Reflective Journal: Project Team Dynamics and Performance Optimization

This reflective journal documents the experience of learning about project team management, relating the learning to previous work experience and a current water project on Thames. It explores factors influencing team behavior, including working conditions, organizational structure, rules, resources, evaluation systems, culture, workforce capabilities, and team structure. The journal identifies challenges such as lack of skills, improper communication, interpersonal conflicts, poor work environment, and role uncertainty. It also discusses strategies for optimizing team performance, such as fostering collaboration, providing training, improving communication, and clarifying roles. The author reflects on the importance of leadership, conflict resolution, and creating a supportive team environment to achieve project success.

Reflective Journal
Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................1
Factors Affecting Group Dynamics...........................................................................................1
Challenges..................................................................................................................................3
Optimizing Team Performance..................................................................................................5
Conclusions................................................................................................................................7
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Introduction
This journal is the reflection of the experience of learning about project team management
through the module. While participating in the group work, I could also relate my learning
with my previous experience at work as well as from the current project of Thames. I am
working as a project manager for water project that involves building of sewer treatment on
Thames. Prior to this, I had worked with Kier group on a highway construction project and on
a cross rail project. The objective of the current module is to understand factors that influence
the collective behaviour of teams on a project and identify ways to optimize the performance
of the team working on a new project. The journal addressed the questions of understanding
of the collective behaviour of people in teams through exploration of the learning from my
experiences in prior jobs while later part is addressed by applying lessons learned in the
module to specific team work situations.
Factors Affecting Group Dynamics
Working in groups can help solve many problems through coordinated actions such that full
potential of the team is utilized to achieve organizational objectives. A cohesive group is
needed to achieve higher efficiencies at work. A number of factors affect the way people
behave in a group that can affect their performance as a team. These include conditions they
work in, organizational structure, established rules and regulations, resources, system of
evaluation, organizational culture, work force capabilities, team structure, and roles.
Conditions: The working conditions are created by a number of factors and decisions that are
taken in an organization. These can include organizational structure, development strategy,
rules and regulations followed, organizational resources, recruitment system, employee
evaluation system, and organizational culture. While developing a strategy to manage teams
within an organization, some goals are identified based on which planning is done. These
goals can include reduction costs, improvement in quality, and increase in sales. Based on the
goals of the organization, strategy that an group or team must follow at work is determined.
While working on the Crossrail project, my team was working on an objective of making
deliveries on time such that the project could be completed within schedule and thus, not
incur additional costs of human resources that would otherwise occur if there were delays.
With this goal in mind, processes were established by me to ensure that the work was well-
coordinated, regularly updated and reviewed to ensure that delays were avoided (Fapohunda,
2013).
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Organizational Structure: The organizational structure defines who takes decisions at what
level, who is responsible for what implementation, who would monitor work and who would
the progress be reported to. The organization I work for has a straight hierarchical structure in
which workers report to the contractor, contractor reports to project manager, and the project
manager reports to the project owner.
Rules and regulations: Companies establish certain rules and regulations as standards for the
employees to follow when working in the organization. With clear directives on rules and
regulations to be followed, it can be expected that some behaviour of the project team
members wold be predetermined and guided by these rules. In the companies I worked for,
rules were decided on how to tackle changes, how to respond to ad hoc requests, how and
when to send progress reports on project. Every morning, the people in the team would have
a small meeting between workers in which project progress, problems and solutions would be
discussed (Gibbison, 2009).
Resources: Resources of a company include finance, raw materials used for construction or
production, equipments and human resources deployed at work. It is important for an
organization to have sufficient human resources to be able to complete projects otherwise, it
can cause overload and pressure on people which would deteriorate their performance. At one
point, when I was working on the Crossrail project, the scope of work increased and people
were working under pressure for long times. This was causing frictions and fights between
some of the team members which was causing unnecessary delays and reworks. This went on
for a few weeks and after which I decided to take on board some more workers for which I
had to increase my budget. This was difficult initially as the project sponsor would not agree
to spend more on the project but later on he agreed as I convinced him of consequences of not
hiring more people. Post hiring, people were more relaxed and the productivity improved.
Shortage of labour in a construction work can cause defects in work, delays and deterioration
and if the company is lacking other resources such as raw materials and equipment’s then it
could also cause problems in distribution of the resources that are limited (Deskell, et al.,
2017).
System of evaluation: The candidates, employees and workers are evaluated for selection,
recruitment, and appraisal using certain system that is unique to the organization they work
for. In the Crossrail project I worked for, people were selected in a team on the basis of their
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skills and experience. Ince joined, they were evaluated based on the amount of work they
could deliver every day and also given appraisals accordingly.
