Reflective Essay on Team Work Experience in Class

This reflective essay is about the author's experience while working with a group in class for an organizational behaviour assignment. The essay covers the stages of group formation, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. The author analyses their experiences and applies organizational behaviour theories to them. The essay provides useful theories, policies and practices for leading a team effectively.

Running Head: TEAM WORK EXPERIENCE 0
Reflective Essay
Experience During Group Work in Class
(Student Details :)
1/12/2019

Team Work Experience 1
Contents
Reflective Essay.........................................................................................................................2
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
My Experience during Group Work..........................................................................................2
Group Formation....................................................................................................................2
Storming.................................................................................................................................3
Norming.................................................................................................................................3
Performing..............................................................................................................................4
Adjourning.............................................................................................................................4
Analysis of my experience.........................................................................................................5
Application of my experience to organization's environment....................................................6
Application of OB theories........................................................................................................7
Theories of Intelligence..........................................................................................................7
Theories of Motivation...........................................................................................................8
Theories of Attitudes and Behaviour.....................................................................................8
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................9

Team Work Experience 2
Reflective Essay
Introduction
The reflective journal is based on my experience while working with my group in class and it
will allow me to learn as well as reflect during future career development by using my
experiences acquired during group work in class. Besides, I will analyse my experiences and
learning as well in the context of organizational behaviour. My analysis of the group
experiences will include incidences, why those incidences happened, what was the learning
from them, and what could have been done differently for making the situation better.
Furthermore, as I have learnt many things from working in a team for the organizational
behaviour (OB) project hence my reflection will contain an application of my experiences to
organization’s environment and if those experiences would have been occurred in an
organization then what should have been done.
Moreover, I will apply organizational behavioural theories into my experiences of group
work or team work. Finally, this reflective essay will provide useful theories, policies as well
as suggested practices which can be used to engender further success as well as mitigate such
problems in future. In this way, with the help of (Australis College, 2018), I learnt that
reflective practice is an important tool to analyse my past experiences and failures in a way
that it can help for the future development from the personal as well as professional
perspective (Australis College, 2018). Thus, I am here reflecting my team-work with my
group while working in the class for the organizational behaviour assignment.
My Experience during Group Work
Now, I have experienced that our group had so many different stages of feelings while
working on the group project. For instance, apart from group formation, there were other
stages of our group learning includes storming, norming, performing and adjourning.
Group Formation
My experiences during group work contain many things like group formation technique while
forming the group. I got to know about this five-stage model given by Bruce Tuckman in the
year 1965 which was containing five steps for developing a group formation. In this way, my

Team Work Experience 3
experience about group formation was amazing as that group formation helped my group for
accomplishing our assignment. Moreover, I did not face any difficulty during interacting with
the group members because fortunately I was assigned a group whose members were already
familiar with me as most of us were good friends. Additionally, team work with my group
built my character as well as provided exclusive learning into so many aspects. I would like
to narrate a great experience of my team-work during organizational behaviour assignment
that my group has appointed me as a leader as they found required leadership skills in my
character. Besides, my team members were so intelligent as well as polite that they helped me
in each and every task related to our task as well as group report. As we know that
technology advancement influencing collaboration and communication considerably
currently hence we all group members chose Facebook messenger and Google Drive link for
sharing and storing info regarding our group project (Management Study Guide, 2017).
Hence, the idea of introducing these technologies into our team work helped all of us and
made our work easy from the efficiency as well as timeline perspective.
Storming
This stage of our group work was the storming stage and during this stage our team moved
into the storming stage, where we all started to ambition and execute our missions towards
the final stage from the forming stage. In my opinion, it is the stage where most of the groups
fail due to lack of clarity and enthusiasm for the work. This stage was there in our group
project because of the reason that there was certainly a conflict amid team members' natural
working styles which was requiring our group storming in order to successfully execute
group project. In this context, as I have already mentioned that I was having a good chemistry
with my rest of the team members as we all used to be friends earlier than becoming team
mates hence I contributed a lot to minimizing the conflicts due to different opinions among
my team. According to five stage model of Tuckman’s group development, the stage of
storming is very important from the perspective of building base of the group work as well as
it is vital to strengthen bonding among the team members.
Norming
Further then, during norming stage of our team project team moved into the progressive
stage. As per the (Jones, 2013), it is the stage when team members take initiative to solve
their differences, raise the value of team members' strengths, as well as respect the authority
of the leader. Likewise, our group members also tried their best to resolve issues with each

