Experiencing Team Work!!

Every occasion that I work in a team it challenges me to adapt to the different styles and personalities of the members. However, this is a skill that I feel I have developed and is further developing, by the time I graduate I am confident that I will be accomplished in it.

I evaluated the different team members of this particular occasion and decided on what I felt their roles were in our team. This is my opinion and it may therefore be incorrect or inaccurate:

Member A/ Myself: Shaper and Co-ordinator.
Member B: Monitor/ Evaluator.
Member C: Implementer.
Member D: Completer/Finisher.
Member E: Co-ordinator.
Member F: Monitor/Evaluator.

From my evaluation it is evident that our group lacked a number of roles that are vital for success. I feel that our team could have worked better had these roles been included. Perhaps our team could have benefited from a specialist member for more in-depth research.

Over time, I have noticed that I work better with the more extrovert members who are more active members of the group offering original ideas to the table who I feel have a larger contribution to the task. In this particular task two of the other members were extrovert and the remaining three were more introvert building quietly on the ideas offered. I understand that as an extrovert person I must be sensitive of those less at ease of contributing, I therefore continually try to include and motivate the quieter members asking if they had any ideas or anything they would like to add, or whether they thought our ideas are good.


Tackling the issues we encountered:
It was evident that one group member wanted to complete aspects of the task alone; however we avoided this emphasising that it is a group task. Understandably, people prefer to work alone and often work better alone, and in this case I would suggest that by choice they work alone on aspects of the task to their taste but bring the ideas to the team who can then develop upon them.

In addition, one other group member lacks motivation and leaves things to the last minute. We must accept that this is her style and motivate the member to develop her work gradually rather than leaving it to the last minute. We ensured that this was the case by organising weekly meetings at an arranged permanent slot in our timetable that suited every team member. All the team members were dedicated and consistent at attending the meetings which then motivated the less motivated member to also attend and contribute to the task.

How to get things done? – Motivation and dedication!
As previously mentioned we set aside a specific time for our group meetings which ensured that we completed our campaign and developed our pitch in time for the deadline. At the end of each meeting we discussed what would be completed in the meeting next week. All members were flexible on the length of the meeting depending on what needed completed, we all dedicated the afternoon for our group work no matter how long the tasks took.

To begin the task we discussed what aspects needed included, what we needed to research and what we wanted to pay special attention to. Our group benefited hugely from brainstorming and taking turns to type recording our ideas as we discussed them. We ‘bashed things out’ where everyone’s opinion was offered to the table and we later drew rational conclusions and developed them.

To keep all the members motivated and continually thinking about the task we set up a group email and we would add any ideas that we may have thought of during the day. By reminding the members of the task meant that we would subconsciously think about task and therefore become inspired and draw ideas from everyday life. Furthermore, it is beneficial to practise using the technique of email when working within a group as Pr practitioners use internal emails everyday as a form of communication in their job.


What needed improved?
Our team would have benefited to a bigger variety of people including more thought orientated roles rather than more active of people orientated roles. Apart from this, all the members worked well together and got on well.