Reflective Writing on Group Assignments: Leadership Skills

This assignment presents a reflective writing piece on a group assignment completed by a student. The student explores the importance of group work in developing team spirit and leadership skills. The reflection delves into the challenges and benefits of working in a group, highlighting the significance of understanding individual personalities, managing conflicts, and distributing tasks effectively. The student discusses the application of Homan's and Balance theories in group dynamics, emphasizing the role of attraction and shared activities. Furthermore, the reflection covers the role of leadership, with the student acting as a participative leader, and the importance of team norms, roles, and cohesiveness. The experience of conflict resolution and the 'one for all, all for one' attitude are also highlighted. The student references relevant literature to support their reflections on organizational behavior and team effectiveness, providing insights into the complexities and rewards of group assignments.

NAME OF THE STUDENT
NAME OF THE COLLEGE
REFLECTIVE WRITING
GROUP ASSIGNMENTS

Group assignments are not just assessments given to the student for understanding the
content of the course but also a way to learn the importance of team spirit and leadership skills. It
enhances a person’s ability to understand the motive of having one goal and several ways to it.
We, as a group were given to create a report on organisational behaviour with the team
and present it as a team assignment to the teacher. This assignment has not just made us learn
about the various skills needed in a person to complete groups tasks but also helped us in
understanding our peers in a much better way.
I was worried of the fact, that, if my teammates would end up having conflicts on the
ideas while completing the group task, but the situation turned out to be different. Small conflicts
are a part of each group assessment because of the clash in ideas of the people involved in it.
Still, the conflicts never end up ruining the task if the intensity of achieving the goal is same
among all the team members. Hence, along with the various behavioural qualities, we also learnt
about the ethical mediums of completing a group task.
A group work is a result to the individual behaviour of the members participating in the
team. Understanding the personality of the members is a very important trait to make an effective
job performance. The main aspects of understanding the personality of the team members lies in
their attitude, ability to learn from others, perception of the various activities and the people and
values that provide the basic foundation for the creation of other aspects. While working on the
assignment, the team members are required to distribute the tasks amongst themselves and
discuss various points while doing it. The correct distribution of actions in the task relies much
on the individual behaviour of each member. Not just this, to create a symphony in the ideas,
individual personality plays an important role.
While completing the group task, it was very important for us to divide the tasks amongst
each other and then decide the outcomes based on the discussions with our team to excel the
efficiency of the group and understand the need of patience and trust for conducting a the project
to make it a single lined success.
The group formation was based on 2 important theories-
Homan’s theory describes that the more activities people share, the more interactions
they do, the stronger will be their group dynamics. It worked true in the case of our group work,
as we spend a lot of time discussing about the ideas and progress on the work conducted by each
member. Not only on the work level, but we also spent time in informal meetings with the group
members to understand the personality of each individual. This activity helped us in choosing the
tasks for particular person according to their capabilities and ideas.
Balance theory describes the importance of attraction to other members of the group on
the basis of similar attitudes towards the common goal and objective creates a comprehensive
approach towards the task. It worked well with our group as the members with similar set of

ideas could interact more and came out with results as a single entity. This avoided the case of
confusion amongst the members, creating a balance of ideas and approaches in the task work.
A group might not sound well when talking about the completing of a single goal project
with the members. It is more like a team, that had individual accountability as well the mutual
accountability to other group members, focussed more on the team goal than the personal ones,
came together to discuss problems and ideas, taking decisions and solving problems of the
project. It was guided with individual roles to all the team members with a singular achievement
attitude. A team consists of a leader, who manages the tasks for the team, and hence we also had
team leader for helping us maintain discipline and motivation in the team to complete the group
task.
Leadership plays an important role in a team so as to make all the team members to
achieve a single goal. It helps in influencing people to strive willingly for the group objectives. I
was chosen as a leader based on my task oriented characteristics, which consisted of
persistence, responsibility, achievement needs and initiative. I followed the theory of
participative leadership or democratic leadership, in which, I carry the responsibility of
taking the final decisions but with an active contribution of the team members. It helped the team
members to achieve interest on the project and also developed the skills of the members.
The team performance is guided by three aspects, team norms, roles and cohesiveness.
These three aspects were fully followed by the team members while conducting the research for
the project. The team norms decided in the project were punctuality, attentiveness and
respectfulness towards the ideas of other members in the team. Even if a single person acts
negatively towards the work or any other person, it creates an impact on the effective result.
Team roles play their part in deciding the work for particular people. It can disturb because of the
team conflicts and ambiguity. Hence, it was taken care that the team does not get into any
conflict on the roles allowed to particular people.
My overall experience with the group project was exciting as I got an opportunity to act
as the leader to my group and maintain healthy relationships with the members of my team. The
situations of conflict helped me to learn how to deal with the barriers in achieving a goal along
with a team. The “one for all, all for one” attitude helped me to be more selfless and adjusting
towards the needs of other people. The assignment not just made the learning more attractive and
interesting but also made it interactive so as to learn more.

References
Esquivel, M. A., & Kleiner, B. H. (2015). The importance of conflict in work team
effectiveness. Team Performance Management: An International Journal, 2(3), 42–48.
https://doi.org/10.1108/13527599610126265
Johnson, J. E. (2012). Effectiveness and Cost-Effectiveness of Group versus Individual
Motivational Enhancement for Substance Use. International Journal of Group
Psychotherapy, 62(4), 655–660. https://doi.org/10.1521/ijgp.2012.62.4.655
Junker, N. M., & van Dick, R. (2014). Implicit theories in organizational settings: A systematic
review and research agenda of implicit leadership and followership theories. The
Leadership Quarterly, 25(6), 1154–1173. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2014.09.002
Mehta, A., & Mehta, N. (2017). Knowledge Integration and Team Effectiveness: A Team Goal
Orientation Approach. Decision Sciences, 49(3), 445–486.
https://doi.org/10.1111/deci.12280