Team Work Experience 4
other as well as all started taking my opinion for each and everything related to the
organization behaviour project.
In this way, we all team members interacted with each other better, and hence socialized with
each other (Honig, 2008). This stage of norming helped all of us in so many ways like we
could easily ask one another’s help as well as provide constructive feedback to each other
after living this stage. Additionally, I suggested my team mates that we should grow a solider
commitment to our team goal, as well as start to see good evolution towards it. Afterwards, I
got positive response from all of my team members as there were no conflicts among each
other and they truly liked my opinion as well as started working into the team’s goal
direction.
In this way, it was my task to hold my group’s members together without any clash of
opinions over small topics and sustain our team harmony throughout the whole OB project.
Besides, being a leader I also tried my best to assign the relevant work to my group members
like primary research, finding the main material as well as the group’s workplace. Thus,
during this stage we all evolved as more cooperative towards our team goals that helped us to
complete OB assignment within the timeline.
Performing
During this stage, all preparations regarding OB assignment have been done and we all were
ready to perform efficiently. Thus, this was the stage when my group started functioning
appropriately as we already discussed all required things in advance many times. We started
performing on our OB project as well as designed layout of the poster on OB. While we were
designing poster for OB theories and writing report on the same then problems regarding the
group effectiveness occurred due to pace of the work and some personal stuff of the group
members. Yet, in the end we finished our assignment comprising report and poster making on
OB theories efficiently with the help of each other without any delay form the assigned
deadline due to our effective team work and incredible harmony.
Adjourning
Although, our group accomplished our team goal and submitted the complete work prior
deadline, yet there were three problems occurred include lack of creativity, decision-making
difficulties, and lack of participation. In this way, this is the best quality of my group

Team Work Experience 5
members that in spite of having above mentioned hurdles into the path we all successfully
accomplished team’s goal effectively (Goetsch and Davis, 2014).
Analysis of my experience
In this context, being a good leader I can easily reflect upon the causes behind these above
mentioned problems. For instance lack of creativity has faced by the group while we were
designing the poster for the studied and researched OB theories. My group members had to
search a lot of material and designs over internet as no one was having clarity regarding
professional poster designing on management topics. Moreover, clashes of opinions over
selecting poster design also contributed into lack of creativity as one group member
suggested a good design and I agreed to him but other opposed him as they did not find the
design appropriately suitable. Hence, the poster making over OB theories took a lot of time
and hence in my opinion it was lack of creativity of our group which made us to search over
internet. Moreover, while writing report two of us could not join our team and hence only
three of us completed almost half of the report. However, I leant understanding, empathy and
team work skills from that instance as the two members could not join us because of their
personal reasons. One of them went home to visit her mother as she was not well and the
other one got fever himself. Thus, the both incidences gave me a life-long learning regarding
team-work as well as keeping empathy for each other. Furthermore, because of the above two
incidences my efficiency and leadership got influenced for a little span of time and I started
thinking like whether I should take the decisions without the two group members or I should
wait for them to join us again. Finally, I took the decision as per the views and opinions of
three of us and (Pettigrew, 2014); hence in the end our project got successfully submitted on
time.
Moreover, I observed that there is often an extended overlap amid norming and storming,
because of the reason that, when new and challenging tasks come up, then team might lapse
back into behaviour alike the storming stage. We studied many organizational theories like
leadership, conflicts management, organizational change, innovation and technology,
professional behaviour, communication skills and many more through (Burke et al., 2015).
In this way, my analysis of the experiences during group project demonstrating that I learnt a
lot of things from the perspective of working in an organization in the future. For an example,
I learnt leadership skills and my leadership’s pros and cons which will certainly leverage my

