INDIVIDUAL TEAM REFLECTION
Teamwork is a very crucial aspect within any group of people or an organization that is aimed at achieving certain collective goals. Thus most of the times working as a team is mostly aimed at producing better results, that is, more effective, detailed as well as comprehensive work (Nurmi, 1996). This is usually achieved as a result of the combination of a variety of talents and skills of the team members in the process of contributing ideas and knowledge. Therefore I managed to realize most of the aspects of working as a team work within the five weeks I was involved in a team work. Thus I was able to determine most of the issues that are involved in the team work, including the strengths, weakness, opportunities as well as the involved challenges (Stott and Walker, 1999).
Throughout the team work I managed to identify that there were various strengths associated with the team work that were not easy to achieve when working as an individual. Thus these strengths were the main issue that contributes to a great number of people to prefer working as a group rather than working as individuals (Stott and Walker, 1999). The most apparent strength that I notice when we were working as a group was the way we managed to have a variety of viewpoints on an issue thereby we had a wide array of options when we were approaching a certain issue (Nurmi, 1996). Moreover, there was also the ability of complementation whereby different individuals were covering for each other, for instance, if a team member had some weaknesses it was easy to compliment them by other member’s strengths thus striking for a balance within the team. There was also a better outcome leading to higher productivity since it was possible to divide some tasks thereby doing them within a very short period of time (Bolton, 2010).
Moreover, despite the strengths that I experienced in our team there were also various weaknesses which I noted to easily accrue as a result of working in teams. For instance, it easy for the free-rider effect whereby some of the members are just idle awaiting for others to do the work for them. However, if some of the members were hardliners to their ideas it was possible to have frequent conflict of ideas since some members will always insist that their ideas are the best (Stott and Walker, 1999). Also time management was another weakness since some members were not effective time managers hence they would delay the progress of the entire team.
In addition, during the team work I managed to identify various opportunities upon which I utilized a variety of them. For instance, due to the persistent communication among the team members I managed to improve on my communication skills both written and spoken. I was also able to learn various aspects of time management since we had to work under a tight time schedule. Moreover, the team work encouraged me to be more creative compared to earlier since we were involved in constant brainstorming for ideas (Nurmi, 1996). Hence this consistency helped to improve my creativity.
There were certain challenges that we faced as a team, for example, since we were unknown to each other at first it took sometime before we could familiarize with each other. Also since as team member we were not drawn from different classes it also took time for us to establish a common ground and focus on the task (Stott and Walker, 1999). If I were to be involved in another teamwork I would ensure that there is a strict time guideline to be followed by all members. Moreover, as a future health professional the team work will be very crucial since I can’t work in isolation and I will constantly work in numerous teams throughout my career (Bolton, 2010).
References:
Bolton, G. 2010. Reflective practice: writing and professional development. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Inc.
Nurmi, R. 1996. Teamwork and team leadership. Team Performance Management, vol. 2 no. 1, pp. 9 – 13.
Stott, K. and Walker, A. 1999. Extending teamwork in schools: Support and organisational consistency. Team Performance Management, vol. 5 no. 2, pp. 50 – 59.
