cohesive and effective group. The groups may experience pressure and change, and may revert to storming stage.

Stage 4: Performing

Not all groups can reach this stage, which is characterised by a state of interdependence and flexibility. Everyone understands each other well enough to be able to work together, and trusts each other enough to allow independent activity. Group identity, loyalty and morale are all high, and everyone is equally task-oriented and people-oriented.

Further more, ten years after first development the four stages model, Tuchman added another final stage –

Stage 5: Adjourning

This stage is about completion and disengagement of tasks and groups. Group members will be proud of their achievement and enjoyable corporation. Some also refer the stage as ‘Deforming and Mourning’, recognising the sense of loss felt by group members.

Tuchman’s work described the way groups evolve as he observed, whether they were conscious of it or not. In practice, the model help us to have more awareness what is going to happen through group evolving process, and help it to move to the Performing stage.

Bind these theories in mind, I revised my own experience of being a part of a charity project group while in college. During my business course in college, we were divided into 5-6 people groups, and required to produce a business plan in any preferred business. After discussion, we chose the greeting card business, which would be sold in UK marked, based in London for design and management, and outsource production in China. The background of each of us is as following:

Gautam, a sober and prudent guy. As his parents run a greeting card in India, he knows quite well about the procedure of greeting card business.
Victoria, sophisticated, smart, prudent and hard-working girl, who has two years working experience after her high school. She is also the most mature one in us.
Vivian, a quite girl, but is not too introvert to gave out her opinion. She studies hard, loves reading, and as she has been in UK since 12, her English was the best in five of us.
Phil, very nice and helpful guy, he is resourceful and earnest.
Me, I would assess myself as extravert, easy to get well with others. As my parents were all doing export business in China, I know quite well about the exporting procedure in China.

As we did the project, we didn't aware about the role behaviour as in Belbin’s model, we just assign task and responsibilities for each other. When I revise our corporation now in relate to Belbin’s model, I found that each of us actually took several different roles throughout our work. Not only because we were a small group with only five people, but also as in practice, the group need to be flexible and should not fix roles and responsibilities. The roles allocation was:

Victoria: she was our team leader, and in relate the Belbin’s model, her role include plant, especially when there was problem arise; co-ordinator and shaper, as she co-ordinated our ideas and strategies, put them together and guide our group’s direction; monitor evaluator and completer finisher as she was sophisticated and has working experience, so she could identify those impractical ideas and possible mistake; and team worker as she has the quality to motivate others to work toward goals.

Gautam: he was responsible to gave advise on the whole business procedure, especially the design part and marketing distribution part. His role included plant, to gave ideas on production and marketing parts; resource investigator, as he consulted his family company staffs for advice on many aspects; monitor evaluator and completer finisher because with his knowledge, he knew what could be the best thing to do; and specialist.

Vivian: she was responsible for report writing, time keeper, and also gave many advises on product design and marking promotion as she was the one who understand English culture most. Her role included plant, monitor evaluator and implementer.

Phil: he collected almost information we needed throughout our project, and whenever anyone in need, he was always happy to help. And he study very hard and know very well about all those business theories, so he contributed a lot in report writing. His role included plant, resource investigator, team worker, implementer, and specialist.

Me, as I was more familiar with the production and exporting procedure in China, I was mainly responsible for the outsourcing operation part in China, which included finding information about factory production procedure and price, custom application process, shipping details, etc. Besides of the production part, I also gave ideas and strategies on design and promotion works. My role hence included plant, resource investigator, and implementer.

Although when we did the project we were unaware about the Belbin’s roles model, when I look back now, I can see that the model does describe these needed members’ behaviour in an effective and efficiency group.

Although not every group got to the harmonic performance stage, I felt very lucky to be part of a cohesive group. Our group went through all five stages described by Tuckman. As we were classmates in the same course, we went through stage one very quickly. The storming stage mostly involve in the first week when we discussed which kind of business we should choose. However, every conflict were dealt quickly and smoothly, this was partly because we know each other very well already, and also because no one of us has dominate personality, and I would like to say everyone in our group is very nice, helpful and hard working. So as long as we decided to do the greeting card business, we soon engaged to norming stage and set up the rules each one should follow. We did support each other, and our communication had always been very good. Based on the successful previous stages, our group perform very well, successful developed the business plan, and our report got second highest score in eight groups. Finally, although our task had finished, all five of us became very good friends, and keep in good touch till now.

After review the theories together with my own experience, I would conclude that, in practice, many group can work well even without awareness of this model. However, with these models’ help, we can better understand what is happening and going to happen during groups development, and this awareness can help us to better resolve any possible problem and get the perform stage more quickly.

REFERENCES:

MANAGEMENT TEAMS: WHY THEY SUCCEED OR FAIL 1981

BELBIN, R Meredith

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR 10Th Ed 2004

Hellriegel & Slocum

SKILLS FOR SUCCESS 2003

Stella Cottrell

BELBIN, R Meredith, MANAGEMENT TEAMS: WHY THEY SUCCEED OR FAIL, 1981