Organizational Culture: Organizational culture defines how people behave and follow rules
in an organization. These may not be the documented rules of procedures but are commonly
followed in the organization. When new employees join, they slowly adopt to the culture and
start behaving in certain ways. These practices are the ones that have been proven to bring
success to the organization and thus, are encouraged to follow between people working in the
company. In the Thames project, we have a culture of sharing and maintaining transparency
such that all the team members are aware of what is happening on the project and are sharing
the progress with each other. A unified report is received by me as the project manager and I
would keep the workforce updated on the progress, challenges, and achievements.
Workforce Capabilities: The behaviour of a team is also majorly influenced by the
individual capabilities of the team members. These are affected by the skills they possess and
their personal qualities. The effectiveness of a group depends on how individuals contribute
to the team work. It is not the collective sum of the work of each member but the result of
coordinated behaviour. Project members often depend on each other for things such that
project performance is affected by how they collectively work in tandem. In the Thames
project, I had a team of workers in a construction group that had individuals with specific
strengths. While most were skilled with their work, there were only few that were also good
with building and maintaining relationships and thus, were able to support in creating
coordination and maintaining cordial environment at work. Whenever there were conflicts or
issues, these people would come forward to talk to everyone in the team and would get the
problems resolved. They acted as unclaimed group leaders and supported team efforts
(Littlechild, et al., 2013).
Team Structure: a number of components define the structure of a team such as leadership,
roles and responsibilities, cultural norms, status, size of the workforce and its composition.
Leadership is defined by the format hierarchies followed in an organization. For a
construction project like Thames, formal leadership for the team is with the project manager
who monitors and guides the whole team of workers and deals with contractual issues.
Depending on the leadership style of the project manager, the leadership culture is shaped on
a project or in an organization (Yang, et al., 2011).
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Roles of Team members: Every member in a team would play a distinctive role in the
organization. Although, they may have similar skillsets and would be technically working on
the same thing, the group dynamic demand them to assume certain roles that create the work
environment. As per Belbin, there can be nine types of roles people can play in a team. These
include plant, evaluator, coordinator, investigator, implementer, finisher, team worker,
shaper, and specialist. The person playing the role of the plant is creative and contributes in
solving problems. An investigator keeps track of the resource utilization and is good at
developing contacts that can be useful in carrying out work. Coordinators are the mature and
friendly people who can identify right resources as well as delegate work accordingly. Shaper
people have the drive to overcome challenges and thus, are used to drive change in an
organization or a project. An evaluator is a good judge when a team has to make a choice
from available options to solve a problem or bring a change. Team worker works
diplomatically and is cooperative. An implementer is an action oriented person who ensures
that project activities are executed as planned. A completer would have the habit of
overlooking the output of the work and ensuring that it is made perfect before marked for
completion. A specialist role provides skills and knowledge needed for meeting specific
needs of the project. Although, there was no formal identification of these roles, I could
clearly see that these roles do play in project work and I could identify people at my work
who could be assuming specific roles like of the evaluator , coordinator and team worker
(Purohit, 2015).
Challenges
Companies need to have teams performing well to be able to succeed in any business.
However, there are many challenges and barriers that can fall in the way of performance of a
team. These challenges have to be tackled if the company needs to align the team to the
organizational goals. Thus, they are important to understand. Common barriers and
challenges that can prevent teams from delivering best performance can be lack of skills,
improper communication, interpersonal conflicts, poor work environment, and role
uncertainty.
Lack of Skills: it is important that every person on a project or a team in an organization
carries the right skill set needed to complete the action needed to achieve organisational
objectives. In the case some people lack certain skills, it can cause disturbances in
performance and can affect the team work. Inexperience can thus pose a challenge in
performance of a team. Thus, it is important the company selects people on a project based on
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the skills and experiences they have so that it can be ensured that they carry the right skill
sets. If any person is lacking in certain skills needed for smooth project development, the
person should be given training on the skills for adoption. The companies I worked for used
to do an assessment on the skills requirements of the people and uses to identify any skill
gaps. If it was found that there was a skill needed for work but was lacking in a number of
people in the team, the company used to arrange an external trainer for them to learn and
attain skills. For instance, when implementing a new project management methodology, a
project management consultant was called to give training to all the team members who
learnt about principles, processes, and practices of project management (Perminova-
Harikoski, et al., 2008).
Improper Communication: Communicating is a key component for success in all phases of
a project or endeavours within an organization. In the event of the lack of communication
between project team members, the project flow can suffer and open up challenges.
