Reflective Journal: Forming And Managing A Team And Report Writing Skills

Discuss About The Shared Mental Mode Communication Collective?

Reflective learning is the procedure that allows the students with opportunities to step back from their learning experience and develop critical thinking skills. It helps in improvement of future performance by analyzing and evaluating the different experiences and reflecting on meaningful observations (Sherstyuk, Olekh and Kolesnikova, 2016). Researchers are of the opinion that reflective learning helps in moving the students form the surface learning to that of in-depth learning genre that include different types of activities like self-review, peer-review and also personal development planning (Woodcock, 2017). This assignment would be a reflective journal that would depict my experiences and the issues I faced in the two domains that are taught in class. I will reflect on the different insights and views I have developed from the experiences and how I want to develop those skills in the future.

I had been assigned as the team leader during my placement months where I had to form a team of the fresher employees and had to complete a set of goals that had been set by the higher authorities. I was quite excited to get this opportunity and immediately formed a team of 10 employees out of 20 employees who got the placements. I assigned them their respective tasks and set them deadlines. I expected them to complete their work within the deadlines but on the day of submission of their work, I realized that none of the members were ready with their work and they were constantly blaming on each other for their inability to complete. Moreover, I also noticed that the work done by them did not synchronize with each other and therefore it was a complete massacre. I noticed that the team members did not communicate with each other and kept a safe distance. Moreover, feedbacks were not given properly and negative feedbacks from each other destroyed the morale of the other team members. Moreover, cultural stereotypes were also found between the Australians and the Asian members that affected the dignity and respect of the members. All these were creating job stress in them and even two of the members approached the authority for leaving the team.

Another incident also occurred after this. I was asked by the higher authority to submit a report on the progress of the team and how the team members are performing. I became quite nervous as I had to collect and incorporate a large amount of data about each of my ten team members. I clearly wrote about their performances, their inhibitions, their issues and challenges and described how they were progressing in their respective tasks. I even attached their productivity report in an excel file. However, the authority criticized my report and stated that the information provided by me in my report was not done professionally and that I need to learn proper ways of report writing. I was severely embarrassed after this incident. However, I did not allow myself to lose my confidence and in turn requested my mentor to help in rectifying the mistakes. He explained to me in details about the mistakes I made.

Report writing

After reflecting on the incidences, I realized a number of mistakes I had made while developing and managing a team. I had been quite fast into initiating the work but did not focus into the five steps that are important in team formation. The first stage is called the forming stage that I totally ignored. At this stage, I should have given scope to the team members to know each other and understand the different roles that they need to perform with the teams. This stage needs focusing on arranging a meeting where they would be able to introduce each other and mention their job roles so that others can understand each other’s participation (Zoogah, Nole and Shenkar, 2015) . As I did not conduct the step, both of their task-related queries and interpersonal roles were unclear to them. I also did not provide importance to the storming stage. I should have actively monitored them during work or should have conducted meeting where the team members would have got the scope to clarify their issues and solve their misunderstandings. Constructive feedback should have been asked from the team member about each other so that the members could have developed the skills (Fiore and Georganta, 2017). As the steps were not conducted properly, different problems like cultural conflicts, blame games and job dissatisfaction others took place within the team. The norming stage was also not conducted successfully. Due to so many issues within the team like cultural conflicts, lack of role clarity and improper communication among the team members, informal relationship did not take place among the members and therefore no strong bonds and relationship development took place. Because of this, there was no synchronization among the work of the team members (Brock, et al., 2017). Therefore, blame games became common. The failure of the above stages indeed resulted in the failure of the fourth stage called the performing stage and the fifth stage called the adjourning stage. None of the members could actively perform their respective roles and failed miserably.

In the second situation, my mentor pointed out that I had made a number of mistakes while writing the report. The main problem was that I had not followed the format of the report properly. I had written it in the form of essay with long paragraphs that disappointed the higher officials. I should have incorporated small paragraphs with distinct information in each of them so that all the important details get highlighted to the professionals (Ee and Eng, 2015). Moreover, I conducted another big mistake where I failed to provide heading to the paragraphs which made the higher officials think that I have missed out many points. Moreover, my writing was quite scattered. This is said so because unlike the guidelines or a proper report, I did not provide the conclusion and recommendation at the end but rather incorporated it throughout the report. This was a turn off for the officers, as they could not understand the issues I depicted in the report. There was a complete missing of flow in my report.

Insights I developed after the incidents

From the entire reflection on the incidents, I have developed a proper understanding of how to develop and manage different attributes of forming and managing a team. I will make sure that I maintain each of the steps of ‘team-forming’ effectively like forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. I also have to ensure that new team members develop the important skills that are important in team working like proper communication skills. Active listening and constructive feedback giving and listening skills should be inculcated as important teamwork skills (Almost, et al., 2015). This would help in developing rapport among the team members for which effective bonding and relationship building will take place. The better their relationships are both formally and informally, the better their coordination and collaboration are at workplace (Turner, 2014). High level of collaboration will ensure that the work is completed within deadline and high quality of work is produced. Such teamwork will help in ensuring that the members do not develop job stress and job dissatisfaction (Donia, O’Neill and Brutus, 2018). Therefore, I will first form teams following the five important steps. Then I will ensure that following the Belbin’s theory, I also have to assign proper roles that match with their job preferences. Maintaining the role clarity will help in reducing stress and increase productivity. I will conduct important discussion sessions, where all members would disclose their concerns and issues so that they can be solved properly. Moreover, in the meetings, I should also initiate a trend of constructive feedback sharing so that miscommunications are resolved and innovations and creativity are ensured.

In order to ensure that I develop proper report writing skills, I first need to make a planning and develop a rough with all the important points that I will cover (Garza, 2016). This will help me to understand the important heading that I have to make for each point. Following this, I will incorporate the headings first and then initiate data incorporation within it. Moreover, I will be very careful about not making the paragraphs too long as this is against the guidelines of writing reports. I will make separate sections for the conclusion and recommendations and refrain from incorporating any conclusive ideas in the body of the report (Ohaja, 2017). Moreover, I will also be making proper sections and subsection of the different points separately with proper headings and subheadings. This will ensure more clarity in the report and the higher officials will be pleased (Morley-Warner 2009)

Incident of report writing

Conclusion:

From the entire discussion, I understood that I do not have proper skills in forming and managing teams. The reflection of the episodes helped me in identifying the different mistakes I made as a team leader. Following the mistakes, I developed a planning of inculcating proper teamwork attributes and skills among the team members. Proper ways of forming the teams, assigning them of their roles, managing the issues faced by team members and others are important parts of ensuring a highly productive teamwork. Moreover, the reflection of the incidents also showed me that I do not have proper report writing ideas which I need to develop through proper practice and being careful while writing report in future. This attribute would ensure that I emerge as effective and successful professional in future.

References:

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Brock, S.E., McAliney, P.J., Ma, C.H. and Sen, A., 2017. Toward more practical measurement of teamwork skills. Journal of Workplace Learning, 29(2), pp.124-133.

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