Reflecting on Team Development: Lessons Learned

Team development and improvement are complex and time-consuming. Communication, clear and mutual goals and a well-defined work ethic are all vital in a well-performing team. This essay aims to reflect my personal learning through my group research paper. By reflecting on the roles played by each of the members in my team I believe it will be an effective way to grow and improve my strength and weaknesses when performing within a team in the future.

A team’s effectiveness is important for increased productivity. Throughout our research project, it was evident that it was important for me to understand not only my responsibilities but of my teammates as well. It was evident that we all had to keep in mind that this wasn’t our only subject to work on, therefore it took careful collaboration for us to gain the ability for us forge strategic plans, divide work equitably and reach our end goal of a research paper of the highest quality. In order for us to become productive, it was evident that as a team we needed to have a clear purpose and goals that we all share. I believe that as a team we all wanted to achieve the highest mark possible therefore we came up with a set of key milestones and goals to achieve to do this. We had set time limits on when we had to have our individual research completed and dot pointed. This was for us to have numerous sources of information to work from to come up with our own ideas to share with the group in order to set a clear plan in mind on how we approach our research paper on offshoring. Throughout this process, it is evident that as a team we improved and developed, in how we interacted and communicated. Bruce Truckman developed a theory called “Tuckman’s Stages”. This theory states that every team inevitably goes through 5 stages of development and growth. It is evident that as a team we also went through these 5 stages, which are;

Stage 1: Forming

This stage took place when we first met up as a team. At this stage, as a team, we discussed appropriate ways to achieve the objectives and goals of our project, at this stage as a team we developed our strategy and discussed our research paper.

Stage 2: Storming

At this stage our team started working together, at this stage we competed for status and acceptance on our ideas, in terms of what contemporary trend to research. There were conflicting ideas and we found the most effective way to choose was by discussing and then voting on what trend we would research. Although this stage says that even members who liked to avoid conflict must get involved I found that there were a couple of people who did not really contribute their own ideas and only agreed with what was being said.

State 3: Norming

At this stage, our team started working more effectively together. During this stage is when we developed set milestones to achieve to complete our goals. This is where we conducted our research and exchanged ideas to work together, this marked significant progress towards our research paper.

Stage 4: Performing

We were able to reach this stage near the completion of our research paper. By this stage we were able to come up with a decision on problems that arose suddenly, like how we forgot to allocate one part of the work, however, we were able to reallocate very effectively in order keep everything fair and keep everything going.

Stage 5: Adjourning

The adjourning stage was reached once individual parts of the research paper were complete, and members moved on to another assignment they had due. This stage saw our communication drop; however, we were still available for communication on completing the assignment when help was needed.

Hence, upon reflection, I believed that as a team we worked very effectively and productively. It is evident that from this project we have grown as a team in order to become more fluid with how to get to know and work with people. However, moving forward I would be more mindful of the stages of team development, and how it interacts with each stage of a team project, in order to work more effectively and communicate better within my team.