Afsaneh Rahili
O&L-698, Team Building, Collaboration, and Leadership
Intersession 2017- Dr. Patricia Mitchell, Dr. Silvia Ramirez
Final Reflection Paper-Experiential Team Activity
When I think about the best experience I've had working in our team last Saturday, what comes to my mind is the feeling of satisfaction and the sense of accomplishment that comes out of hard work, stress, and lots of laughter. I had an amazing team activity experience with the wonderful team members. They were very responsible, creative and competence. Even though we did not have much time to knew each other deeply, but I learned so many things from them. What makes our team experience so great is a combination of several factors. But the most important factor is
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In the “real world,” problems often have more than one solution, and “two heads are better than one.” Experiential learning enables us to engage the creative portions of our brains and seek our own unique and most fulfilling solution to a hands-on task. This creativity, and the variety of results produced, enriches the classroom and society as a whole. Through these team projects, we learn to work more effectively together, developing a plan of action, and utilizing the unique qualities of each team member. In turn, we learn real-life leadership skills, as well as how to apply critical thinking and adapt to changing circumstances. Critical reflections, and getting classmates to participate in that process of analyzing, reconsidering, and questioning, are key components of successful experiential learning …show more content…
I think I tended to be an introvert person instead of being an extrovert, so, usually I’d rather be observant instead of speaker. But it does not mean that I do not participate in a team activity. During our team activity I have learned to be more creative and push myself to extend my boundaries. View each interaction, and each new social setting as a unique challenge, opportunity and adventure to meet new and wonderful people. I understand going outside of my comfort zone into challenging situations that can benefit my career.
Most Valued Contribution to the experiential activity:
There are many more ways to contribute to great team activity success. Each person is an important piece in the overall project puzzle. We as a team identified goals clearly, once we understand our role and the roles of others we are in a position to collaborate with them more successfully. This collaboration isn't just a nice thing for you to do. It is necessity to the ultimate success of the project. Look for ways and be willing to collaborate. Asking questions, checking in with others, coordinating schedules and having an open communication helped us to succeed
According to Northouse (2012), team leadership has become one of the most popular theories of leadership research. A team refers to a group of employees within an organization, who are interdependent of each, and share a common goal which can only be realized through coordination of their activities. Actually, this can be attributed to the fact that team members typically have dissimilar and unique roles that represent critical contributions to collective action. It goes without mentioning that a team can either be virtual or non-virtual (Tiffan, 2014).
Creating and managing effective teams in today’s work environment is much different than it was just a short time ago. With each generation of American workers come new ideas, rules, and methodologies that must be considered when developing an effective team. Some of the newer ideas may have been foreign to managers even ten years ago. An example of this is that many companies today are becoming more socially responsible. A recent article in Incentive states, “Social responsibility, it seems, is the new signing bonus” (Flanagan, p4, 2006). Rarely are managers given a perfect set of employees, a perfect environment, or a team without conflict in order to develop an effective team. These issues make it more important than ever to be able to effectively manage these teams. The simulation for Luxurion was an excellent example of managing a team well, even when the team is not put together perfectly. This paper will examine what team member were chosen, why these choices were made, issues that were worked through during the simulation and the final outcome after completing the simulation.
Developing and improving the team work in my organization is one of my key responsibilities. I work in a military department with about thirty different personnel. Each individual has certain skills, age, rank, and motivation. These attributes can make my department effective or ineffective.
...and show an open mind to everyone’s ideas. I’ve found that this makes for a lighter and more fun environment and we’ve shown success in completing our task. Most times I’m put into groups, I don’t know the other people very well. This is common at school with my classmates. I’m used to having no leader in the group and everyone fighting to have their ideas chosen. Once a leader was chosen in the group we started discussing openly everyone’s ideas with the chosen leader voicing their opinion on which idea to choose and why. Usually when it comes to my friends I take the leadership role and make an try to hear everyone’s opinion before making a decision. I believe that for a team to find success and reach their goal someone needs to take leadership and voice an unbiased opinion. The team needs to hear everyone’s ideas and choose one based on which will lead to success.
