questionnaire 1 - teamwork and leadership - aisha rattan

7/25/2019 questionnaire 1 - teamwork and leadership - Aisha Rattan

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QUESTIONNAIRE - BUILDING CLASSROOMS

Describe the task

In detail, what was the aim of the task? How many teams? What was the team dynamic?Timings? Rules & restrictions?During my trip to laos we had a task with the aim of working together in order to buildclassrooms for the local school in the village we were staying at. In terms of our whole group,we split ourselves up in 3 teams. There were around 10 people on each team (but a little less onthe team of people who would shovel out the soil.) The teams consisted of people who wouldcarry the soil, people who would dig up the soil and people who would mix cement and laybricks. I was put into the team of people who would carry the soil. The group dynamic ( in termsof how the roles and responsibilities have a direct result on productivity) was quite good. As ateam, we had a really great group dynamic as we all worked really well together, and each haddifferent qualities that benefited the team in different ways. We had 4 hours to try and complete

as much work as we possibly could. As we were all determined to make the biggest differencein these kids lives and help the schools as much as possible, we were all very determined ontrying to be as effective as possible and work to the best of our ability. There werent really anyrules or restrictions other than just being responsible and safe as we were working in quitedangerous locations (near the edge of a hill with steep grounds, if people were messing arounda serious accident could occur, we were also were working with quite dangerous and sharpequipment like shovels and worn out tools - therefor it was necessary to be responsible andsmart when handling equipment.

What was your role in the team?What did you do? How did you contribute? Leader or teamworker?

My team's overall aims were to help transport and carry the heavy soil from one location toanother. My personal role was to position and hold the bag we were using to carry the soil whilstit was being filled with the soil. When the bag was flattened out, ready to carry we had to work inpairs to securely carry the soil from one place to another. When doing this - I had the role ofcarrying the bags end whilst my partner would carry the top of the bag so the soil wasbalanced. Whilst working in this team I feel as if I had taken the role of a leader, as opposed towhat I usually would take in most team working situations. I had taken the role of a leader in thesense that I tried to organize and manage the group in order to have highest rate of efficiency,whilst keeping team workers motivated and with a high morale so theyll be happy to work to thebest of their ability. I had told my team members communicating with them the specific rolesthey should do - e.g who would be specifically holding down the bags, laying it flat in the bestposition that will hold the maximum amount of soil, who would be the person holding the top of

the bag, who would be holding the bottom and I judged who would be best suited for each rolebased on things like level of strength, and how determined they are. I feel that in the team I hadtaken the role of monitor evaluator as I was trying to be as logical as possible and makedecisions that were just based on the qualities of my team members that were not biased orbased on any emotions or my thoughts on them. I also was quite determined and focusedthroughout.


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How did you perform as an individual?For the M & D criteria make comparisons with other individual performances in your team andrelate to theory.As an individual, I think that I performed quite well during this activity. Relating to Belbin's theory,as I mentioned before, I feel as if I took the role of a monitor evaluator as I had all the qualitiesthat these types of people in a team possess (logical, make impartial judgments, arent biased,decisions arent based off emotions, as theyre impartial. Theyre generally quite focused anddetermined people.) I also feel as if I possessed the qualities of a coordinator in this specificsituation. This is because I tried to organize the group by assigning certain roles to people whowould be best suited for those roles based on their qualities -I allocated certain tasks to certainindividuals and kept things organized in this way in order to be as successful as we can, and as

efficient as possible. In comparison to others in my team I feel as if I took on more of aleadership role as the others were sort of listening to me and following my instructions. Somepeople in my team were quite lazy and werent as determined as I was to make a difference,which is why I ended up taking up this role. As I was more of a monitor evaluator/coordinator,others in my group who were determined and happy to work were more solely around the actionoriented roles like implementers. This means that they were very efficient when working andthey also carried out the task by following my instructions. I also feel as if I had taken on thesecharacteristics as well as I was also doing the hands on practical tasks.

As a leader I feel that I had kept all the qualities mentioned above, but also tried to be ascompassionate as possible , keeping good communication with my team members as I wantedthem to have a high morale in order for our work to be as efficient as possible, and to the

highest quality standard that it could be. This can only be done if I had kept everyone happythroughout this activity as they were more motivated to work at a better standard. I did this byhaving and maintaining a people-oriented role as well as a action oriented role in order to be thebest leader that I could have been as I had intentions and the aims of keeping people happywhilst trying to complete a task at a high quality, combining these roles as those 2 objectives gohand in hand.

As I usually dont tend to take a leadership role when working in a group activity this was quite anew, useful experience to me as I was able to develop many skills, take a risk and try somethingthat was stepping out of my comfort zone. I had learnt, developed and improved myorganizational, communication, quick thinking and risk taking skills whilst taking up this role.

