People Management Module: Reflecting on a Group Work Experience

This reflective assignment details a student's experience working in a group of five for a people management project. The student, acting as a coordinator, reflects on the challenges encountered, including ineffective communication, unclear goals, and personality clashes, while navigating the stages of team formation based on Tuckman and Jensen's model. The reflection highlights the student's initial struggles with team dynamics, the evolution of their role, and the eventual understanding of the value of diverse perspectives and effective communication. The assignment analyzes the practical application of team roles, digital platform management, and the importance of adapting leadership approaches. The student concludes with insights gained, emphasizing the significance of understanding diversity, improving communication supervision, and the overall development of leadership skills through the group work experience.

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EXPERIENCE OF WORKING IN A GROUP
The purpose of this reflection assignment is to reflect upon my experience of working in a
group of five for a project assigned in the module, people management.
In a presentation work, a group of five was formed for responding to a real-life organizational
system, in which our group was asked to identify a leader who has guided an organisation to
success and to further assess and analyse the leader.
The critical issues identified in the group activity project were lack of effective
communication, unclear goals, and misrepresentation of the views shared over a common
digital platform.
I experienced a detailed process of team functionality by following the stages of the
formation of a team. Each step indicated the connection with the theory of Tuckman and
Jensen’s team formation (Lazar et al. 2020). In the first stage, forming, I was allotted the role
of a co-ordinator by considering diverse backgrounds. I experienced lack of participation in
discussing the common goal of the group but with the understanding of the significance
regarding allotted task.
I faced a challenge in collaborating thoughts of members. The second stage indicated
maximum challenges (Peralta et al. 2018). In the second stage of storming, I started
experiencing a number of challenges due to personality clashes. The increasing
communication gap caused challenge in accomplishing common goal and included my
arguments with team members.
I experienced the challenge of too many planters. The other team roles based on the theories
were resource investigator, team worker, monitor evaluator and specialists, shaper,

implementer, and completer finisher (Lynch, Lynch and Clemens 2018). In the norming
stage, I witnessed the logic behind each idea and used these as a tool for connecting each role
in the team. I built a common digital platform for responding to gaps, which was cluttered
later on.
In the performing stage, I was completely dependent on the implementer. I was unable to
supervise the supporting roles for the implementer. After responding to each personal
challenge, I was sad to be departing with the team members, but I am thrilled to play the role
of a co-ordinator in a real-life project.
There was an alternative for understanding and empathizing with the team members and
another alternative of only allocating roles by not encouraging the integration of ideas for my
role as a co-ordinator (Bao 2019).
My assumption of personality clashes was unmatched with the given situation as, in the end,
it contributed as a tool for effective resolution. I assumed myself to be failing the role due to
digital clutter, but it acted as a creative platform for active participation.
In the future, I will handle my responsibility with a better understanding of diversity and will
change my approach of supervising team communication for a better and timely outcome.
I lacked the art of supervising by focussing on each idea rather than assuming the challenges.
A group of five may be challenging to co-ordinate due to the presence of diverse
backgrounds and unclear objectives. However, by talking to the members, and through
secondary research, my challenges can be resolved with optimum expertise utilization.
Working in a group of five was challenging but build an array of expertise in my personality
traits and skills, which can be used in future career opportunities.

References:
Bao, R., 2019. Research on the Relationship between Team Roles Theory and Team
Effectiveness.
Lazar, M., Miron-Spektor, E., Agarwal, R., Erez, M., Goldfarb, B. and Chen, G., 2020.
Entrepreneurial team formation. Academy of Management Annals, 14(1), pp.29-59.
Lynch, D.S., Lynch, M.J. and Clemens, C.M., 2018. Belbin Team Roles. The Handbook of
Communication Training: A Best Practices Framework for Assessing and Developing
Competence.
Peralta, C.F., Lourenço, P.R., Lopes, P.N., Baptista, C. and Pais, L., 2018. Team
development: Definition, measurement and relationships with team effectiveness. Human
Performance, 31(2), pp.97-124.