Week 2 – Teamwork

After one week in UCD it was clear that we would have had been involved in many group-works. When our Lecturers used the word “teamwork”, at first I was unhappy. In my mind teamwork was associated with many negative aspects, such as anger and never-ending discussions. To avoid such  a bad result, I read very carefully the weekly articles for the Management class, as they were all related to teamwork.

Going through the readings I found out that a lot of issues I was worried about had already been studied and analyzed by experts. My first dilemma concerned trust. Especially if you don’t know very well the people you are going to work with, how can you rely on them? Trust is “putting our fates in the hand of others” (Katzenbach, J.R.; Smith D.K; The Discipline of Teams, Harvard Business Review. pp 168). Usually I’m quite confident towards the others, still I wasn’t so excited, couldn’t stop thinking we were going to get a mark on our work. My mind was full with questions such as “Will the others be able to do that?” and “Will they be smart enough?”.

Reading Doctor Moon’s “Making Groups work” brought me to a brand new point of view. I was always thinking about the others and never about ME. Maybe that is the biggest problem of working in a group: we are always ready to point the finger to the other people, that we don’t see our own weaknesses. This fact hit me when Moon brings a specific example of a situation that can create an internal dysfunction: or “some members of the group are less able to understand what is going on (language problems)” (Moon, J; January 2009, Making Groups work, Higher Education Academy, pp 27). And I do actually have a problem with the language, as I am not a native English-speaker, and this fact could slow down the group! As I’ve always been a good writer and quite a good speaker I’ve never thought I could be the weak point (from a “language point of view”) in a group. I was already aware that I would have to work hard on my English, but reading Moon made clear the fact that I have to improve quickly. I also wished Moon had explored better the aggressive category, when she describes the different kind of behaviours, as sadly I fall into that one. Obviously I’m not so bad, Moon tends to emphasize every type (don’t worry, future team-mates!), but I’ve always knew it’s one of my weakest point and I’m working on it since when I was a child. The few advices given in the Reading will surely help.

To deal with our own weaknesses and with others’ weak points, it is important to behave and to make polite criticism. Behave is not important just at the beginning, when we try to make a good first impression, conscious that people are studying us, as Vandeveer describes in his “Synergy and team cooperation”, but for the whole time the group will work together. If we have some constructive criticism it is important to take it to the group attention, it will lead to an improvement, but our manners need to be polite. Often is the way we say something which is important: voice and body language can express more than what we would like to and we have to pay attention to not offend anyone, as Doctor Moon stressed often in her article. Creating a pleasant environment will reduce the  fear of conflict, situation that must be absolutely avoided in a group. We don’t have to fear conflict: if it is based on respect it will bring to a positive debate and improve the work, as Vandeveer explains. It is not a battle, but a chance to change.

All the readings gave us some advices to avoid bad situations and to face them if they show up. Obviously theory and practice are different, but remember that every team have had to deal with internal problems will help us to get through any difficult we might encounter.

Team work is risky, it’s challenging but challenges bring evolution. And what was I saying about challenges in the previous post? That they are welcome in my life.