Reflective Essay: Team work

This reflective journal analyzes team working skills and effectiveness during the HRM module. It reflects on factors affecting group effectiveness and suggests alternative actions for future improvement.

Running Head: REFLECTIVE ESSAY
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Organization Behavior: HRM
Reflective Essay: Team work
(Student details :)
4/23/2019

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Contents
Reflection: Organizational Behaviour........................................................................................2
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Reflection...................................................................................................................................2
Effectiveness of my group.....................................................................................................2
The factors affected the group’s effectiveness.......................................................................3
What could have been done differently.................................................................................5
Self-assessment and learning about myself............................................................................5
SWOT analysis...................................................................................................................5
Big 5 personality traits test.................................................................................................6
Self-assessment (values, personality, interests and aptitude).............................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................7
References..................................................................................................................................9

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Reflection: Organizational Behaviour
Introduction
This reflective journal is based on my self-reflection on the organizational behaviour
in the context of human resource management (HRM). In this context, as I have been a
member of a group working within HRMG 204 workshop for 6 weeks. Therefore, for
extracting the major learning from the HRM module I am reflecting upon the incidents and
important events of the workshop while working effectively in a group. In addition, I am
going to reflect over the effectiveness of my group during this period as well as analyse the
major factors which majorly affected my group’s efficacy (Pelegrini & Marie, 2014).
Besides, with the help of this reflective essay I will demonstrate a comprehensive learning
about myself.
In this era, HRM is a core segment of organizational behaviour which needs to be
supervised and handled in the most efficient way so that organizational outcomes can be
maximized at their best (Ogunyomi & Brunning, 2016). In this way, with the help of working
with the group during the HRM workshop I realized the importance of effective team-work
skill for the future career development.
Reflection
While working with the group during the HRM workshop, I learnt critical aspects of
learning at workplace for the organizational betterment as well as self-development
(Staggers, Garcia, & Nagelhout, 2008). In this context, in order to analyse the key factors
which have majorly affected my group’s effectiveness, and my learning about self, I have
used following ways to reflect upon my team-work:
Effectiveness of my group
In this section I am going to describe my group’s effectiveness while working during
the module. To do so, I would like to reflect upon the criteria for evaluating my team’s
effectiveness. Here, I have used the three dimensions of team-effectiveness in order to
successfully as well as fairly evaluate the efficacy of my own team. The criterions
dimensions are productive output, enhanced capability of inter dependence and group’s

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contribution to an individual well-being (Hirsch & McKenna, 2008). In this context, my
group has successfully demonstrated fulfilling the first dimension of the set criteria which is
productive output as our group has submitted each and every task as well as assignment
within the deadlines while attempting with full efforts. Now, for the second criteria of the
enhanced ability of inter dependence, my team was actually showed inter-dependence at a
large extent. Besides, my team’s cohesion, support and cooperative skills have contributed a
lot to the personal development as well as well-being of all of us team-members (Han &
Harms, 2010). For an example, one of us was not willing to give presentation while the whole
group was supposed to give one within a task. In this context, we all team-members tried to
interact and resolve his problems related to stage fear and lack of confidence. We all
supported him and hence he confidently gave the presentation within that task of the module
(Heyrup & Bente, 2009).
Source: (Berlin, Carlstrom, & Sandberg, 2012)
The factors affected the group’s effectiveness
On applying knowledge related to the theories, concepts as well as models within the
course for identifying and analysing the factors which have mostly facilitated and obstructed
my group’s effectiveness I gained useful knowledge and learning about the same. In this
context, such factors can be cohesiveness, decision-making, individual personalities,
communication, conflict management, group norms, team-size, team leadership, team
stability, team composition, boundary management activities as well as homogeneity

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(Summers & Smith, 2010). Thus, all of the above mentioned factors based on different team-
work theories and models affected my team’s effectiveness to a large extent as follows:
I realized that effective communication in teamwork is the key to success (zkjadoon,
2015). Besides, while working in a group, I observed that an efficient communication
mechanism played a crucial role while developing our team effectively and efficiently.
Moreover, my learning about communication theory suggests that for understanding the
scope of the team goal as well as agreeing on a common path to reach the said goal, groups
should always grow an effective way of communicating in a team (Den Hartog, Boon,
Verburg, & Croon, 2013).
In addition, as per the group cohesion theory given by Tuckman (1965) I learnt that
cohesiveness is the major factor which affects teams’ effectiveness so as it has done with my
team during the HRM module (Bonebright, 2010). Besides, my observations about my own
team suggests that due to a high cohesiveness among my team we all group members could
able to achieve an increased morale, self-esteem as well as performance while completing the
HRM module. In the context of cohesiveness my opinion suggests that team members should
be well-known and comfortable with one another. With the help of our team’s successes I
realized that when a team is greatly cohesive, a team member’s willingness as well as
commitment to strive for work excellence thrives (Hoch & Kozlowski, 2014).
Furthermore, Belbin’s team role theory enabled all of us to incorporate role identities
into our team’s success (Belbin, 2012). According to me, it is an extent to which group
members are able to assume diverse team-roles all over the team-structure, therefore it
diversify team efforts and develop subject matter experts into different fields. On the other
hand, conflicts management has been observed as an important factor affecting the team
effectiveness of my own team during the HRM module. I learnt that dealing with conflicts is
so necessary that my team could not achieve anything without this team-management factor.
We all team members dealt with the group-conflicts in our team as soon as those arose. While
studying the HRM module, I analysed that team conflicts tends to divert a team off from their
focus in a way that they get distracted from their aims and objectives. In this way, based on
conflicts management theory given by Kenneth Thomas and Ralph Kilmann learning of
dealing with group conflicts immediately occurred successfully. With the help of five
conflict resolution strategies or concepts which teams utilise for handling conflicts
comprising avoiding, defeating, accommodating, compromising and collaborating, I and my

