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Individual Reflective Essay Communication for Global Business Henrique Oliveira Altoe Word Count: 1716

Introduction: The purpose of this essay is to reflect on how me and my team performed and collaborated with each other in order to completed our group e portfolio. In this essay I will be reflecting on events and situations which had an affect on our performances and how our project was created and finished. This essay will cover the team roles each of the team members were, what were their functions and responsibilities and how our team’s strengths and weaknesses benefited the groups. The essay will also talk about Tuckman’s ‘Lifecycle of a team’ which we experienced when forming into the teams and when we had to delegate work to each other based on qualities and flaws. Also the communications methods we used between ourselves were very crucial on how efficiently we got our points across and how we experience difficulties within the team and how we managed to overcome these issues. Background: In class, in the first few weeks, we carried out the Belbin Theory test which helps determine what are an individual’s strengths and weaknesses and what type of team members they are. A few of the different types of team members are plant, team worker, shaper and resource investigator. In our group, we had me and another group member as team workers, a shaper, a plant and a resource investigator. We all felt that the team was well balanced and we were happy with the outcome. As per Jane S. Prichard et Neville A. (1999), Belbin’s team role theory is an effective way of developing a team, however there is not much empirical support for his work, mainly because of the lack of research. However, they still acknowledge the fact that it is used by many companies around the would to propose teams with a wide variety of qualities. Even though this was the initial stage of us forming the groups, we were already experiencing Tuckman’s ‘Lifecycle of a team’, which at this stage was the forming of team period. This includes getting into teams and at this period in time, we were all excited and looking forward to work together as a team. Within the first week, we had a member of the team leave, as there was difficulties in meeting her whenever we attempted to organise meetings. As a team, we felt we felt that she was not making as much effort as the others, there had been numerous attempts to keep her in the loop regarding the project, however we felt that she was not prioritising the group work. As a team, after discussing also with the seminar teacher, we decided to part ways with her as we all thought that we would work better and more effectively without distractions and preventing issues arising.

2 After that was finally resolved, we had meetings and we were able to progress with the project by delegating work according to people’s strengths. With the Belbin theory results coming into use, we decided the work based on each other’s results of the test. I was a team worker, meaning I was able to collaborate with other with ease, able to help with various tasks at the same time while trying to avoid problems and confrontations between team members. I was in charge of carrying out some research regarding Tesco’s customer service, the services they provide and their social media accounts and how they use it. According to Kristina Hauschildt et Udo Konradt (2012) the roles and performances of a team is based on proficiency, adaptivity and projectivity. This was something we all attempted to do as we had to adapt working with different personalities and be productive in terms of starting the project and carrying out work. While working in this project, we used commination methods like face to face conversations, use of social media and mobile phones. This was effective and efficient as it saved time and it was also cost effective to everyone in the team. It was methods of communication that we, student are very familiar as we use it on a daily basis. It made it extremely easy and convenient for us to all get in touch as we created a group on one of the social media platforms we decided to use. By doing that, we were able to talk and share pieces of work that we each had researched and found. At this stage of the process, according to Tuckman’s ‘Lifecycle of a team’, we were at the norming stage, which means we were in agreement as to what each other were responsible for doing, we knew our roles and we were all on track to meet deadlines and targets. The performing stage is where the team has a clear vision, a focus on the goal and objective. This was where the team and I were clear on what we wanted to achieve and what we wanted to end result to be. At this stage however, another issue started to arise as one of the team members started to get a bit distracted and disinterested in the project, which surprised me and the rest of the team. I personally felt annoyed and angry as we all thought that we had put problems behind us after we faced a few at the beginning of the project, however, it worried and caught all of us by surprise. The reason why we all felt like that was because one of the team members was being very difficultly to communicate with, hard to collaborate and showing very little interest in the entire project and the outcome of it. As soon as we realised that the individual was completely not interested in helping us, we spoke to the seminar tutor and explained everything to him. He wanted us to first try to sort it out, we did but there was no resolve and it the end it ended up being just 3 of us in the team, me team worker, a shaper and a resource investigator. This was a very difficult and confusing time in the process of completing our project as we enow each had to take on more work load as were one only a team of 3 people, compared to 5 when we first started. As per Serina Chiper (2015), Hofstede’s dimensions in intercultural communication in business schools has certain rules which have to be followed in order to be efficient when communicating in a team with people from various different backgrounds. It states that individuals sometimes have to learn a bit more about a person’s culture in order to know how to communicate and act around them. This relates to the fact that, me being from Brazil and working in a team with 2 eastern Europeans, meaning that there were different customs on how we approached tasks and problems. As this project was one of the first we were set when our university course began, we were all fairly new to each other and were still getting to know more and more about others. Working towards the final stage of the process in regards to Tuckman’s ‘Lifecycle of a team’, adjourning, we finally completed the task and worked hard towards getting good recognition for our work. In the last few weeks, the week before last to be more exact, we