Team Work Experience 6
personality and career at my future workplace. I also realized that for me, the most
influencing leadership style is servant leadership as I have read (Savage-Austin and
Honeycutt, 2011) and learnt that a leader is the one who knows the way, goes the way and
leads the way. In this way, I learnt that being a leader it is not an easy task to manage the
team while satisfying all for their interests. Additionally, I learnt about group decision-
making when my team-members were not available and my team was lagging in whole
participation for giving their opinions then I waited for them to re-join us. However, based on
incidences provided in (Di Serio, De Oliveira and Siegert, 2011), I learnt that it could have
been executed in a different way as I should not have wasted group other members’ time and
interest about the project. I learnt better conflicts management from studying (Tjosvold,
2008) and it’s all sides while working with a group as a leader. Moreover, I influenced my
team members to actively participate and show their creativity while we were designing
poster on OB theories. Hence, in above context I utilised my power of being a group leader
so that my team can work efficiently and complete the project on time. I suggested my group
that we all should utilize social media platforms as well as technological advancements to
make our task easy and best and hence we used to share our progress report as well as
instantaneous thoughts over Facebook messenger as well as Google drive. Thus, the above
use of messenger and Google drive allowed us to learn use of innovation as well as recent
technology into our group project on OB. My analysis over group work is directing my
insights towards cultural intelligence as well as team work, as during execution of the main
work that is performing stage we all realised that we are facing communication problems due
to cultural diversity (Gelfand, Erez and Aycan, 2007). At that time, I researched about
conquering that communication problem of our group and I observed that professional
communication skills could easily resolve the problem of communication hurdles (Imai and
Gelfand, 2010). In this way, our group’s cultural diversity taught me cultural intelligence
concept as well as its significance from the organization behaviour point of view (Gelfand,
Erez and Aycan, 2007).
Application of my experience to organization's environment
In order to apply my working experiences in a group of student class to an organization’s
environment, I would like to quote one example of my own leadership style during the group
project. While I was leading the group then I realized that there were so many expectations
and demands of my group in the very beginning stage of the group formation. Thus, I started

Team Work Experience 7
feeling nervous and pressurized because of my position’s responsibilities and expectation of
my group members. Then I went to my tutor who gave us the assignment on OB and I
narrated all hurdles which were coming into my path of effectively leading my team.
Afterwards, the tutor understood all of the problems and feelings of mine and he suggested
that I should read some best leadership incidences and theories which are real-life based and
available in the books as well as on internet. I did the same and when I read many leadership
theories in the organizational context (Colquitt et al., 2011), then I chose servant leadership
over all of I read at that time. In this way, I applied that theory of servant leadership to lead
my team and resolve all conflicts, disappointments, short-comings as well as decision-making
concerns. Therefore, my tutor helped me while leading my group to complete the project
efficiently on time as well as I myself learnt a lot from big business leaders’ stories.
Therefore, i can now reflect that introducing organizational theories into our academic
context will definitely help, assist, and advantage us for the future career development in
professional workplace. Moreover, decision-making problems and their resolutions which
have been occurred and resolved during my group work can easily be applied into an
organizational context to become an expert profession (Management Study Guide, 2018).
Besides, I also learnt and experienced conflicts management problem during my team project
on OB and it is also applicable on actively working in an organization for the overall future
development. As we all know that conflicts’ occurring is a frequent issue in each and every
organization hence as I learnt conflicts management among my group then I will be
effectively using these techniques as well as frameworks during my future working as a
professional person.
Application of OB theories
Being a group leader of my group, I gave faced many issues and challenges which are almost
identical to the organizational issues as well as challenges. In this way, I can now reflect and
narrate them for demonstrating the understanding of application of famous theories to resolve
them easily.
In this context, there are some major theories, policies as well as practices which can be
utilised to engender future success and mitigate all above mentioned group work’s problems,
which are as follows:

