Developing Self-Awareness and Emotional Intelligence for Effective Teamwork: A Reflective Report

This reflective report provides evaluation of the puzzle solving experience completing during group classroom activities. The main three areas which are covered in this reflection are self-awareness, emotional intelligence and effect on professional competencies. VIA survey was conducted to identify strengths and weaknesses of each group member and overcome cultural differences to finish group work.

Reflective report

Executive Summary
This reflective report provides evaluation of the puzzle solving experience completing
during group classroom activities. The main three areas which are covered in this reflection are
self-awareness, emotional intelligence and effect on professional competencies. VIA survey was
conducted to identify strengths and weaknesses of each group member and overcome cultural
differences to finish group work.
The primary barrier during the group activity was related to language as members were
from different countries including Egypt and Vietnam. The strengths identified for Chinese
group member were respect, curiosity, independence and creativity. On the other hand, two
members were identified with having leadership, honesty, team work and fairness.
The VIA survey findings also helped identify personal strengths which are honesty,
fairness, bravery and Zest while areas for improvement are communication, time management
and analytical skills. The application of Tuchman theory to build team effectiveness is also
provided in this reflective report along with development of emotional intelligence and
professional competency.

Contents
Executive Summary.........................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5
APPENDIX......................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
In recent times, it is important for every personal to develop their professional skills for
successful career along with able to work in a diverse environment and intercultural work place.
Many companies require to develop their employee’s capacity to perform their task effectively
with different team along with diffuse miscommunication or conflicts rapidly (Anderson, 2020).
The main source to increase the ability of employees to work is diverse culture are development
of self-awareness or emotional intelligence to enhance effective personal as well as team
performance.
This project covers the importance of self-awareness and emotional intelligence, and
analysis their impact on professional competencies. Further, it highlights integrate strategies to
effectively interact with others in a diverse professional context, at last it identifies and reflect on
own strengths and their application in business context along with reflect on feedback to
determine opportunities for self development.
MAIN BODY
To develop professional skills, there was a group formed in classroom in which three
members decided to conduct puzzle game as their group activity in order to enhance their
communications and team working. It helps them to know they work as a team along with many
challenges which they have to face while working in a team. It also helped me and other team
member to know about our strengths and weaknesses. Such as when we played Puzzle game we
faced various barriers like confusion, disagreement, conflict and others regarding some aspects
of game (Rosseel. & Anseel, 2022). We also faced other problems also such as lack of
understanding about the process of game, lack of engagement, time and communication which
leads to delay in completion of game or group activity on time.
While participating in group activity it has been determined that it is very important of me
and other to develop emotional intelligence to understand personal and other emotions or
feelings. It includes various aspects and skills like curiosity, forgiveness, creativity, social
intelligence, team work, hope, perspective, leadership, self-regulation and many more which
helps a person to strengthen their understanding and skills for effective team working.
There is also lot of differences among team member due to different culture, nature,
mind-set and personality which leads to miscommunication and delay in work. By using
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Hofstede Country Comparison analysis, it has been seen that every person is belong to different
country and have different culture or language (Minkov & Kaasa, 2020). This analysis has five
dimension like power, gender, identity, time and uncertainty which highlight the reason of
problems among team work. In the group activity there is three members which came from
different countries that is I belong to Egypt, 2 one is from Vietnam and third is from China
which has different language which was the biggest barrier to complete the group activity. We
found difficulties to communicate each other along with understand the information and idea of
others which enable us to accomplish the puzzle on time effectively. Another weaker area of us it
that we are unable to match our timing to work on Game with proper focus and discipline.
Second member of our team is a girl whose has their personal reasons by which we cannot meet
much for coordinating and did not found time to work together (Noorbehbahani & Salehi, 2021).
During performing the game, we have less knowledge about each other weaknesses or strengths
which create problems to assign task as per our capabilities as it also creates confusion among us
related to part of task.
It has been determining that with various barriers there are some strengths also which
allow us to help each other in their task in order to complete the project on time. All these
strengths are related to the emotional intelligence which enable them to understand each other
mind-set and information to solve puzzle game effectively. In the given document it has been
seen that there is one member who belong to china are have some emotional intelligence
strengths such as forgiveness and like to travel or explore new things for learning while
