Our team consistent of five members that had different backgrounds, mentalities, and coming from various countries such as Albania, China, Germany, Spain and United Kingdom. Such diversity of students tend to raise some questions such as: How am I going to implement all this into helping my team to succeed in our set goal? What is our goal and how we are going to align all together? What is the rationale that triggers the need for individual contribution to a group? Previous experiences have helped to answer these questions. Learning is a process and not a phenomenon that I have learned from previous experience in working with the team. It is a turning point to understand the importance of conflict and how to manage it. Such issue have occurred in our team and hindered its performance. After a careful overview of an issue we managed to establish the root of the problem and resolve it. As a group it is important to have a common goal and set priorities of the project that will help have a successful end result of the project (Contribution for a team, working and speaking up www.Ivythesis.com).
We as a team have decided to have an informal conversation, which have helped us in analyzing various angles of our project. It was not an easy process but we as a team managed to overcome our indifferences and concentrate on our project. There is an expression “A good start, half of the work done”, at our first meeting my Mediterranean temperament have showed. My aim was not to show who is going to lead a team, but to break the ice and convey to an open conversation with a brief introduction of our backgrounds (identifying who we are and what we have been doing) and identify the fields where each of us feel confident and superior. Reflecting on this experience helped me to take under consideration such challenging barriers that consist of language, culture, and divers’ personalities; and applying it in business world to my best ability.
Professor Keith Merron (at “Golden flame, pg.77) says: “Remarkable leaders have a clear sense of what they want to create. Their sense of outer authority comes from a sense of inner authority. Great leaders are both clear and open”. As we went along with the project as a group we appointed individuals to their roles, who will be handling the following: trade-offs between personal and organizational behavior as well as identifying different conditions as the determinant of what will lead and dominate.
I have established that leadership can aid in formalizing group processes and identify the topic of a certain undertaking. A formal structure within a group creates the atmosphere that helps interact in a professional manner that has helped to eliminate some barriers that have been mentioned above. Sometimes strong personalities derive to misalignment, conflicts, stress and inefficiencies. A guide lines were established in order to help us through this project that have eliminated uncertainties of roles of each individual and maintained our concentration on the project as well as any deadlines.
Going back to the first class in “Team building and Leadership” and taking knowledge from that class I have suggested set up some ground rules knowing that sometimes we hesitate to give our personal ideas because not everyone is forthcoming due to new environment.
It is a crucial factor to build such frame as it will create confidence of sharing ideas and generating more options. I worked very hard in building this frame and it appeared to be good start for the whole team. The effort and implementation have showed good results at our second meeting. The whole team got motivated and was ready to take on this new project.
We all agreed that this project is not an individual competition where we have to compete against each other but we are a team that is competing against challenges in this business program and achieving a mutual goal by being the best team in “Angel Island” is our number one priority. I felt motivated and content that the first step that we took was successful one. Two months into our project was running smooth, most of the work has been done in efficient manner, and each member of the team has contributed persistently. We kept our focus on defined guidelines as well as established roles that helped us to maintain consistency within our project. “Golden Flame” states:
“What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen”.
- Henry David Thoreau
Inspired by this phrase makes me belief that is not difficult to make the miracle happen. You must look beyond the words and see that it is just simple to be the person that makes this miracle happens. But is that so easy? In my opinion nothing is impossible, you just need to go through a self knowing process and draw in the board your goals. In this process you might need the help of your loved ones, friends, and coworkers. By being a better leader you find better solution and get closer to the miracle or your goal.
In the last meeting we went through evaluation process and I heard two valuable points from my teammates that have made me to reflect on my Mediterranean temperament through the following points:
- Taking control of the excessive passion
-Listening more
This helped me to evaluate myself, how to become a better team member, and how to get closer to the ‘miracle’ being the team number one.
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