Team Work Experience 8
Application of Theories of Intelligence
 Emotional Intelligence Theory: this theory of emotional intelligence, I applied
when I had to take decision over adopting the poster design as well as some other
things and two of the group members were not present at the work-site.
 One General Intelligence Theory: I had to use this theory all over the journey of
the group assessment as well as leadership among the group. This theory of
individual’s intelligence allowed me to handle each and every stage as well as task
if my project efficiently. My own intelligence gave me the idea of taking my
problem to my tutor and hence he guided me to read about famous leaders and
their leadership style as well. In this way, my own general intelligence and
wisdom gave me the authority as well as power to take wise decisions for my
group members and group project.
 Theories of Multiple Intelligences: when we all were deciding, storming, norming
as well as adjourning then there were so many stages where multiple intelligence
was needed to resolve one aspect of our project effectively and hence we utilised
the theories of multiple intelligences in order to make our project complete,
attractive, efficient, informative as well as well-researched (Zheng, Yang and
Mclean, 2010).
Application of Theories of Motivation
 Expectancy Theory: this theory suggests that a person will act in a way that as they
are inspired to choose a particular behaviour over the other behaviours and because of
what they suppose the result of that chosen behaviour will be (Huczynski, Buchanan
and Huczynski, 2013). In this context, this theory was utilised by all of my team
members and me as well.
 Common-sense Theory: as we all know that common-sense is lies within the basic
sense of us and hence it gives motivation when we can solve, analyse and understand
things easily with the help of common-sense (Huczynski, Buchanan and Huczynski,
2013). Therefore, in my opinion we all used this theory to successfully complete our
project of OB theories on time.
 Goal-setting Theory: this theory gives an important motivation to each and every
member of this nature as through setting a goal one can easily achieve this within the
timeline (Huczynski, Buchanan and Huczynski, 2013). In this way, my group was

Team Work Experience 9
really motivated with this theory of goal-setting as we all used to discuss each and
every stage of the project completion and progress and hence we accomplished our
goal of OB project with the help of goal-setting theory. Without setting the goal
nobody can achieve their aims of life. Likewise, we set our goal and implemented it
within the timeline and hence setting the goal allowed us to assess the progress of the
project time-to-time. Hence, we could easily reach to the main goal of the project and
learnt so many things throughout the whole journey.
Application of Theories of Attitudes and Behaviour
 Reinforcement Theory: this is a theory of attitudes and behaviour in an
organization which was also utilized by my group’s members as we know that
reinforcement theory of behaviour is a restricted effects media model which is
applicable within an empire of communication (Huczynski, Buchanan and
Huczynski, 2013). Besides, this theory typically states that persons seek out as
well as remember info which offers cognitive support for their predating beliefs
and attitudes. In this way, reinforcement theory is being applicable here while I
am reflecting upon my experiences about the group work and it is reinforcing my
attitude as well as behaviour for the future professional practice.
 Organisational Behaviour Modification: we all group members modified our
attitudes and behaviours after learning many things from the work in the class for
the OB assignment. This theory often allows an individual to evolve their
personality according to the theories as well as learning acquired from the
working as a professional in an organization. Likewise, my team’s group members
evolved their personalities and attitudes as per the feedbacks and opinions they
received from the other team members. Hence, it is very well applied to our
project on OB and we can apply our learning in this context to our future
professional life.
 Single and Double Loop Learning: this is also learning theories that evolve
attitudes and behaviour of a person. Double-loop learning occurs when an error is
detected as well as corrected through the ways which include the alteration of an
organization's fundamental policies, norms, and objectives (Huczynski, Buchanan
and Huczynski, 2013). Moreover, single-loop learning occurs when goals,
frameworks, and values to a substantial extent and useful strategies are taken for
granted.

Team Work Experience 10
 Social Cognitive Theory: this theory also evolved all of my team members’
attitudes and behaviour for their future career development. As we know that this
theory adopts a unique way into which persons attain as well as
maintain behaviour, along with considering the social environment where those
individuals implement the behaviours (Huczynski, Buchanan and Huczynski,
2013). Moreover, this organizational theory covers a person's past experiences,
those matters into whether behavioural actions will be occurred or not (Zheng,
Yang and Mclean, 2010).
Conclusion
In conclusion, reflective practice on group work in class over the topic OB and poster
designing provided life-long learning to me for the future career development. My
experiences about group work taught me many things like efficient team-work, solving
conflicts, empathy, communication skills and many more. Experiences with my team gave
me an exclusive experience of working as a leader as I was appointed of my group’s leader.
Besides, I also got to know that my friends and team members respect my skills and consider
me a deserving candidate for the position of a group leader. While I was reflecting my
experiences about the group work then I realized that there is no hurdle which cannot conquer
with the help of a great team-work and dedication. My experiences built my character as a
leader for my future development in the area of personal life as well as professional one.
In this way, I could easily analyse my work experiences being a leader and a group member
while preparing OB project I class. My analysis over team-work’s experiences demonstrated
great learning like positive attitude and behaviour, effective leadership skills, conflicts
management, innovation and technology use and professional communication skills. Finally,
this reflective journal writing demonstrated my reflective practice skills as well as made me
feel that every critical task’s on-time completion is incomplete without reflecting upon the
experiences, feelings, evaluation, and analysis as well as learning during the task completion.
Therefore, my group task completion overall gave me an exclusive experience of being a
leader as well as an efficient team member which will allow me to become an expert
profession at my future workplace.
References

