Team Building Process and Group Development: A Reflective Essay

INSTITUTIONAL AFFILIATION(S)
EFFECTIVE BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
[Document subtitle]
STUDENT NAME
[Date]

REFLECTIVE ESSAY
This essay will reflect upon my learning experience gained during week nine of the semester
i.e. team building process and group development related concepts. Shum, et al. (2017) asserts the
necessity for individuals to reflect critically so that awareness is raised and changes can be made
wherever needed in ourselves. Whereas Prabhakar (2008) distinguishes teams and groups along with
discussing how groups develop to form teams and engages themselves in group decision making.
Since I aspire to became an efficient team leader in future, it becomes significant for me to understand
the process of team development and ways through which team building process can be held
efficiently. To understand the concept more precisely, I have used journal articles and credible
sources to support literature related to week nine’s concept that I present in this report.
It has been very well documented in literature that working in teams is conductive as well as
effective that involves learning through shared information’s and collaboration among team members.
My own team activities worked both co-operatively and collaboratively that facilitated readiness to
identify individual roles within the team along with maintaining regular meetings, communication
links and sharing information and idea with each other’s. The viewpoint offered by Ramaraju (2012)
is that team cohesion along with peers helping each other’s are majorly due to the reason they strive to
succeed in future career. This, idea is applicable for my future career also as our team work activities
was assessed as combined effort. Kumar, Deshmukh & Adish (2014) states that strong group
cohesiveness enhances cooperation and personal support for team development that was again evident
in our weekly activities. However, Klug & Bagrow (2016) acknowledges the constraints realised by
team members while going through the development process as each team member may have limited
exposure to other members knowledge. Since our group had dissimilar timetables, we experienced
few difficulties at the times meetings were called, nevertheless, we manged this issue by maintaining
contacts via digital communications and emails. Prabhakar (2008) also acknowledges that
complications raised in teams need stability when team members aspire to produce optimum
performance. The author also adopts effectivity stance by signifying the application of team activities

and cooperative learning through reinforcement amongst group members and discussions made of
peer review. This collaborative team work concept has proved significant in my work activities also
as it constructed knowledge within me and etiquette in assuming the negotiation of team members
diversified perspectives.
There are many formal and informal roles played by team members while creating successful
projects and even a single person in a team can play more than others significantly for which each
team members are bound to work in collaborative manner (Fapohunda, 2013). Putting succinctly,
every team member in projects carry their own responsibility that relates to formal and informal tasks
for which they facilitate critical arrangements for formal and informal meetings. However, to manage
small or big projects, understanding the team development stages proves significant for me as I lack
in depth knowledge about it. Besides for managing a team as a team leader, it is necessary to hold,
inspire and motivate all the project team members to achieve success. As stated by Fapohunda (2013),
successful team leaders recognise individual importance as they know that project without them
would not deem accomplished. I will therefore, release my idea as well as present literature
concerning team development stages as mentioned in peer reviewed article.
Most of the contemporary workplaces group development theories focus on identification of
series of evolutionary steps that teams have to go through from the moment they form a group until
their dissolution. For explaining the theory of team development stages, most of the researchers and
practitioners rely on Bruce W Tuckman model (Hingst, 2006). This theory has been developed and
taken over the years into several concepts in theory of organisational behaviour and management
theory that includes five critical stages for developing a team. According to Zoltan & Vancea (2016),
“A true team does not appear overnight but must complete several steps to overcome the initial stage
of its existence as a group” (p. 241). This widely accepted theory has served framework to many
group development practices experienced by students like me. I can still remember the experience
when I was told to write an analysis paper of a chosen article. While completing the paper, I
composed, revised and published different successful stages for critical writing in terms of topic and
contents. I can now realise how my initial process of writing and reviewing article were divided