Communications happens on the project at three levels including assignment, departments,
and others outside of the project or the organization. Assignment related communication is
about what is expected out of the project which needs to be clear to all the project team
members. For this, a documented communication on deliverables to be achieved is important
to make. When communicating with different departments in an organization, people could
be following certain reporting procedures and schedules for them. It is important to
understand how different departments play a role in the supply chain which is operating so
that appropriate communication can go to them at the point needed. In Keir, we used to send
reports of development to the people from other department including procurement and sales.
Procurement department would know the raw material requirements if we were about to
exhaust them which would help us get the materials arranged for construction work by the
procurement team when we needed. The major milestones completions were also
communicated to people in sales who could start developing plans on how to communicate
the project information to the market outside. When communicating to the people outside of
the project or the organization, a formal procedure needs to be followed and the people or
stakeholder outside must be understood well when planning communication. Everyone in the
company should have a consistent way of communicating the progress or any project related
information outside of the company (Wick, 2017).
Interpersonal Conflict: An interpersonal conflicts can manifest between people because of
differences in their interests. The difference could be due to differences in their personalities,
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values, attitudes, perceptions, and cultures. Personality differences can cause real big
problems. For instance, if two people have the personality to dominate and be the star of the
team then getting both of them to compromise and get along could become very challenging.
In one of the projects I worked for, we have two people put on a single project coming from
different departments. Both were at the same levels in the hierarchy of the company and were
used to dominating their juniors in getting things done. When the two had to cooperate on the
same project, both wanted to be dominant person who took decision which caused a major
conflict between them and their started to fight. An intervention was needed and I as the
project manager stepped in to come up with a solution to resolve that conflict. I decided to
limit the interaction between them to only communicating updates on the project
(Beheshtifar & Zare, 2013).
Poor work environment: There can be several factors that can lead to creation of a poor
work environment such as lack of processes, lack of flexibility, and uncomfortable conditions
at work. These factors can affect the performance of people both at personal and group levels.
Lack of processes can creation confusions in the work and as a result into unnecessary
conflicts. A poor work environment can cause people to feel uncomfortable at work and can
build frustration in them, People in such work environmental feel demotivated which can
affect the performance of people negatively. It is essential for an organisation to create a
healthy working environment both with facilities provided and with creation of a culture that
is positive to encourage talent (Purohit, 2015).
Role uncertainty: A project is a coordinated activity which would need a number of people
to contribute with their skills to the job. However, with large number of activities involved in
organizations, it is important that everyone is clear about the roles and responsibilities they
have so that their is no overlap in the work as it can create confusions and lead to duplication
of work or conflict. With interconnected processes where all the people are working towards
a common goal, it is very challenging to arrive at a clear demarcation of the job roles of
people. However, it is one of the most important thing to do as it can cause problems on
projects if not taken care of. I my experiences, the challenge of role uncertainly mostly
happens when new people are hired in an organization who are given exposure to every area
of business and no list of activities are clearly defined for them. Over the time, they gain
experience and learn and then they are assigned the participate set of activities to follow.
However, in many cases, their roles later defined can stull clash with existing roles that can
cause conflict. Thus, companies need to have a careful evaluation of the needs of the
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organization and accordingly assign work to every person in the company ensuring no
overlap. Also, besides overlap, every activity must have a clear persona made responsible
failing which wither the activity would be skipped or would be played on by multiple people
having conflicts when deciding who should be taking care of the work (Perminova-Harikoski,
et al., 2008).
Optimizing Team Performance
The aim of the project manager always remains development of a team that is high
performing. To be able to do that, the project manager must follow appropriate leadership
style and take care of many other things like appropriate selection of team members,
motivating teams to work together and so on. The project would need to manage team in
ways that their performance can be optimized. Tuckman has suggested a process of team
development which can be applied here to understand how teams perform throughout a
project. The stages defined in the model include forming, storming, norming, and performing.
Most conflicts should get resolved and the processes must be formalized before the team
reaches the stage of performing if the project manager needs high performing team. During
forming, individuals are put into groups to work for a single purpose. They take some time to
understand each other’s roles and make adjustments in their working styles accordingly.
After formation, people realize if they have difference of opinions and working styles which
causes resistance and conflicts between them. For a project manager to be able to develop a
high performing team, it is important that all the conflicts rising at this stage are handled or
prevented from taking severe shape. By the time the group reaches the next stage of norming,
people start to understand each other and make adjustments so that problems and conflicts
can be avoided. At this stage, people evolve in their behavioural responses and develop a
capability to work together. In the last stage of performance, a cohesive team is already
developed with defined roles and processes that enable a group to perform at peak. High
performing teams have low levels of conflicts in task performance and relationships. Even if
there exist some conflicts at moderate levels, it can still prevent the teams from performing
well and thus, it is important that conflicts are minimize during the storming stage so that a
cohesive high performing team is formalized. This process of minimizing conflict and
creating a cohesive team that can perform high leads to optimization of the team
performance. There can be several ways, team performance can be optimized such as
acknowledgement, ground rules, shared vision, collaborative processes, conflict management,
and involvement (Yang, et al., 2011).
