The Role Of Team Members In Group Dynamics And Personality Reflection

Write an essay discussing the role of team members and how that influences group dynamics and then reflect on your personality and own personal style in relation to your learning during the workshops. Introduction.

Discuss theoretically the meaning and significance of teams and team dynamics. Use theory and references eg elements of team dynamics. Tuckman. Belbin etc.

Discuss the role of your team members and how that influenced the group dynamics of your group.

Explain the role of your personality traits and then reflect on your personal style in relation to your learning during your team task as well as during class sessions and workshops.

Teams and Team Dynamics

Team is group of two or more people who join together with a mission to accomplish certain objectives. Team enables individuals to collaborate and cooperate toward collective results. Team members contribute differently and complement one another in the process of working together to achieve a common goal (Spitzer, 2008). Personality of an individual is recurring qualities that make an individual behavior distinct. Personality of an individual is shaped by background of and person (Tasa, Sears and Schat, 2010).

The following essay discusses the role of team members and how they influence group dynamics. The essay will also contain a reflection of my personality and own personality style in relation to learning in class or the workshop.

A team is a group of individuals who share the same objective. Teams are made up of two or more people with shared understanding of objectives and devote their abilities and energy towards their common accomplishment (Rousseau, 2006). A task handled by a team is interdependent and each member contribution is valuable in attaining result. Teams either bring efforts together or complement ability toward achieving common desired results. Team dynamics refers to changes that happen within the team as a result of change in relationships between people (Kaldy, 2008). Change in relationships influence individuals or all people in the team in terms of contribution and collaborations. Team dynamics occurs when there changes of members of team and objectives in the group. Team dynamics keeps on changing from time to time. A team is said to be functional or dysfunctional. A functional team is the one that meets it objectives while dysfunctional team is the one that isn’t meeting objectives.

Tuckman puts forward a theory of team, how they are formed and their dynamics in 1965. Tuckman’s theory put forward four stage models. He proposed a group decision making process that is known as Tuckman’s Stages for a Group. These groups are forming, storming, norming and performing. He holds that all these phases are importance and are inevitable when growing a team, facing challenges, solving problems, planning work and producing results (Fiore, 2008).

The teams are significant in several ways.  Teams increase productivity of members compared to what they can produce as individuals. Members are able to deliver on large complex projects, consolidate abilities and build good relationships in the community.

The groups’ dynamics can also be understood by use of Belbin theory of team roles and behaviors in the workplace. Belbin suggest that individuals have roles in the team that range from strong to allowable weakness. These roles influence the group dynamics in the teamwork.

Role of team members and group dynamics

The group dynamic of a team can be assessed by use of Fletcher Lyons Collective Resilience Scale. The FLCRS checks the well being of the team and their satisfaction working in the group.  

Team members are important component of the group that enables combination of efforts to deliver result. Team members have a role to play in the group to ensure that the team is functional in meeting its goal. The team member’s role in the group determines the level of performance achieved. It is also their role in the team that influences the group dynamics of the group (Gueldenzoph, 2008). The roles of each member in the group as follow; first, there is a shaper role that enables and leads the group toward the achievement of the task at hand. The shaper role of a team member in the group acts as the leader of the team leading to coordination in the teamwork. Second is the implementer role, these members get the group in action of the task at hand. They get the group to start discussing. The implementer role gives the idea and thoughts to get the group work started. Third is the team worker role, these member enable the working together of the group. They keep the team together united to face the task together. They support one another and ensure conflicts in the group are settled. Fourth is the completer role in the team. These members play a role in the group of ensuring that the group pays attention to details, perfects and results are analytical. The completer role in the group detects errors and ensures no omission is made. Lastly is the coordinator role in the group. These members enable the delegation of tasks when need be to ensure that set goals are timely met. They influence actions of other members to certain direction in order to meet deadlines and complete tasks.

These roles in the team influence the group dynamics. The roles influence the relationships and the changes that occur when undertaking a certain responsibility as a team. These roles of team members influence how tasks are completed, coordination of members, getting started, union and priorities that are taken by the group. The roles also influence the behaviors of an individual in terms of actions, people and thought orientation in the group (French and Kottke, 2013). Therefore the roles and their influence in our group can be said to follow the Meredith Belbin theory of group roles and group dynamics. 