How did you perform as a team?For the M & D criteria make comparisons with other team performances and relate to theory.Overall, as a team I think we all worked really well together and were able to avoid any conflictand disagreements by all trying our best to cooperate with each other and have a clear methodof communication. We were a very efficient and productive team as we all followed instructionsand a clear strategy as I assigned everyone clear roles. Everyone stuck to their role and as theoverall atmosphere when working in our team was very positive we were all happy whilst


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working - making very good progress and being super efficient. Because we had clear rulesand instructions so our team would be classed as a formal team. We all worked together inorder to complete the specific task and cooperated without any issues as everyone was verycooperative and came into the task with a good mindset.

In comparison to other teams, I think our team seemed to be the most organized and

cooperative. I think this was because all the members of my team had a great method ofcommunication. We had all spoken and made sure that everyone was clear with their role -asking questions if there was any clarification needed. All members of the team had greatcommunication skills, were able to carry out their individual tasks effectively and efficiently. Asthe members of my team were all quite friendly with each other, they were comfortable enoughto share ideas and communicate without hesitation.

I think together as a team we had experienced a full process of tuckman's theory. We started offforming - we had established a leader role in the team (me), we had started talking about whatit was we wanted to achieve, making sure we all had the same aims and expectations. The nextstage we went through was storming - we had definitely as a group experiencing this point

except for the fact that our activity was so short therefore there was not really any opportunityfor any team rivalry. Cliques were definitely formed as it was clear who was getting along themost and who wasnt in a group of 10. At this point I had also assigned the roles for each of myteam members and we had all, as a group, re established the goals and aims making sureeveryone was clear of them and understood. We had then gone through the norming stagewhere agreements were made on who was fulfilling what role - making sure everyone washappy with their roles. The team had kind of come together at this point as pretty mucheveryone was working well with each other and the group was more in unison as the goals andobjectives were clear. We had then began actually working - the performing stage. At this pointthe team was very efficient, making great progress and being very successful and productivewhen working - people were fulfilling their roles to a high standard, working together in order toachieve the best possible outcome to build these classrooms. After our time was up we had

went through the final stage, the adjourning stage - the group breaks up as we had completedall the transporting of the soil that we needed - all the tasks were completed. I think the onlyroom for improvement that we could have done would be by not using 2 people to transport onebag, and using 1 person per bag instead. I wish i would have done this at the time becauseinitially I thought 2 per bag would be necessary due to the weight. But as we went on everyoneseemed to be having a fairly easy time transporting the bags. therefor an improvement I wouldmake would be to have 1 person per bag as this would mean larger quantities of soil wouldhave been transported - making the team more efficient.

In comparison to the other teams, when they went through stages based off the eyes oftuckman's theory they seemed to have a much harder time in comparison to ours. For example,when they went through the storming stage, negative cliques were being created therefore

people felt uncomfortable and left out. People were also angry as there was a hierarchysituation as the leader seemed to be taking too much control - this made the norming andperforming stages a more difficult process for this group as they had a bad start anddisagreements at the beginning.


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What were your strengths?Communication, problem solving, time management, supporting others, physical abilities,confidence, motivation, resolving conflict, praise, questioning, body language, listening,

awareness, creativity etcI would say that my biggest strength throughout this task would be my communication skills. Asa leader in this task, it was important that I was able to share the thoughts of the group, andremind my team members of the aims and objectives within this task. It was important that I hadgood communication skills as situations came up where people needed clarification - althoughthis didnt happen to be much of a problem or occur that often as I made sure when I wasspeaking that I was very clear so people would understand me. My other strengths throughoutthis task would include my motivation. I had a lot of motivation myself as this was a cause that Ido care about therefore I wanted to make the biggest difference I could. As my team membershad similar intentions, it was important to constantly motivate them as well in order to be asefficient and hardworking as we could be - being able to motivate my team workers. I also had

good listening skills and awareness as I was able to think very practically...thinking what actionwould need to be done in order to have the best outcome. An example of how I did this wouldbe when I was assigning roles & responsibilities to each person in the group. I was aware oftheir qualities, and was able to assign them to a role suited towards them in order to be the mostefficient that we could be.

What were your weaknesses?Communication, problem solving, time management, supporting others, physical abilities,confidence, motivation, resolving conflict, praise, questioning, body language, listening,

awareness, creativity etcI think my weaknesses during this task was my physical abilities. Personally, Im quite a weakperson in terms of physical strength and was not one of the strongest of the bunch. This kind ofbrought me down in terms of how efficient I wanted to be as I wasnt able to keep up as quicklyin comparison to others in my team and was struggling at times. I felt because I wasnt asphysically capable as the others at times I felt as if I was bringing the team down. I guess this isthe reason why I wanted to take more of a verbal, leadership role as I feel like I wanted to makeup for the fact that I wasnt as able to be the most efficient physically. I feel as if I also wasnt asI possibly could have been in terms of motivating my team members. If I had more time, I couldhave thought of more creative reward strategies rather than just praising my team memberswhen they had put in hard work. Instead, I could have used my creativity skills to come up withdifferent rewards such as more time using the hot shower as we were staying in a village at the

time, simple rewards like that would highly increase the team members morale and motivatethem even further.