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Acknowledgement: The importance of the work and of the team members must be
acknowledge by the project management as well as the fellow team members in the team.
Individual team members can be acknowledged for their performance and skills by the
project manager as well as by others in the team. In Keir, we used to get acknowledgement
from the seniors for good work in written emails. Also, we were encouraged to appreciate
contribution of other members in the team. When congratulation project work, the teams
were appreciated instead of just the individuals but also individual contributions were spoken
about in the appreciation note.
Ground Rules: Some rules must be established for the team to follow while working
together or communicating with each other. For example, in Kier group, we used to have
some rules defined for following routine and coordinating on daily basis for the project.
These rules defined when a team worker should report project progress and when raise alarm
when facing problems or issues. They can help in minimizing conflicts in teams. Typical
ground rules that can be set in an organization include
 All team members must have respect for each other
 Team members should not engage themselves in personal attacks to others
 Everyone should participate actively to work and in meetings
 In meetings, one should hear others attentively before building upon any conclusions
Ground rules are not norms but they can be accepted as the same when the team is willing to
accept by the third stage of the team development.
Shared Vision: A unique vision should be shared between all the team members so that they
work towards a common goal and have coordination established. A powerful vision an
empower a workforce and accelerate towards high performance. A shared vision of a project
is the view that is carried by all the team members on how the outcome of the project would
look to customer and how it would be appreciated by them. In our company , this vision was
documented using a vision board and a project map which also served as a tool for
motivating teams on achieving common goals.
Conflict Management: The conflicts can arise between people during project that must be
addressed and resolved to ensure a positive agreement is reached at which does not
negatively affect their performance. It is critical for a team to have all interpersonal conflicts
resolved and only then can a shared and collaborative culture can be developed. Storming
between people in a team is never productive and if conflicts remain unresolved even after
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this stage then it would prevent the team from developing productive relationships. While
common cause of conflict in the storming stage of team development is lack of understanding
of each other, the conflict can also occur at other stages of the team formation that have to be
explored to identify causes and measures should be taken tom resolve them. Conflicts can
occur between people in a team due to interpersonal differences that should be minimized. To
this, a prediction can be done on the probabilities of facing conflicts between specific people,
if the project manager can use face negotiation theory. Employees can be asked to fill up a
questionnaire that can then be analysed to make a prediction on conflicting management
styles such as dominating and emotionally expressive. The test can also reveal other types of
personality or management style patterns that can be used positively while forming teams.
For instance, people with integrating styles, compromising style, and obliging styles can be
put in the roles accordingly (Oetzel, et al., 2003).
User involvement: The people in the team must be involved in day to day discussions and in
major decisions as they could affect them all. Involvement can give them a sense of
responsibility and recognition which would create a positive work environment in a team. In
order to create a team that delivers optimized performance, a group leader would need to
understand the process of group development and assume an attitude that is not just
concerned about output but also about people. Both task completion and team work are
important. Focus on team work can ensure that the conflicts are reducing during the storming
session. To resolve conflicts, a project manager can go deep into determining the cause of
conflict to plan for resolution (Mirza, 2017).
Collaborative Processes: Collaboration is important for leadership development and team
performance. In the business environment which is highly collaborative, the productivity is
high. Such an environment encourages team work and sharing of new and innovative ideas or
solutions. With frequent changes happening in the modern business world, collaboration has
become even more important and needs to be embedded at every stage of the team
development (Levasseur, 2011).
Conclusions
This reflective report explores the experience of working in teams through a learning module
and in the process examines the factors affecting behaviour of people in teams. It was found
that teams on a project are developed in four stages including forming, storming, norming
and performing. Most of the conflicts in the teams are faced at the storming stage and if they
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can be resolved such that cohesive structure of team is formed in the norming stage, a
performing team can be formed. There were certain factors discovered that would affect the
performance of the teams and their behaviour at work such as organizational structure,
organizational culture, workforce capabilities, evaluation, system, roles and conditions in
which people work. A number of techniques that could help optimize the team performance
in an organization were discussed including collaboration, user involvement, setting of
ground rules, shared vision, conflict management, and acknowledgement.
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