TEAMWORKING

EXPERIENCE OF WORKING IN A SUCCESSFUL TEAM

There have been several occasions in the past when I have worked as part of a team. The most effective team activity which I was involved in was during high school.  During Year 10, the school decided to have an internship with NatWest Bank, who opened a scheme where students could open up accounts in school. This scheme was in place to enable NatWest to expand their target market. As part of the scheme, they interviewed and elected six students who would voluntarily help during lunch times twice a week to help open up accounts for fellow students. I was elected as one of the six members. Even though we were in the same year and knew each other fairly well, we had never worked as a team before. During the first week, we had to advertise to the school that the students could now open NatWest accounts with us. As a team we gathered few ideas on what to include in the flyer, which was later put up on several notice boards round the school. Using Tuckman’s theory on stages of team development, we had comfortably passed the ‘forming’ stage as we knew each other fairly well.

During the second and third week of the scheme we had hardly attracted any students and at this stage we were wondering what could be done to improve this, but we had no ideas and one of the member was actually considering opting out as she was losing valuable lunch time carrying out this work. We tried persuading her that soon there will be a surge of students that will want to open accounts and that we will have to patient, but she did not want to hear none of it. At this point, we were at the ‘storming’ stage of team development as there was some levels of de-motivation and some form of conflict had arisen. There was pressure on us to be able to actually attract students soon as this scheme would only be open for couple more months.

We had a meeting with the head of year about what could be done differently in order for us to attract students to open the accounts with NatWest. We came up with the idea of going to each year’s assemblies and advertising on the stage and letting everyone what the account has to offer. We split the work so for each year there would a different speaker and we worked as a team to come up with a presentation that is neither overloaded with too much information nor boring. I believe we worked rather well as a team during this stage and as a result we successfully opened up several accounts as well as able to complete transactions which the students wished to carry out, e.g. depositing cash. This stage of team development is known as the ‘norming’ stage.

There was a sudden rise in students wanting to open accounts and we were kept busy during both days in the week when we were open. We had to manage a queue outside the room with students interested in opening the accounts. As a result, we were more productive than we had ever been in the past since this scheme was introduced. We were able to reach the ‘performing’ stage of team development at this stage. 

When it came to the end of the scheme, we felt we had achieved a lot working as a team; gained a vital experience. We wanted to carry on this duty due to our success as a team. The final stage of Tuckman’s theory of team development is ‘mourning stage’. At the end of the scheme, we were rewarded with certificates and got the chance to visit Bank of England, which was a good experience.

Group assignment review

Tuckman's theory focuses on the way in which a team tackles a task from the initial formation of the team through to the completion of the project. Tuckman's theory is particularly relevant to team building challenges as the phases are relevant to the completion of any task undertaken by a team. Each of the stages are described below:

FORMING- at this stage, the team is assembled and the task is allocated. Members tend to behave independently and although goodwill may exist, they do not know each other well enough to unconditionally trust one another. Time is spent planning, bonding along with gathering information.

STORMING- the team starts to address the task suggesting ideas. This phase can be very destructive if members of the team do not co-operate by competing for ascendancy with their ideas. Relationships between team members may not recover if they break and in such cases, the team may become stuck in this phase. It is vital that a team has a strong facilitative leadership in the storming phase.

NORMING- this phase tends to be a move towards harmonius working practices with teams agreeing on the rules and values by which they operate. There is trust between each team member as they accept the vital contribution from one another to the team. Individual members take greater responsibility which allows team leaders to take a step back from the team. However, at this stage, the team may become complacent and lose the drive that brought them to this stage as well as their creative edge.

PERFORMING- this stage is an era of high performance and not all teams make it to this phase. Teams at this stage have high levels of motivation, knowledge and independence. High levels of respect between members when communicating will be present and for this reason decision making is collaborative and dissent is expected and encouraged.

For the group assignment on the different motivation theories, we decided to relate the theories to two well-known companies: Cadbury and Tesco.  I believe we worked thoroughly well as a group, but there was room for major improvement.  I believe we reached the norming stage. From the start, when the group was formed, till the end, on the completion of the project, no conflict had taken place. This is mainly because we knew each other fairly well and each of us had the ability to get the work done without any difficulties. Each of us co-operated well and managed to divide the work between the four of us without any complexity. As we knew each other fairly well, we managed to quickly get through the forming stage.

We had decided to work together right from the very beginning and we held meetings where each of us would meet to discuss the work. On our first meeting, we divided the project up between the four of us. For example, each of us chose a motivational theory to do and relate that to a known brand.  Subsequently, we regularly met up and updated each other on what we had done and whether there were any difficulties any of us were facing in completing our task.

There was potential to move onto the performing stage, but we never managed to reach it. This may have been due to it being our first time as working in a group and even though we had the knowledge and motivation to reach performing phase, we lacked that extra driving force to get us there. Few days before the deadline, we met up and went through each other’s work and made few changes the layout and managed to pull all the documents into one and restructure the layout and organise the work into one full report. On the whole, I believe we communicated well with each other and had the right mind set to complete the work set and therefore I believe we managed to successfully reach the norming stage. The mark we received for this project was satisfactory and there was room for vast improvement. The only way to reach our full potential is to move on to the performing stage and possibly approach the task differently.

THE TIMES TOP 100 COMPANIES

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/career_and_jobs/best_100_companies/

Using the link above, one of the best 100 companies to work for is a charity firm called P3. P3 is ranked as number one on Times Online Best 100 Companies (Times online, 2010). Team work has been a key factor that has added to the success of this company. Like last year's winner, Beaverbrooks, the key to P3's victory lies not in big pay and bonuses, but rather in its supportive, inclusive culture which promotes control, choice and independence for staff as well as clients.

Another firm where teamwork has been a key to their success is W L Gore & Associates. It follow that it does particularly well in our employee questionnaire for people feeling they can make a valuable contribution to its success and believing they can make a difference in the organisation, getting 86% and 84% positive scores respectively. Both are top three answers. Staff at the West Lothian-based company find that work is good for their own personal growth (82%). Employees say colleagues go out of their way to help each other, which shows teamwork is effective at W L Gore & Associates.

REFERENCES

M.Simpson (2010) PowerPoint presentation.

Team working assignment

Times online (2010) P3 [online]. Available from:

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/career_and_jobs/best_100_companies/article7030217.ece

Times online (2010) W L Gore & Associates [online]. Available from:

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/career_and_jobs/best_100_companies/article7030223.ece