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team could easily managed almost every conflict which occurred in team. In this way, I learnt
that a team can easily remain effective all the times by managing the above mentioned factors
of team-effectiveness.
What could have been done differently
In this context, on evaluating as well as analysing different aspects of effective team-
work I realized that there are a lot of ways through which we all team members could have
done the things differently for making our team best amongst others. I learnt that
homogeneity, more focus on goals, time-management as well as positive attitudes are those
factors which could easily be utilized for demonstrating an effective team-work spirit over
others.
My realization post doing team-work during the module suggests that for team
members to work efficiently together, all of them require to own a positive attitude for the
organization, the assigned project as well as their set goals, and each other (Cooren, Kuhn,
Cornelissen, & Clark, 2011). My team could also have used this factor of positive attitude
and focus on goals by putting considerable efforts to know each other well. As we all team
members have not been worked together before hence as per my evolved opinion we should
have encouraged our team-work by having casual meetings, like a lunch or after-hours
dinner. I consider that if we would have practiced initial informal meetings in the very
beginning then our shared experiences would have creates bonds as well as build trust, which
were the anyway good measures of promoting team spirits at huge level (Borrego, Karlin,
McNair, & Beddoes, 2013).
Self-assessment and learning about myself
In this section I am reflecting upon my learning about myself so as to integrate my
personal learning with the help of group experiences and self-assessments. In this context, I
practiced self-assessments post working in a team during HRM module as follows:
SWOT analysis
Strengths
 Collaboration
 Co-operation
 Time-management
 Team-work
Weaknesses
 Bad negotiation skills
 Less effective worker with big sized
teams
 Unable to handle negative attitudes

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 Good communication skills  Taking huge risks while working
 Patience
Opportunities
 Conflicts management tactics
 Effective leadership
 Interpersonal communication
 Strengthening negotiation skills
Threats
 Emotional instability
 Less focus on goals
 Easily diverted from influential
personalities
Big 5 personality traits test
Source: (Cattell & Mead, 2008)
While assessing my personality using this self-assessment tool, I realized that I own
all of the four traits of big five personality model include conscientiousness, agreeableness,
and openness to experience as well as extraversion (Den Hartog, Boon, Verburg, & Croon,
2013). On the other hand, fifth trait of this personality assessment tool is emotional stability,
about which I have already mentioned that I am less effective at this aspect of personality. In

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this context, different sub-factors of this personality trait include coping with stress,
moderation, self-regulation and resilience needs to be addressed and upgraded by me from
the perspective of future career development (Bassos, 2016).
Self-assessment (values, personality, interests and aptitude)
In this context, while doing the self-assessment of the career planning process I
gathered info about myself for learning more about myself. In this way, a self-
assessment including my values, interests, aptitude and personality suggests following key
points:
 Values: I carry the major things which are essential for professional development
such as achievement, autonomy and status
 Personality: my personality traits include positive attitude, influential, active and
hard-work.
 Interests: my key interests are setting goals regularly and completing them,
playing golf, having intelligent discussions with friends and class-mates.
 Aptitude: I am very good at academic activities like professional
writing, computer programming, and learning online (Ogunyomi & Brunning,
2016).
Hence, after completing four self-assessments I realized that I can further use these
assessments to deepen my understanding about myself as well as how I behave within
professional groups. I also learnt that how my presence influence any group’s procedures and
productive outcomes.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this reflective journal has successfully analysed my team-working
skills along with my team’s effectiveness while working during the HRM module. With the
help of different team-working theories such as Belbin’s team roles, Tuckman’s team
cohesion, this paper has helped me to reflect upon my team-work during the HRM module.
Besides, through writing reflection I found many alternative actions which could have been
adopted while working with the team. The above found alternative actions will allow me to
gain an understanding about future learning and up gradation from the perspective of working
within a team. In order to deepen my understanding of my group I assessed the factors
affecting my group’s effectiveness so that I can take care of the faced challenges in future.

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Apart from this, reflective writing has also allowed me to practice relating models as well as
effective team-work theories in the context of team-dynamics and effectiveness. In whole,
with the help of this reflective writing I developed many important skills like observing,
reflecting as well as analysing the team process.

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References
Bassos, B. (2016). What is reflective practice? In The reflective practice guide: An
interdisciplinary approach to critical reflection. Oxon: Routledge.
Belbin, R. (2012). Team roles at work. London: Routledge.
Berlin, J., Carlstrom, E., & Sandberg, H. (2012). Models of teamwork: ideal or not? A critical
study of theoretical team models. Team Performance Management: An International
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group development. Human Resource Development International, 13(1), 111-120.
Borrego, M., Karlin, J., McNair, L., & Beddoes, K. (2013). Team effectiveness theory from
industrial and organizational psychology applied to engineering student project teams:
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Cooren, F., Kuhn, T., Cornelissen, J., & Clark, T. (2011). Communication, organizing and
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Hoch, J., & Kozlowski, S. (2014). Leading virtual teams: Hierarchical leadership, structural
supports, and shared team leadership. Journal of applied psychology, 99(3), 390.
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