Reflective Essay: Professional Development Through Teamwork

This reflective essay delves into the crucial role of reflection in professional development. The essay begins with an introduction, highlighting the importance of reflective practices, and defining essential skills like self-awareness and critical thinking. It then explores various reflection models, including Gibbs, John's, and Rolfe's frameworks, emphasizing their impact on continuous learning and professional growth. The essay further examines the teamwork component of a group project, detailing the dynamics, communication strategies, and division of tasks among team members from different disciplines. It reflects on the benefits of cooperation, dependency, and shared goals in achieving project success. The overall reflection section discusses personal and professional growth, focusing on time management, adaptability, communication, and ethical considerations within a multi-disciplinary environment. It highlights the development of leadership skills, emotional intelligence, and the importance of team characteristics for innovation and productivity, concluding with a comprehensive bibliography.

Task 2: Reflective essay
1 | P a g e

Introduction
This is a reflective journal, prepared with the objective of understanding importance of reflection
in professional development. It include brief introduction of journal, its skill and importance,
analysis on team work, learning from disciplines in teams and its impact. Finally it includes my
complete reflection on the way it helped in developing my professional identity throughout this
project.
Reflection in professional setting
As it is rightly stated there is no true growth by mere experiences, rather it depends on reflection
on experience. In 1980 authors like Schon and Boud discussed concept of reflection practices
widely (Schön, 1983). Reflection practice can be defined as process in which individuals involve
to explore their experiences to achieve new understanding (Bolton, 2010). Different skills
required for successful reflection include observation, self-awareness, critical thinking and self-
evaluation. Reflective practice in professional setting means studying own work, experience and
actions to improve future work, it helps in continuous learning (Mann, Howard, Nouwens, &
Martin, 2009).
Authors have highlighted different models for reflections, according to Gibbs reflective cycle, it
is a six step process that involve description of experience, feelings associated with it, evaluating
positive and negative about encountered experiences, analyzing sense out of it, making
conclusive statement of what else could have been done and action plan for the same.
Next model is John’s structured reflection model that involves five cues i.e. influencing factor,
could I have dealt with it better, learning, and description of experience, reflection to think and
2 | P a g e

break each experience encounter and act as a guide for analyzing a critical incident (Jasper,
2003).
Third is Rolfe’s reflective practice framework that involves experience analysis based on three
questions, what (it include problem, role, what happened and its consequences), so what (was
going in mind, could have been done) and now what (do I need to do) to evaluate contribution
and take corrective or better decisions (Lewis, 2013).
Importance of reflection
Reflection practices have strong impact on professional development and growth, it helps in
deepening learning by evaluating what is being learnt and the way further development can be
done; it facilitate in ensuring integrated,, internalized and personalized learning process. It
fosters cognitive, physical and emotional activity to reflect own personal values. It facilitates in
encouraging double loop learning among individuals by ensuring job specific skill development,
better understanding of self and skill development. (cipd.co.uk, 2018)
Reflective practices facilitates in both personal and professional development as it facilitates in
enhancing self-awareness, emotional intelligence, it also helps in developing decision making
ability and better judgment by analyzing various scenarios. As personal reflection involves open
question answer analysis, it fosters innovation and adaptability to chance, therefore enhancing
compassion towards others and self. As professionals, reflective practices helps in developing
leadership skills by enhancing self-awareness, critical thinking and communication skills that
facilitates in fostering better work relationships and better address towards organizational
development issues (Adair, 2011). One can engage in reflection either by reflecting on action
after encountering the experience or reflecting in action which is done during the experience
3 | P a g e

(Johnson & Ulseth, 2016). Different ways through which reflective practices can be done involve
free writing, drawing, journalizing etc.
Team work component
This was a group project completed by three members from different disciplines. Team work
involves management of people and working with others, it helps in identifying different
possible points of conflict and ways to manage the same. Two key components of team
functioning, it includes the task and the team, to work effectively it is crucial to review team
objectives and establish methods to achieve the same. Further, members should also find ways,
through which members provide support to each other, solve conflict and work in coherence to
achieve a common goal. Evaluating team dimensions help in understanding weather team is
working cooperation with each other or not.
To analyze team and social dimensions following factors were considered, it include regular
objectives were reviewed, there was regular discussion among team members regarding work
progress through what’s app, all the team member were helpful to each other, help in collecting
information and discuss with each other. There was continuous communication among team
members, my two team members were continuously available on call and review approach to get
job done, all the decisions were taken after proper consent of all members. In terms of social
dimensions also, our team perform very well, there was continuous support from each other, it
was a supportive team, conflict were for short period of time, after proper discussion conflicts
were resolved and we believed in teaching each other new skills and pull together as a team all
members were friendly (Garcia, 2012).
4 | P a g e