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How could you improve for next time?Make future recommendations for yourself, your team and other individuals / teams.Next time I would like to improve my capabilities to take part of more practical work andsituations, rather than just communicating and not being able to perform as well in a practical

situation - taking more action in my team in a more physical, active sense. This not only appliesin a business situation but also to situations where im outdoors, like this trip to Laos. If iminvolving in both aspects when working in a team situation, it would mean that my rate ofefficiency and productivity would increase - and therefore would increase my value andeffectiveness as a team member. As a team I think overall we worked pretty well, but there weresome aspects which we could have worked on to make the success of our team even moreeffective. I think as a team something we could have improved on was coming up with solutionsas a group. I also wish that as a group we had all put in equal effort, and next time I would liketo make sure that everyone is doing this by monitoring team members. If I was in a team for alonger task I would make sure that either someone in the group or myself would conduct regularreviews, and have members do self assessments in order to see how much effort each member

is actually putting in - these are methods of monitoring. If I were to monitor the team, it wouldhave many benefits as doing this would help the team achieve the highest level of success. Thisis because Id be able to see if there were any flaws or problems within the team, and would beable to quickly address these issues in order for it to not have any long term damage on theteam. This would also enable to me to support and develop underperforming team members. Ithink it would be important to set more realistic goals given the time frame that we have, as mygroup had a tendency to try and overwork themselves as we had set ourselves some very high,unrealistic goals.

Whilst watching other teams working when building the classrooms, I had noticed that otherteams had many conflicts and disagreed on many different things due to an issue ofcommunication and members listening. An improvement I would suggest for this team would be

to work on their communication and listening skills as this would basically completely eliminatethe conflict and issues going on as they would have the opportunity to meet in the middle, andagree on a compromise. This would also challenge team members to work on their problemsolving skills as they would be addressing a problem and finding a way to come up withsolutions where everyone would be happy.

When looking at individuals in a group, I noticed that one of the leaders seemed to have a verylaissez-faire leadership style - where they pretty much dont have a hands on approach. Theydidnt monitor their team and didnt check up on what theyre doing, the progress they're makingetc. Personally, I tried to be a democratic leader - listening to people and taking in their opinionsas I feel like this leadership style is the best way to get a team motivated and as efficient aspossible. I would recommend that the team should have followed this leadership style as it

would have resulted in less conflict and inefficiency as the leader would listen to what the teammembers wanted, hopefully fulfilling or coming up with a compromise to their wants and needs,increasing morale.


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Was there any conflict in the group?If yes, describe why and how was it resolved? If no, what did the leader do to ensure this wasthe case?Personally, there wasnt any conflict in my group. Being the leader, I had taken action to ensurethat this would be the case. One being I tried to actively listen to the group as much as possible,and have clear communication exchanged between me and team members. Doing this helped

prevent conflict between me as a leader and the group as I would always try and come to acompromise if they had any issues with anything that I had said or suggested, in order for bothof us to be happy. As I was actively listening to what my team members had to say, it developeda relationship between me and them as it showed that I cared about their opinions and whatthey think, especially as I had most of the time taken action when they had suggestedsomething or shared an opinion. An example of this being when one member of my teamsuggested that one stronger person would pair up with one medium strength/weaker person inorder to have a balance of efficiency when carrying and transporting the soil. I had decided touse this technique and method as everyone in the group agreed and it was important to listen towhat my team members wanted in order to keep them happy and efficient - preventing anyfights or conflict with them. If conflict did happy to arise, I would have had used my problem

solving skills, and come to some sort of compromise if team members were fighting amongsteach other.

Another way that I prevented any conflict between the group was by ensuring that I had formedthe right group with the right people. I mean this in the sense that the members of the teamhaving the same values, objective and aim in this task prevented from any conflict happening,as all of the members got along quite well and wanted a positive atmosphere as they all have ashare of similar interests and all were there to do one thing - which was complete this task to ahigh standard.

How else could you use relevant theory to analyse the overall performance today?Leadership styles, Belbin, Tuckman, Adair, Honey, Margerison & Mccann, Woodcock,

I have mentioned and included any relevant theory in the questions above. This task andexperience had a lot to do with with the theory of leadership styles (autocratic, democratic, andlaissez-faire mostly) as this were the 3 different leadership styles I had witnessed in teams.Personally, I was an democratic leadership style and due to the fact that I was open, listeningand acting on my team members opinions made my group conflict free. Another group had aautocratic leader and therefor a lot of conflict took place as a lot of the team members hadissues and problems with the objectives that the team leader was implementing. I also had seena laissez-faire leadership as mentioned above, which just didnt work out as conflict occurred,and the group was very unorganized and unsure of what exactly they had to do, therefor beingextremely inefficient.

Belbin's theory was also mentioned earlier on as I had said which roles I felt that I fit into.

Looking at other groups, I had seen a range of people who possessed traits from thinkingoriented roles, people oriented roles and action oriented roles. A combination of people who hadtraits from each category created the best team as they had a variety of different team memberswith different skills, making the team extremely efficient.

Tuckman's theory was expressed when talking about how my team did and how their overallperformance was. I used this theory earlier on to explain how the group had developed fromstart to beginning.

questionnaire 1 - teamwork and leadership - aisha rattan

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