Reflective Case Study: Key Components of My Effective Team, MNG82001

This case study, submitted to Desklib, examines the key components of an effective team based on the author's experience as a coordinator of a cultural festival at ABC Groups of Institutes. The assignment details the importance of communication, the use of short-term goals, strategies for team engagement, and mutual support among team members. The author reflects on the successful outcome of the festival, which involved a large number of students and teachers, and attributes the success to these organizational behavior principles. The case study also includes the analysis of these components and provides example answers to encourage further learning. The author highlights how effective communication, well-defined short-term objectives, high levels of engagement, and strong mutual support contributed to the team's ability to exceed expectations, managing a large-scale event successfully. The study draws on academic research to support its points and concludes by emphasizing the significance of these elements in team success.

Organisational Behaviour
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR –
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Table of Contents
Introduction...............................................................................................................................3
Case Background............................................................................................................................3
Key Components of My Effective Team...................................................................................3
Communication...............................................................................................................................3
Short Term Goals............................................................................................................................4
Engagement.....................................................................................................................................4
Support............................................................................................................................................5
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................5
Bibliography..............................................................................................................................6
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Introduction
Case Background
I have been working as a teacher in the ABC Groups of Institutes since the past 10 years.
Because of my long association with the company, I have also been appointed as the
coordinator for cultural fests that take place twice every year in the college campus. ABC
Groups of Institutes is a prestigious college that offers professional courses in diverse fields
and has a student strength of around 35,000. The last festival in the college was a cultural fest
that took place on 26th January, 2019 to 29th January, 2019. The fest was attended by 300,000
students and almost 30,000 teachers from different colleges and high schools.
I had a great time while acting as the coordinator of the cultural fest, where I was responsible
for heading a team of 5 teachers and 60 students who worked day and night to make the
festival successful. The operational areas where the team had to work were finances,
advertisement, sponsorships, security, registrations, scheduling of events, etc. The success of
the festival could be attributed to the excellent team work demonstrated by the teachers as
well as the students. In this report, I would share my experience while working in a team and
the key components that made my team effective.
Key Components of My Effective Team
A team is defined as a group of people that work towards the achievement of a common goal
or an objective. Team work can do miracles in a workplace or a business setup as it allows
the members of a team to work together and create synergies, which they cannot create while
working alone or as individuals (O'Neill & Salas, 2018). As discussed above, I had an
extremely important opportunity to coordinate a cultural festival that had a budget of
60,000$. The festival was a huge success and the key components that made our team more
effective are discussed below:
Communication
Communication in a team work is one of the most important elements that makes it effective
and efficient in achieving its goals and objectives. We knew it from the very beginning that to
organise such a large festival successfully, we had to use the most effective channels of
communication and ensure that relevant information reached the concerned people at the
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right time. For the purpose of fostering open communication within the team, we created
groups on different social media platforms. One group was created where all the members
were added while there was a separate group made for each of the operational teams. It was
ensured that the members shared relevant information in these groups at the right time and
were able to keep their team mates informed about the progress of the plans. We met with
each other every other day for one hour where all the progress and important matters were put
forward by the leaders of the operational teams. Information, in the form of bulletin points,
was recorded and shared in the social media groups so that the team members could keep a
track of their operations and processes. We also ensured that the team leaders were available
at all the time so that the students could freely discuss their plans or problems (de Toledo
Piza, et al., 2018).
Short Term Goals
From the very beginning, the team of teachers coordinating the activities of the cultural
festival had suggested that there should be excessive use of short term goals, which would
provide a direction to the team members. Right from the very first meeting, the heads of
different operational teams were asked to formulate a set of short term goals and assign a
deadline to them (Brock, 2017). These short term goals were then communicated with the
entire team through social media, along with their deadlines. In the following meetings, the
progress on these short term goals were discussed by the operational leaders and verbal
reinforcement or appreciation was given to the team members once a short term goal had
been achieved. These short term goals were regularly updates in every meeting so that the
areas that required a greater attention or priorities could be brought forward. Thus,
establishing short term goals and celebrating their fulfilment really kept out team on the right
track and motivated.
Engagement
A team can perform well only if its members are completely engaged in their work and are
ready to go an extra mile to achieve success for their teams. To ensure engagement amongst
the members of the team, we conducted a 10 minute brainstorming session in the end of
every meeting. In these brainstorming sessions, the leaders of different operational teams
would ask for the input of their team members in relation to the problems that were being
faced or the barriers that were hindering the progress of the team. The input received from the
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team members was recorded and was afterwards studied by the operational teams separately,
in order to find the best possible solution. This not only helped us in keeping our team
members engaged in the activities, but also in finding out innovative solutions to our
problems and innovative ideas that made the cultural fest a huge success (Saks & Gruman,
2017).
Support
A team can become effective only when its members are ready to support each other
whenever required. We made it a point that the entire team was closely connected to each
other and could ask anybody for their help in case something went wrong. Even though the
entire team was subdivided into operational teams that were headed by the teachers, a team
member from a different operational team was always helpful and ready to support a team
member from another operational team. The teachers were so efficient in leading the entire
team that they instilled a vision in the minds of the team members and unified them to work
towards the achievement of their vision (Sundberg, et al., n.d.). Each member of the team was
delegated authority on the basis of the role that they were playing and they were also
empowered to take necessary decisions when required. They were made to feel that even
though they are looking after a particular operation, they were responsible for the overall
success of the cultural festival and that their knowledge or input in any other operation than
their own, would be equally valued by the team members. The team members demonstrated a
great attitude towards helping each other, which allowed them to create synergies beyond
anybody’s expectations.
Conclusion
There are a large number of factors that can make a team effective but there are some factors
without which a team cannot function at all. The factors that lead to the success of our team
were some of the important factors without which a team cannot function. The success of my
team could be judged from the fact that the management had forecasted a total walk in of
250,000 people, which was 50,000 less than what we achieved. Even though there was a
greater walk in than expected, my team was able to manage the festival in the best possible
manner and made it an experience worth remembering for all the people who visited the
festival.
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Bibliography
Brock, S.E., McAliney, P.J., Ma, C.H. and Sen, A., 2017. Toward more practical
measurement of teamwork skills. Journal of Workplace Learning, 29(2), pp.124-133.
de Toledo Piza, F. et al., 2018. Assessing team effectiveness and affective learning in a
datathon.. International journal of medical informatics, Volume 112, pp. 40-44.
O'Neill, T. & Salas, E., 2018. Creating high performance teamwork in organizations.. Human
Resource Management Review, 28(4), pp. 325-331.
Saks, A. & Gruman, J., 2017. Human resource management and employee engagement. A
Research Agenda for Human Resource Management.
Sundberg, M., Paul, R. & Verghese, G., n.d. Teamwork and Collaboration. Patient Safety and
Quality in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology and Stem Cell Transplantation , pp. 51-65.
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