Throughout the course of a Master’s counseling program, moments of doubt, and a lack of working knowledge are bound to play a major role in the confidence a future counselor will posses in effectively implementing interventions early on in the instructional phase of his or her career. Corey (2010) states that an effective group leader, is able to become aware of their own vulnerabilities, and take responsibility in their responses. To become aware of a possible vulnerable area, a counselor must first take a concise look into their personal strengths and weakness, and then decide to actively seek out assistance with working on vulnerabilities. In exploring the roles of an effective group leader, I have realized that within the group process, I most fear the roles of a group leader that pertain to direct confrontation of a client, I also fear that the improper implementation of a intervention could lead to potential harm of the client. Attending to these fears I hold regarding group member confrontation, and intervention implementation is the key to gaining further understanding into how I can become comfortable with these essential functions of a group leader. The current paper will take a closer look into my vulnerabilities, using current research to gain insight into how I can overcome fears, when facilitating a task, psycho-educational, counseling, and psychotherapy group.
Leadership can take many different forms, depending on the person and the situation in which it is needed. Collaborative leadership is a leadership style in which a leader brings together a large group of people, with a variety of backgrounds, to make a productive decision and act upon it. According to Chrislip and Larson (1994):
The area of team leadership attracts a lot of attention in the modern world because of the need to assemble and deploy diverse teams for the completion of projects. The future of many corporations relies more and more on the kind of team leadership they have for their projects. This paper explores a number of facets that constitute effective team leadership.
The team members should know how important a project is to the company and stride to achieve the goals in a professional manner. Each member should contribute one hundred and ten percent of their input to the group to make the project the best that it can be. Every member of the team should be rewarded individually for their performance, insights, and total input that is beneficial to the team. Communication is the key to a productive team. Without proper communication with a high performance team, it will be very difficult for the team to be victorious on the project they are trying to accomplish.
All the participants will have understood what brings and drives team spirit and what breaks team spirit and how to avoid it
Working in teams provides an opportunity for individuals to come together and establish a rapport towards others within a group. Teamwork is classified as people with different strengths and skills who work together to achieve a common goal. When a team works well, specific objectives are fulfilled and satisfied. Teamwork plays a crucial role in implementing and fulfilling a common goal in a team project. Each member plays a role and takes on different responsibilities combined together. In different stages of teamwork, conflicts and arguments may occur for as members have different standpoints which need to be harmonized within the team. The key to having an effective teamwork is to explore each member's unique abilities to motivate them.
In order for a work place to be successful and beneficial to everyone involve in the company, teams needs to be form, and each team must have a goal in mind. Employees must come together to accomplish a common goal. Teamwork will not only benefit those involve in the project but it will also have a huge impact in your business.
Proponents claim that learners’ academic achievement can be significantly improved with the effectiveness of use of collaborative learning. The active exchange of ideas within small groups increases interest among learners and also promotes critical thinking and deeper levels of understanding of concepts (Benware & Deci, 1984). According to Johnson & Johnson (1986), there is convincing evidence that collaborative teams achieve high level of thoughts and retain information longer than learners who work as individuals. The shared learning gives learners an opportunity to engage in discussion, take responsibility for their own learning, and thus become critical thinkers (Totten, Sills, & Russ, 1991).
Realizing that a group can become a high performance team is important. Accomplishing this goal is invaluable, advantageous and profitable. Once able to operate from a group to the high performing team is a great step into preparation into the big business world. Leaders and members must also realize not only how to accomplish this but that some problems will and can arise from different demographic characteristics and cultural diversity. That is if one is in such a group, which the probability would be quite high.
It is important to have the whole team involved and every team member should about the status of the project and identify there responsibility towards the project success.
The work community has several members, it is vital that these individuals act as a group, so that the common goal was achieved. This section describes the team, the team's importance, team building and why before-mentioned issues are important. This section also takes place through the cases and at the end of the self-evaluation.