travelling. The values of that person are respect, curiosity, independence and creativity which
allow them to help other to solve the puzzle effectively. We conduct VIA Survey and other test
in order to know about the strengths and weaknesses for improvement. Along with this test helps
us to develop various skills for professional career (Schlegel & Mortillaro, 2019). There are
some other strengths of another 2 persons such as leadership, honesty, team work, fairness and
other which helps them to coordinate with each other to complete their group activity. It has been
determined that I need to develop various skills like communication, time management and
analytical skills in order complete various task in future which make trouble for me during the
puzzle game. We need to improve our skills and learn new things or languages in order to reduce
miscommunication, misunderstanding and language barriers. In today world, it is more important
to develop self-awareness and emotional intelligence to work in a team for professional work to
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become successful. My values are honesty, fairness, bravery and Zest which helps to work with
other and understand their thoughts and ideas to complete group task within time limit in order to
get good grades. The emotional intelligence refers to the abilities to know personal and other
strengths along weaknesses in order to work with each other and understand point of view along
with ideas for effective working. Another quality is leadership which is an ability to lead the
people in a direction in order to meet the goals and objectives. It enables me to assign the task
and divide it as per the skills and ability of each person. The strengths of each person allow them
to put more efforts and use it for productive purpose in order to complete the group activity. It
also helps me to work in an organisation with a team and get better opportunities to become
successful. The values of each person force them to help each other if they have knowledge of
their task and give extra efforts to resolve difference among them (Cui, 2021). My creativity and
honesty enable me to help the team member so they manage their time to give more focus on
game and finish their part of work in order to gain better grades and feedbacks.
During the working with other team member I need to develop another skill like
communication, active listing and time management to meet up for completing task in proper
manner. We found difficulties because of language and understanding which make trouble for us
to solve the puzzle. We can also use Tuckman theory and its stages for team effectiveness. In is
forming stage we made a team as per same interest to perform group activity as well as in
Storming stage we faced problems to work with each other due to culture and language
difference which delay our work (Higgins, 2021). At Norming stage we make plan to develop
communication and understanding by helping, listing and sacrificing for each other to complete
the project on time. At last performing stage we perform the whole task with full dedication and
efforts to meet its goals on time for growth. In order to increase clear understanding, we need to
develop our self-awareness and learn languages of different countries which help us in future
team work with people who belong to another country. By using various resources, we can
develop skills like working on communication through reading books, interacting with each
other and participating in various seminars (DeMink-Carthew, Netcoh, & Farber, 2020). In order
to develop time management skills, we can make proper time schedule, following it properly and
dividing the complex task into steps in order to complete the task on time.
We can develop our emotional intelligence and self-awareness by practising daily as well
as develop understanding about people behaviour in order to work with them. By working on my
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behaviour and improve my patience level with meditate I will improve my emotional
intelligence. Through participating in training session to learn new language and culture we will
improve our active listening skills. By listening their ideas and personally interacting with them
by video calls on zoom meeting we can learn their language to reduce language barriers.
CONCLUSION
As per above presented information, it has been concluded that team work skills are must for
every person to work with diverse culture group and organisation. It has been seen that every
individual must develop their emotional intelligence skills. By conducting VIA test they can
know about their strengths and weaknesses along with use various source to develop them like
online training and daily practising.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Anderson, J., (2020). Reflection. ELT Journal, 74(4), pp.480-483.
Cui, Y., (2021). The role of emotional intelligence in workplace transparency and open
communication. Aggression and Violent Behavior, p.101602.
DeMink-Carthew, J., Netcoh, S. & Farber, K., (2020). Exploring the potential for students to
develop self-awareness through personalized learning. The Journal of Educational
Research, 113(3), pp.165-176.
Higgins, F. (2021). Reflective blogs: Supporting students' learning experiences while on work
placement.
Minkov, M. & Kaasa, A., (2020). A test of Hofstede's model of culture following his own
approach. Cross Cultural & Strategic Management.
Noorbehbahani, F & Salehi, F., (2021). A serious game to extract Hofstede’s cultural dimensions
at the individual level. User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction, 31(2), pp.225-259.
Rosseel, J. & Anseel, F., (2022). When reflection hinders creative problem-solving: a test of
alternative reflection strategies. Journal of Business and Psychology, 37(2), pp.429-441.
Schlegel, K. & Mortillaro, M., (2019). The Geneva Emotional Competence Test (GECo): An
ability measure of workplace emotional intelligence. Journal of applied
psychology, 104(4), p.559.
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APPENDIX
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