Team Work Experience 11
Australis College (2018) The Importance of Reflective Practice, 13 May, [Online], Available:
https://www.australiscollege.edu.au/blog/community-and-counselling-study-blog/the-
importance-of-reflective-practice/.
Burke, R.J., Koyuncu, M., Wolpin, J., Yiriks. and Koyuncu, K. (2015) 'Organizational
Empowerment Practices, Psychological Empowerment and Work Outcomes Among
Frontline Service Employees in Five-Star Turkish Hotels', Effective Executive, vol. 18, no. 1,
p. 42.
Colquitt, J., Lepine, J.A., Wessaon, M.J. and Gellatly, I.R. (2011) Organizational behavior:
Improving performance and commitment in the workplace, London: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Di Serio, L., De Oliveira, L.H. and Siegert, S. (2011) 'Organizational Risk Management: A
Case Study in Companies that have won the Brazilian Quatity Award Prize', Journal of
technology management & innovation, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 230-243.
Gelfand, M.J., Erez, M. and Aycan, Z. (2007) 'Cross-cultural organizational behavior', Annu.
Rev. Psychol, vol. 58, pp. 479-514.
Goetsch, D.L. and Davis, S.B. (2014) Quality management for organizational excellence,
New Jersey: Pearson.
Honig, M.I. (2008) 'District central offices as learning organizations: How sociocultural and
organizational learning theories elaborate district central office administrators' participation
in teaching and learning improvement efforts', American Journal of Education, vol. 114, no.
4, pp. 627-664.
Huczynski, A., Buchanan, D.A. and Huczynski, A.A. (2013) Organizational behaviour,
London: Pearson.
Imai, L. and Gelfand, M.J. (2010) 'The culturally intelligent negotiator: The impact of
cultural intelligence (CQ) on negotiation sequences and outcomes', Organizational Behaviour
and Human Decision Processes, vol. 112, no. 2, pp. 83-98.
Jones, G.R. (2013) Organizational theory, design, and change, London: Pearson.
Management Study Guide (2017) Popular Theories of Organizational Communication,
[Online], Available: https://www.managementstudyguide.com/theories-of-organizational-
communication.htm [04 Dec 2018].

Team Work Experience 12
Management Study Guide (2018) Decision Making in an Organizational Context, [Online],
Available: https://www.managementstudyguide.com/decision-making-in-organizational-
context.htm [03 Jan 2019].
Pettigrew, A.M. (2014) The politics of organizational decision-making, London: Routledge.
Savage-Austin, A.R. and Honeycutt, A. (2011) 'Servant leadership: A phenomenological
study of practices, experiences, organizational effectiveness, and barriers', Journal of
Business & Economics Research, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 49-54.
Sherman, (2018) What Is the Relationship Between Organizational Functions &
Organizational Structure?, [Online], Available: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/relationship-
between-organizational-functions-organizational-structure-18571.html [02 Dec 2018].
Tjosvold, D. (2008) 'The conflict‐positive organization: It depends upon us', Journal of
Organizational Behaviour: The International Journal of Industrial, Occupational and
Organizational Psychology and Behaviour, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 19-28.
Zheng, W., Yang, B. and Mclean, G.N. (2010) 'Linking organizational culture, structure,
strategy, and organizational effectiveness: Mediating role of knowledge management',
Journal of Business research, vol. 63, no. 7, pp. 763-771.