Team Dynamics and Performance in a PechaKucha Presentation

Student’s Last Name 1
Introduction to Management
By (Name)
Course
Professor
University
Date

Student’s Last Name 2
Introduction
Technology, as well as other effects associated with globalization, has made the society
more complex. As such, there has been an increase in the need of working in teams with the
focus being to solve issues and concerns at the workplace, and at school equally. In the past
weeks, my team members and I have been working on team PechaKucha presentation. Teams are
generally formed to achieve specific purposes. Generally, a team is formed to achieve a goal. It
is worth noting that working in teams alters productively every member’s performance towards
the attainment of the common goal. When my class was assigned the task to prepare the
PechaKucha presentation, the tutor advised us to get into teams made of members from different
backgrounds. Over the course of this reflection, I will demonstrate my team dynamic, the role I
played as well as how performance could be improved in my team.
Team Dynamic
My team’s dynamic was pretty simple. The role of each team member was selected from
the first day the team was formed. With one of us being the team leader, we voted and fairly
agreed on our roles, and specifically planned what our priorities were both as a team and to
personally become successful in our class. With this understanding, it was easy to divide tasks
and reduce conflict. As we progressed with our course, I observed that my team could be
associated with the Optimal Distinctiveness Theory which is of the opinion that people tend to
have a desire of being like others (Zhao, Fisher, Lounsbury and Miller, 2017, pp.197). I associate
my team to this theory due to the fact that my class had one primary goal which was to excel and
attain grade A. To ensure that process was smoother, we used WhatsApp as a tool that would
enhance our cohesion.

Student’s Last Name 3
My team was composed of inter-team and intra-team dynamics. My team’s intra-team
dynamics comprised of several elements such as full participation, open communication,
empowerment, support, feedback, and trust (Warner, Bowers and Dixon, 2012, pp.55). However,
in the beginning, during the formation stage, trust was low since the team members had not
interacted and got to know each other. Also, the team members had never worked together
before, making the interdependency and dependency levels to be very low. In spite of this
strange atmosphere, my team was open to learning, willing to fully participate, and had an
interest in doing anything possible to ensure the project was a success (Georgiadis, 2014,
pp.192). As my team members began trusting each other, we began authorizing ourselves to take
responsibility to accomplish our tasks. As such, this empowerment resulted in increased
interdependency and an enhanced sense of team identity along with accomplishment.
However, I did not seem to recognize a high-degree of inter-dynamics in my team. Some
of my team members kept reporting about how other teams were tackling their projects. Because
our project was quite dissimilar from what other teams were doing, this resulted in hesitancy in
our team. In spite, we were able to continue with the plan that we had earlier formulated of
preparing our presentation (Baggetta, Han and Andrews, 2013, pp.560). There was also no
noticeable over competition or negative attitude towards other groups. Although there was no
evidence of explicit competition, the mere presence of other teams in our class was an underlying
motivation for my team to enhance its efforts to get better grades.
The Role I Played
Every team member had a different role to play in making sure that our project was a
success. Belbin’s team role notes that a high-performing team ensures that there are clear