Exploring Organisational Behavior Through a Teamwork Experience

This essay delves into the realm of organisational behavior through a student's personal experience of working in a team. The author reflects on their role as a team leader, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses, and analyzes the contributions and behaviors of their teammates, drawing upon Belbin's team roles theory to categorize their functions. The essay discusses the challenges faced by the team, such as communication gaps and conflicting work styles, and how technology was leveraged to overcome these obstacles. The author concludes by emphasizing the importance of tolerance, conflict resolution, and a collective "we" approach in effective teamwork, and expresses a desire to explore different team roles in future assignments. Desklib offers a platform for students to access similar essays and solved assignments for enhanced learning and academic support.

Organisational Behavior 0
Title: Organisational Behavior
Assignment Name:
Student Name:
Course Name and Number:
Professor:
Date:

Organisational Behavior 1
Contents
Introduction...................................................................................................................2
My Experience of Working in a Team..........................................................................2
Conclusion....................................................................................................................5
References...................................................................................................................6

Organisational Behavior 2
Introduction
Organizational behavior can be defined as the academic study of different
ways in which people act and react within a group setting. The principles of
organizational behavior are implemented in an organization to make it function
effectively. The academic study includes various different aspects of research that
have the main aim of improving job performance, increasing the level of job
satisfaction, increasing and encouraging innovation, and strengthening leadership.
Each of these various aspects has its own specific recommended actions, for
example, reorganizing groups, altering methods of performance assessment, and
altering compensation structure. The assignment highlights each team member’s
role along with his or her strengths and weaknesses. The assignment also highlights
the various challenges faced by the teammates that hindered the main goals of our
team, but with the help of technology, they were also taken care of. The study also
offers some prominent advice given by the learned scholars.
My Experience
Organizational behavior is a study dedicated towards identifying, developing,
and explaining the behavior of the people that is an individual or a group, in an
organization (O'Neill, Goffin & Gellatly, 2012). According to Kaifi, the best approach
to analyze and understand the organizational behavior is “RED analysis”, where R
stands for Recognizing, E stands for Explaining, and D stands for Developing (Kaifi,
2010). I had an excellent experience of working in a team in my last semester, where
I had to complete a team assignment in Monash and I played the role of a team
leader. This was a complex assignment and we were a team of three people. We
divided the work of the assignment according to everyone’s knowledge, interest, and
strength. However, we discussed and attained opinion on each and every aspect
from the rest of the teammates. This helped in building a transparent working
environment in the group and it also improved the quality of work (Ciocirlan, 2016).
Our main team goals for the assignment was to complete the study paper in
the given time limit, which was a month. We three wanted to score high marks on
this assignment, therefore attention to detail was crucial. Another goal of the
assignment was to accept the opinion and feedback about each other and utilize it
productively. Though we have divided the work amongst three people, yet as a team

Organisational Behavior 3
we wanted to stay updated on the different aspects of the assignment, and also it
was necessary that each member should have complete information about the entire
assignment at the time of submission.
As a team leader, it was my duty to monitor the work of other teammates,
providing them with necessary recommendations and encouraging them to improve
their work. During the complete phase of understanding and examining the different
behavior of my teammates, I recognized that as a leader my biggest strengths were
my calm demeanor, my openness to opinions and feedback, and my attitude of
encouraging my teammates constantly. On the other side, there were certain
weaknesses too that I identified, like I had the habit of persuading too much and I
also had a very lenient approach towards my teammates, which they misused more
than a couple of times and the work also got delayed due to it. However, there were
no major issues that I suffered as a team leader, but at times when the work was
delayed, I used to get highly frustrated and that affected my role as a team leader.
According to Belbin’s team roles, I possessed the role of an implementer. The role of
an implementer is to ensure that all the different activities in a team should be
conducted appropriately that is on time and according to schedule. Also, the main
focus of the implementer is to transform the ideas, discussions, and opinions into
practical activities (Nelson & Quick, 2011).
We were a team of three people and my other teammates were Aaron and
Elon. Aaron is a person who has a dynamic personality and he likes to argue a lot.
According to me, his argumentative nature is his biggest strength. He might argue on
minute aspects, but he is not at all adamant about his opinion, he always considered
the different opinions stated by Elon and me. According to the Belbin theory, in our
team, he played the role of a shaper. A shaper is an outgoing and proactive
personality, who helps the other teammates in taking decisions by pushing them
forwards and helping them to embrace challenges. But Aaron has a huge weakness
too, which many times created minute disputes between our team that is his
impatient attitude. As a team, we helped each other at different stages in completing
each other’s work. Aaron had the responsibility of conducting the research work for
the assignment. Elon and I used to help him very often, but due to his impatient
attitude, he was never satisfied with our efforts. In my opinion, Aaron played the role