3 recorded our voices and out it together with the slides the resource investigator had prepared. By the end of the project, I had noticed that the level of engagement show by the group members had increased as you understand more about people as individuals. It is relevant to understand other’s methods of performance and how they would like to be treated in order to get the most out of them. As Patricia Costa et al (2014) mention on their article, the amount of energy and enthusiasm of groups/teams are based on how they interact with others, which in my experience, as we all got along well, there was high levels of energy shown by everyone. I believe that members of our team were motivated by the fact that other had left, as if there was a hunger to show we could do it without them.

Conclusion: As mentioned above, our group faced a lot of problems which we did not see coming, we were caught by surprise and we had to find ways to deal with them efficiently and with less disturbances as possible. Within the first 2 weeks, we had a problem with a person who did not seem to want to co operate with the rest of the group, which I believe we dealt with well as we tried to resolve any issues as soon as we realised. Our seminar tutor helped us solve the situation smoothly, and we managed to get past that. From around week 3 until the last few weeks, the group was fine, but another issue with another group member came up and we had to deal with that swell. I strongly believe that both issues had some say in how our project turned out, meaning, if these problems had not manifested themselves, I believe we were on course to getting a much better mark than we ended with. I personally feel like I dealt with the situation as you would expect a team worker would, trying to look for positives in situations and attempting to defuse any arguments or confrontations. I helped on any tasks I possibly could while also taking care of my own ones. I feel like we worked well as a team where possible, and despite the fact that we were from very multicultural backgrounds, we dealt with diversity well and any communication barriers were deal with efficiently. I believe that our methods of communication were well chosen and well used, however there are few tings we could have done better. We could have maybe started the process earlier in order to make sure we had more time to go over certain aspects. Our choice of social media could have been a more efficient one as we used Instagram, but a more useful tool could have been WhatsApp for example. In terms of team selection, we did not do much wrong as we used the Belbin theory test to decide who we would be in a team with.

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Reference List Costa, P.L et al (2014). Team Work Engagement: A Model of Emergence. Journal of Occupational and Organisational Psychology. 87,(2), 414-436. Available from http:// onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezproxy.westminster.ac.uk/doi/10.1111/joop.12057/full [Accessed 6 January 2018] Chiper, S. (2015). Intercultural Communication in Business Schools: What We Can Teach and How We Can Evaluate. Procedia Economics and Finance. 20, 119-124. Available from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212567115000556 [Accessed 7 January 2018] Hauschildt, K. Konrads, U. (2012). Self-leadership and Team Member’s Work Role Performance. Journal of Managerial Psychology. 27 (5), 497-517. Available from http:// www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/02683941211235409? fullSc=1&journalCode=jmp [Accessed 7 January 2018] Prichard, S J. Stanton, N A. (1999). Testing Belbin’s Team Role Theory of Effective Groups. Journal of Management Development. 18, (8), 652-665. Available from http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/02621719910371164 [Accessed 6 January 2018]...