. Team Work

3. Team Work

An organization or collection of people who get together to pursue a shared goal is known as a team. Even while the efforts of each individual team member are critical to the team’s overall success, the group as a whole is responsible for the team’s overall performance. Our team was made up of five members, each explicitly assigned a different task, all fulfilling the requirements of preparing for the presentation. We followed the Belbin Model in an effort to create balanced roles, where a well-balanced team was created based on nine team roles: creating ideas, exploring opportunities, clarity of goals and decision making, driving the team forward, support and cooperation, discerning judgment, implementation, attentiveness to detail, and technical skills and knowledge (Aritzeta, Swailes, & Senior, 2007). Belbin believes that teams must be formed in such a way that they have a healthy mix of team duties (Smith, Polglase, & Parry, 2012). Nonetheless, we faced complications in terms of assigning roles and ensuring that these roles were not only fair but also balanced. We used a criterion based on individual choice for tasks and roles and adjoined some complex tasks together for easier completion.

The team forming process was fairly regular and in line with the five-stages of developing a team (Cresswell-Yeager, 2021). Our team went through forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. The forming stage was preceded by a phase of introduction and try to get to know one another. During this period, there was a great deal of uncertainty, and people were yearning for direction and guidance. To make it through the storming phase was perhaps the most challenging and important step of the process. The period was characterized by strife and competitiveness as distinct personalities began to take shape. The team’s performance suffered at this stage as a result of the energy used on useless tasks. Subgroups and cliques evolved surrounding strong characters or sections of consensus as a result of the disagreements over team objectives and aims. During the norming stage, agreement was reached on the identity of the leader or leaders, as well as the duties of individual members. Interpersonal conflicts were beginning to also be addressed, and a feeling of coherence and togetherness was beginning to emerge. Team performance improved as members learnt to work together and became more focused on the team’s objectives. When it came to the performing stage, agreement and collaboration were extremely well-established, and the team had reached a high level of maturity, organization, and efficiency. There had been a clear and steady framework in place, and all of the team members were dedicated to the task. Problems and disagreements continued to arise, but they were resolved in a productive manner. The majority of the team’s objectives were met during the adjournment stage, and the key objectives were the completion of last tasks and the documentation of the team’s efforts and accomplishments.

This group work experience is beneficial to my future career development as I intend to be a part of a well-functioning team. My aspirations are to work for a company in order to gather efficient skills and knowledge and later go into private business. The present group work experience will help me develop a better understanding of what I should pay attention to in team collaboration.

4. Presentation Experience

Working in a team meant a lot of learning, compromising, problem-solving, and altogether working towards a common goal. It was a steep learning curve seeing that we all desired to get a high score and also gain something out of the entire experience. I learnt a lot from this presentation experience. I learnt how to make a better preparation for the presentation and how to express myself better in public. For instance, prior to the group presentation, in order to have a better presentation, I had a full discussion with my group members on what models need to be employed to present the opportunities and challenges faced by Innocent Drinks. After deep discussion, we eventually decided to utilize as much as figures and statistics to present the opportunities and challenges faced by Innocent Drinks in a vivid and direct manner. This could enable the audiences to develop a deeper and better understanding of the situation. In addition, we also decided to add some pictures about Innocent Drinks, such as its logo, its sustainable trucks, into the presentation slides. The use of such visual pictures is proved to be successful to make presentation vivid and easier to understand and attractive. The presentation feedbacks from the teacher confirmed this point. In addition, I also learnt that good team cooperation and collaboration also contributed to better results and faster attainment of set goals. We modified the presentation drafts several times based on the suggestions from the group members, being considerate of every suggestion made. Factoring in the suggestions of every group member was an arduous task, one that meant delayed decision making and slower implementation. However, we were able to trust the opinions and skills of each member based on their allotted task, providing a lesson on delegation and team effort and contribution.

As for the presentation, I learnt that confidence and how to express our ideas in a clear and organized manner were the key contributors to a good presentation. Originally, as a result of nervousness and lack of confidence, I was afraid to look directly into the eyes of the audiences and failed to deliver the presentation in a smooth and clear manner. As a consequence, the presentation result was not good as the audiences could not understand what I wanted to stress and what I wanted to deliver through the presentation. However, in this group presentation, we mainly presented our reports through Microsoft Team. Without facing the audiences face to face, I became more confident. In addition, I also made some practices prior to the presentation. As a consequence, I made use of some stresses and pauses to deliver important information. Irrespective of some weaknesses in pronunciations and some stresses, I perceived that I delivered my best performance.