Organisational Behavior 4
of a shaper and resource investigator in our group. This has been identified in the
study conducted by scholars Kuo and Thompson (Kuo & Thompson, 2014).
On the other hand, Elon is a creative person who is a flamboyant personality
and has a cool demeanor. He is the kind of a person, who thinks before he speaks.
According to Belbin’s team role, he played the role of a plant and specialist in our
team. Aaron helped us in embracing the challenges, but it was the innovative
approaches of Elon who transformed the challenges into strengths. Thus, in my
opinion, the biggest strength of Elon is his problem-solving skills through creative
ideas, and along with his cool demeanor, he is a lethal combination. But like most of
the creative people, Elon is a loner and likes formulating creative ideas alone. This
affected the regular team meetings, which were conducted daily to discuss the
progress of the assignment, but Elon missed many of them as he wanted to stay
alone to solve the different challenges of the assignment (Kroshus, Garnett, Baugh &
Calzo, 2015).
Though there were many minute issues that erupted between our team, we
always ensured that we fulfill the set goals of the assignment. Still, there were some
challenges that emerged and caused trouble in fulfilling the goals of the assignment.
We all decided that each member of the team should stay updated with the different
aspects of the assignment (Benoliel & Schechter, 2018). It was my duty as a team
leader to ensure that daily meetings should be conducted to inform the everyday
progress of the assignment to the other teammates. But due to huge research part,
Aaron was over-occupied with work and Elon skipped a few meetings due to his
loner attitude. Thus, we were unable to fulfill this goal smoothly. After this challenge
was identified, as a team leader I decided that we would inform about the daily
progress through voice notes. Thus, we utilized the technology and created a group
on WhatsApp in which each member posted the information about daily
developments, and this helped in overcoming the challenge (Kaifi & Noori, 2010).
Apart from this challenge of staying updated, all the goals were fulfilled easily
and smoothly. Our team was able to meet the different team goals successfully and
this had a huge impact on our team outcomes. Each member attained huge
knowledge of the different aspects that would help us in our higher education
(Hekman et al., 2010). The team was able to work in a more organized manner and

Organisational Behavior 5
due to a set time limit, our efficiency towards work also increased enormously.
According to Colquitt, Lepine, & Wesson (2011), the members of the team should try
building harmony in the group by striving towards a general agreement on different
issues and challenges without seeking, offering or seriously considering the different
perceptions and viewpoints. It is important to treat an issue or challenge with a more
casual approach (Colquitt, LePine & Wesson, 2011).
About working in a team, I learned that to make a team function effectively, it
is crucial that each person should increase their tolerance level to other teammate’s
attitude and also the most important aspect is to solve conflicts and avoid creating
them, as it will massively impact the teamwork (Hirsh, Lu & Galinsky, 2018).
According to Maxwell, the aspect of connection with individuals helps in
understanding them in a better way and also this aspect of connection helps in
increasing the level of influence on those individuals, in a massive way (Maxwell,
2010).
Conclusion
For my next assignment that also involves teamwork, I would like to play the
role of a shaper, as I want to experience the contribution made by the shaper to an
assignment. In addition, I would like to work with new teammates, as it will increase
my understanding of organizational behavior. For my future assignment, I would also
keenly observe the approaches of the team leader, try adapting some of their
strengths, and definitely compare them with my approaches as a team leader. At
last, I would like to conclude that working in a team does not mean that the work is
divided, but according to me, the work further increases, as we have to work
according to the moods of different teammates that requires immense patience and
tolerance. In the end, the one main thing that this assignment has taught me is that
there is no “I” in a team, each team member should work with the approach of “We”.

Organisational Behavior 6
References
Benoliel, P., & Schechter, C. (2018). Teamwork doubting and doubting
teamwork. Improving Schools, 21(3), 225-239.
Ciocirlan, C. (2016). Environmental Workplace Behaviors. Organization &
Environment, 30(1), 51-70.
Colquitt, J., LePine, J., & Wesson, M. (2011). Organizational Behavior (2nd ed.).
New York: McGraw-Hill.
Hekman, D., Aquino, K., Owens, B., Mitchell, T., Schilpzand, P., & Leavitt, K. (2010).
An Examination of Whether and How Racial and Gender Biases Influence
Customer Satisfaction. Academy Of Management Journal, 53(2), 238-264.
Hirsh, J., Lu, J., & Galinsky, A. (2018). Moral Utility Theory: Understanding the
motivation to behave (un)ethically. Research in Organizational Behavior, 38(1),
43-59.
Kaifi, B. (2010). Understanding organizational behavior. Presentation, Carrington
College California on July 6, 2010 from 9:15AM to 10:00AM and also 11:30AM-
12:15PM.
Kaifi, B., & Noori, S. (2010). Organizational Management: A Study on Middle
Managers, Gender, and Emotional Intelligence Levels. SSRN Electronic
Journal, 1(3), 13-23.
Kroshus, E., Garnett, B., Baugh, C., & Calzo, J. (2015). Engaging Teammates in the
Promotion of Concussion Help Seeking. Health Education & Behavior, 43(4),
442-451.
Kuo, E., & Thompson, L. (2014). The influence of disposition and social ties on trust
in new virtual teammates. Computers in Human Behavior, 37(1), 41-48.
Maxwell, J. (2010). Everyone communicates, few connect (1st ed.). [Concordville,
Pa.]: Soundview Executive Book Summaries.

Organisational Behavior 7
Nelson, D., & Quick, J. (2011). Organizational behavior (7th ed.). Mason: Cengage
Learning.
O'Neill, T., Goffin, R., & Gellatly, I. (2012). The Knowledge, Skill, and Ability
Requirements for Teamwork: Revisiting the Teamwork-KSA Test's
validity. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 20(1), 36-52.