My personality traits and reflection

My personality plays a role in my relationship, collaboration and cooperation in the team task. Personality is the one that influence my behavior in the group (Lino, 2017). I will discuss my personality in terms of OCEAN theory. The first personality trait is the level of openness in the group. I like learning new things and enjoy participating in challenging new tasks. I am very active to new topics of discussions that make me think and imagine scenarios as they opt to be. Second is conscientious. I prefer doing thing systematically and working with people who have self discipline. This makes me to be careful when taking action and be self disciplined to enable achievement of a certain objectives. I find myself writing down plans of the things that I will do and projects budgets for my spending. I also take time to make a decision by allowing time to get as much information as possible in order to make informed decisions. The third personality trait is extraversion personality.  I enjoy deliberating about issues on my own. I take time to read on my own, question thing and research about them. I feel that working in a group is time consuming and I don’t get excitement hanging around with groups of people. I don’t easy interact with people and in most cases I find myself with one or two friends. On other account, I like engaging or inclining only on positive emotions and feelings. I remain optimistic to issue till the end. I also find myself trying to dominate and influence people in a group so that we can accomplish a certain goal and avoid wastage of time. Lastly, I find comfort on my own. Fourth personality trait is agreeableness. I find myself trusting people. I am straightforward in my opinions and thoughts. I highly comply with deadlines, rules and agreements. I like being fair and doing to people what I would it done to me. I also like doing what I say to letter. The last personality trait dimension is neuroticism. I don’t feel or suffer from restlessness or fearlessness. In contrary, I am calm and face situations with dedication and courage. I have never suffered from depression from the past and I avoid getting into conflict with others. I have well managed stress in the past and am open to assistance in the future if I feel am losing control of my issues. Therefore, my engagement on a team has to be objective for me to contribute, collaborate and cooperate.

My personality in teams in class or workshop influences my relationships with other team members and participation. My personality enables me to research and be creative in class. I am able to question issues and carry out further studies on my own to understand concepts. When engaging in team for a group in a workshop, I am a great team player, planner, creative and a communicator. This enable me together with the team members achieve desired results on time. 

Conclusion

From the discussion in the essay, teams are made of members who come together for a common purpose to contribute and collaborate to achieve predetermined goals. Team members have different roles in the group that influence the group dynamics. Collaboration and contribution of each team member role leads to successful achievement of the group goals. Each member’s role contributes to the performance of the group. One’s personality traits influence participation in the group. Personality style influences the building of relationships when participating in a team discuss when in class or workshop. It is the personality that determines contribution, collaboration and cooperation of an individual when learning in a class or workshop. Therefore, it can be concluded that team members have different personalities working together that create group dynamics and determine the level of goals achieved in the teamwork.

References

 Fiore, S. (2008). Interdisciplinarity as Teamwork: How the Science of Teams Can Inform Team Science. Small Group Research, 39(3), pp.251-277.

French, K. and Kottke, J. (2013). Teamwork satisfaction: Exploring the multilevel interaction of teamwork interest and group extraversion. Active Learning in Higher Education, 14(3), pp.189-200.

Gueldenzoph Snyder, L. (2008). Teaching Teams About Teamwork: Preparation, Practice, and Performance Review. Business Communication Quarterly, 72(1), pp.74-79.

Kaldy, J. (2008). The Right Personality Types Can Shape Up Teamwork. Caring for the Ages, 9(5), pp.1-5.

Lino, C. (2017). The Big Five Personality Theory: The 5 Factors Explained. [online] Positivepsychologyprogram.com. Available at: https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/big-five-personality-theory/ [Accessed 13 Apr. 2017].

Rousseau, V. (2006). Teamwork Behaviors: A Review and an Integration of Frameworks. Small Group Research, 37(5), pp.540-570.

Spitzer, R. (2008). Teamwork, Teams, and Reality. Nurse Leader, 6(6), pp.6-49.

Tasa, K., Sears, G. and Schat, A. (2010). Personality and teamwork behavior in context: The cross-level moderating role of collective efficacy. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 32(1), pp.65-85.