Group Work Task Personal Experience (Essay Sample)

Group Work Task Personal Experience
Student’s Name:
Institutional Affiliation
Group Work Task Personal Experience
Since time immemorial, humans establish groups and work together to realize goals, solve problems, provide more ideas, acquire skills, and survive. Teamwork is among the fundamental and noticeable work configurations of the current century. Working in groups is vital and central to every task that the society handles in the modern life. When groups are properly constituted and managed, members can develop interpersonal and technical skills, enhanced performance due to task satisfaction, and report overall effectiveness growth. While participating in a group to create an employee development program, I learnt a lot from my colleagues, worked together to handle complex task that an individual would find it difficult to solve, and completed the task within a very short duration.
Summary of my Experiences
Teams in educational institutions and business organizations provide better outcomes than letting people work individually. Khawam, DiDona, and Hernandez (2017) argue that institutions are resorting to working in teams because they are more effective in offering results than people working independently. Teams have enabled organizations to be competitive as they return improved outcomes. Members in a group bring along unique experiences that help enrich outcomes, thus making teams more effective.
I noted many benefits of working in a team while creating an employee development program. Every member of the group contributed based on their unique skills, knowledge, and experiences. The suggestions that members gave, especially those informed by personal experiences, helped the team provide solutions based on sound evidence and argument. The management of the team, which was also done collectively, enabled seamless handling of tasks in each stage of the team development life cycle. Brainstorming on a complex issue that each of the members did not have a solution enabled us to adopt a solution in a short duration. Thus, developing the program in a team was more effective than handling the task individually.
Groups help develop a person’s social abilities to cooperate with others in handling tasks. Teamwork helps members of a group to enjoy improved levels of self-confidence, emotional security, and ability to decide and plan with other members positively (Sanyal & Hisam, 2018). Moreover, teamwork promotes a conducive work environment with creative activities, workable agendas, positive values, and effective strategies. In contrast, teamwork absence may lead to low morale, disappointment, occupational failure, and poor productivity. Thus, teamwork helps members develop confident individuals who can handle complex tasks cooperatively while the absence of it may lead to a person with low self-esteem.
Participating in all group work tasks, including the creation of employee development program has increasingly boosted my self-confidence. Further, teamwork assisted us to develop a sound plan on how to develop the program. Due to my enhanced confidence levels, I would respectfully interject during deliberations, especially when I believed I had a strong argument to make. Many of the members would also express their views willingly and respectfully. In all the stages, deliberations led to development of workable and sound objectives, as well as creative solutions.
Working as a unit in a collective climate promotes member satisfaction and performance. Kozlowski and Ilgen (2016) indicate that collective and shared climate, in which service was the only strategic imperative, led to customer satisfaction within the bank branch which embraced teamwork. Further, encouraging a shared and collective organizational climate that strategically ensured innovation and up-to-date technical capabilities predicted positive job attitudes and individual performance for engineers working in firms experiencing technological change and competition. Thus, an innovative team united for a purpose would ultimately present enhanced individual performance and positive job attitude.
I witnessed a team with individuals completing their individual roles on time and actively participating in brainstorming sessions. Most members of the group demonstrated that they can offer well-thought out suggestions that proved their creativity through the presentation of innovative ideas toward creating a sound employee development program. Ultimately, the unique ideas of members will present a program with positive results when adopted.
Models of effectiveness present factors that may contribute to team effectiveness in terms of leadership judgment, customer and employee satisfaction, and productivity. For instance, interdependence, process, context, composition, and job design contribute to the aforementioned effectiveness criteria (Tohidi, 2011). Further, promoting supervisor behavior, member involvement, and team performance significantly determine team success. Therefore, groups should design their structure in a way that has clear leadership, interdependence of members, and a clear job design.
Our group ensured that all the stages of establishing an employee development program were clearly stated and distinct. Further, each member of the group had distinct roles to undertake. However, the group initially lacked clear leadership, a factor which is required to ensure effectiveness of a team. A member of the group would informally take the leadership role during any planned session. The lack of a formal leadership structure sometimes resulted in challenges, including failure to communicate when the members were to meet.
Group Interaction through the Stages of Team Development Life Cycle
Bruce Tuckman presented a 5-stage development process that teams should observe to report improved performance. Forming stage is the first phase requiring members to get acquainted and undergo orientation (Principles of Management, n.d.). The stage helps teams to establish authority and leadership. In our group, we used the phase to explore our abilities and knowledge on the topic, our diverse cultures, and any prior human resource leadership position that a member had held. The group failed to use the phase to develop formal leadership of the group.
The storming stage is a phase that may manifest competition and conflict as individual personalities emerge. At this stage, members may express disagreements and frustration about responsibilities, roles, and expectations (Stein, n.d.). Members should accept individual differences in order to overcome such challenges. As a team, we had failed to have our group leader during the forming stage. As a result, this exacerbated individual differences during the storming stage as members disagreed on how to run the group. Further, members would frustrate a colleague who showed signs of leading a group.
Norming stage allows members to address any conflict that may have arisen. The phase allows members to build a consensus, especially on who and how to lead the group (Principles of Management, n.d.). In our group, we agreed a member would lead a deliberation session when a task assigned to him is under a discussion. The member would relinquish the leadership role to a colleague presenting on an assigned task.
Performing stage represents a period whereby cooperation and consensus have created a well-functioning, organized, and mature team. The stage presents a stable and clear structure, and the members who are concerned about the group’s mission (Principles of Management, n.d.). Our team enjoyed a seamless presentation of ideas from members arguing their points in assigned tasks. Respectful interventions and contributions would be provided, thus enriching our program development efforts.
Adjourning stage is a period whereby all the team’s goals have been realized. The phase requires the presentation of final remarks and documenting the outcomes (Principles of Management, n.d.). Our group allowed each member to discuss updated views on the assigned tasks after deliberations in a plenary. After each member had presented updated arguments, the group compiled the final program.