Working in small groups is more essential for effective learning since it encourages teamwork and co-operation. Biasutti (2018), on the other hand, takes a pessimistic approach, meaning that the adoption of peer learning methodologies by educational institutes is merely a case of assembling a group of people and hoping it works.  Cooperative learning tends to strengthen learning among team members via debate and peer review, whereas cooperative learning is socially created knowledge that is based on the negotiation of differing viewpoints amongst group members. When it comes to achieving a goal, I’ve learned that collaboration between members of a team is crucial. To put it another way, the Action Learning model is best described by Vince et al. (2018) as a continuous feedback loop and reflection that is supported by team members and ultimately leads to the accomplishment of a goal. In our group, we used Action Learning’s bottom-up method, which encourages creativity rather than merely changing the way things are done. For me, this presentation preparation was by far more effective than any other team exercise I have been a part of before. I learnt to consider the opinion of others, leadership, responsibility, problem solving, and accountability.

5. Common Themes

In reality, business enterprises face a host of obstacles and problems along the road as they embark on their entrepreneurial journeys. Businesses nowadays must learn to collaborate with a plethora of brand-new marketing platforms. They must keep up with the most recent technological developments, whether it’s social media, search engines, or website design and development. Furthermore, because digital media has no territorial boundaries, firms must compete with enterprises from all over the world on a global scale (Vanani & Jalali, 2018). There might be a range of supply chain and logistical issues as a result of these challenges, as well as the stoppage of internal activity.

The challenges identified for Innocent Drinks present common themes across the soft drinks industry. Green & Black’s also faces similar challenges. It also faces significant challenges like fierce competition from other strong rivals and changeable tastes of consumers. Mordor Intelligence (2021) highlights that the UK chocolate market is mainly dominated by some large enterprises, such as Cargill Incorporation, Barry Callebaut Group and Puratos Group and those small-scale compound chocolate makers are gradually merged by these large enterprises. All of these statistics indicate that Green & Black’s faces challenges of high competitive intensity, which will undoubtedly undermine its profit margin if it fails to take some effective measures. Another common theme is the need to keep up with technological advancements. For example, Innocent Drinks is required to think green in terms of environmental sustainability and adding value to the ecological system. This is also a problem that other companies like Green & Black face today. Because technology is changing at a quick pace, keeping up with technological advancements has become increasingly difficult for businesses. Furthermore, if a firm fails to innovate, its competitors will quickly seize control of the market share that was previously held by the company. As a result, technological improvements are forcing many businesses to shut down, and in order to prevent this, every enterprise needs to incorporate technology into its operations.

The reason for the common theme in terms of challenges and opportunities is because of the growth stages that a firm is currently experiencing. In the five stages of business growth, common themes appear because the challenges and opportunities faced also come with the phase a business is currently in. in the fist stage, existence, the main issues include obtaining customers as well as the delivery of product and services. Lewis and Churchill (1983) term the organization as very small leading to an owner doing everything themselves. In the second stage, survival, the enterprise has shown that it can work as a business entity and has enough customers and product to sustain them. The problems and challenges shift from just existence to include the connection between expenses and revenues. In the third stage, success, the company faces an issue on decision making regarding whether to exploit its success and keep expanding, or conform to profitability and stability (Lewis and Churchill, 1983). Take-off, the fourth stage, problems include how to grow fast and means to support the growth. Finally, resource maturity, the last stage, brings a problem of managing success through control and consolidation of financial gain and ways to retain the advantages achieved.

References

Aritzeta, A., Swailes, S., & Senior, B. (2007). Belbin’s team role model: Development, validity and applications for team building. Journal of Management Studies, 44(1), 96-118.

Biasutti, M. (2018). Strategies adopted during collaborative online music composition. International Journal of Music Education, 36(3), 473-490.

Cresswell-Yeager, T. (2021). Forming, storming, norming, and performing: Using a semester-long problem-based learning project to apply small-group communication principles. Communication Teacher, 35(2), 155-165.

Lewis, V. L., & Churchill, N. C. (1983). The five stages of small business growth. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership Historical Research Reference in Entrepreneurship.

Smith, M., Polglase, G., & Parry, C. (2012). Construction of student groups using Belbin: Supporting group work in environmental management. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 36(4), 585-601.

Vanani, I. R., & Jalali, S. M. J. (2018). A comparative analysis of emerging scientific themes in business analytics. International Journal of Business Information Systems, 29(2), 183-206.

Vince, R., Abbey, G., Langenhan, M., & Bell, D. (2018). Finding critical action learning through paradox: The role of action learning in the suppression and stimulation of critical reflection. Management Learning, 49(1), 86-106.