The project was well divided between three members, one team member was responsible for
writing introduction and literature review, another member was responsible for writing result
discussion and future work and I was responsible for writing research methodology that include
research findings, analysis on pilot survey, analysis on actual survey, result and discussion.
Through work division it was clear that our progress was dependent on each other work. Though
separate chapters were allocated but we work together as a team to complete whole project, there
was continuous information sharing through emails and proper discussion on what is being
written on watch chapter and its interpretation. For instance, first part of the report include report
objective, idea, it include analysis on Singapore demand for organic vegetable, people
preference, cost etc. Literature review provides information on health trends in Singapore,
analysis on different technologies that can be used for organic snack. My part was to provide
analysis on both pilot and actual survey; I presented it in comparative form for each question.
Formation of survey questions were based on chapter one and two, my team members share their
knowledge and helped in forming a questionnaire that facilitate in addressing project needs
specifically. Final chapter and future work was dependent on all other chapters’ findings.
This project development helped me in understand role of dependency and cooperation in team
work, how a common goal can be divided among members and achieved smoothly. In an
organizational team also, members from different discipline such as marketing, finance,
technology, strategy, law, project work together, all have specific departmental goals to be
achieved but at the same time, each department is dependent on progress of other department to
achieve organizational goal.
5 | P a g e

Overall reflection
This project helped me in several ways, if I start reflecting from starting, initially there was not
timeline made for project and also lack of cooperation, which made us back of schedule. Then
we as a team discussed and made specific time line for each chapter and achieved accordingly. It
helped me in developing discipline towards time and work well under stress. As in corporate
world there will be tight schedules for every task and stressful environment.
This project helped in developing my professional ability of working in a multi-disciplinary
environment, I was working with people who expertise in different management fields, it was
more of knowledge sharing, adaptability and cooperation to achieve goal. Though there were
conflict of opinion and goal achievement issues but they worked in a constructive manner after
two way communication among all members.
It also helped in understanding ethical and professional ability while working in team, there are
factors like trust, confidentiality, free consent that must be abide by in professional world to get
information and sharing the same.
This project also helped in developing my communication ability and interpersonal skills. It
requires patience and behavioral understanding to achieve goals successful and high
productivity. I learnt the way negative messages can be communicated positively without hurting
other person sentiments. Information sharing was done continuously among team members, there
were regular meet ups to update work progress, understand required changes and make project
better. Team development is a tough task; it involves number of stages to make few unknown
people work together with same set of goals.
6 | P a g e

While working with team I tried to evaluate my leadership skills and my procedure of
responding to different work scenario. I realized that I work as a leader in team, want to
coordinate among members and use positive communication as team motivator (Arbinger
Institute, 2008). I personally use respect and trust to establish team cohesion. Further, I also
realized importance of emotional intelligence in team work, unknowingly or knowingly it is very
crucial to understand people behavior and psychology to set better rules and work with free mind
to enhance productivity.
After completing this project I also realized importance of team in an organization, key elements
that influence outcome is team characteristic as different personalities work together, there is
interdependence for performance. However, a good team help in innovation, enhance
productivity and work satisfaction.
This project was full of learning and experience; it helped in learning several new elements that
leads to my personal and professional development. I understood the complexity as well as
process of team work. It gave me both theoretical and practical understanding of corporate
environment, understanding towards team impact, communication, work ethics and leadership.
7 | P a g e

Bibliography
Adair, J. (2011). Effective Communication (Revised Edition): The most important management
skill of all. Essex: Pan Macmillan.
Arbinger Institute. (2008). Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box. Washington:
ReadHowYouWant.com.
Bhatnagar, N., & Mamta. (2012). Effective Communication and Soft Skills. New Delhi: Pearson
Education India .
Bolton, G. (2010). Reflective Practice: Writing and Professional Development. . London: Sage.
cipd.co.uk. (2018). Reflective practice guide. Retrieved January 18, 2019 from cipd.co.uk:
https://www.cipd.co.uk/Images/reflective-practice-guide_tcm18-12524.pdf
Garcia, H. F. (2012). Power of Communication,The: Skills to Build Trust, Inspire Loyalty, and
Lead Effectively. Mexico: FT Press.
Jasper, M. (2003). Beginning Reflective Practice. Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes.
Johnson, B., & Ulseth, R. (2016). Development of professional competency through professional
identity formation in a PBL curriculam. 2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
(FIE) , Erie.
Lewis, A. V. (2013). Reflective practice: what is it and how do I do it? Journal of Clinical
Practice in Speech-Language Pathology, 70-74.
Mann, D. L., Howard, D. P., Nouwens, F., & Martin, F. (2009). Influence on the Development of
Students’ Professional. Proceedings of the Research in Engineering Education
Symposium (pp. 1-6). QLD : palm Cove.
Office of Student Activities, L. &. (n.d.). Leadership Development. UK Leadership
Development.
Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. . New York:
Basic Books.
8 | P a g e

9 | P a g e