Individual Reflection

Individual Blog Reflection

- ZHANG Lei (52752778)

1. Team Practices

1.1 Team Communication

In our team, we generally communicated with each other through QQ once or twice a week. The most talked about topic was about our new established virtual company. For example, we negotiated about which industry we would like move into and we also discussed about the structure of our group report. Even though we generated many conflicting opinions in the process of communication, we applied plenty of skills about win-win negotiations, virtual organizing, knowledge management, creativity and other communication skills dealing with conflicts quite successful, and my teammates proudly described our negotiations as win-win. For example, when we negotiated with others, we tended to use some strategies of win-win negotiations that had an effective and significant influence in the team negotiation. 

The first strategy we applied was perspective-taking strategy. This strategy means negotiators should convert their positions to reduce the possible antagonistic effect. All of our teammates knew that they should not think only about themselves, and ignored other members’ benefit and opinions. So after a teammate expressed her ideas, the person always gave other teammates opportunities to share their ideas and then she would like to consider about their opinions based on their perspectives.

The second strategy our teammates used frequently was asking questions about interests and priorities. Because we thought that knowing other members’ underlying needs and then judging the relative important aspect of problems was very important for a team. Meanwhile, we thought negotiators who asked the other teammates’ preferences were much more likely to achieve integrative agreement than persons who didn’t ask the other team members’ priorities.

The last most important strategy we applied was that we provided information about our own interests and priorities. Because we thought if negotiators didn’t tell their interests to other teammates, their negotiation would not be effective and successful. However, the important question was not whether to reveal information but what information to reveal. It was very important for us to add issues and create new issues in order to transform a fixed-pie negotiation into an integrative negotiation with win-win potential.

1.2 Team Coordination

In order to achieve a successful coordination within our team, we used some skills about knowledge management to deal with. Knowledge management consists of a range of practices and strategies used in an organization to identify, represent, create, distribute, and enable adoption of experiences and insights. Such experiences and insights comprise knowledge, either embodied in individuals or embedded in organizations as practices or processes. In other words, knowledge management is a process that enables people to develop a set of practices to create, capture, share and use knowledge to advance organizational goals. In our team, we focused on people who created and used knowledge, which included operational knowledge and strategic knowledge, such as unarticulated expertise or experience (Figure 1).

In addition, we tried to make every task fit the others in the best method. Our team leader had a macro perspective of all the work and a long-term vision of the tasks that had to be performed. She generally assigned tasks based on every teammate’s advantages and strengths. For example, in one part we needed to collect plenty of evidences and theories to support our ideas, she would assign this part to the person who knew theories very well and had some effective ways to collect useful information. So her attitude was quite visionary and this attitude help her to provide quick responses and decisions to changes and unforeseen aspects that might appear in the future, such as adding some extra parts in our group blog to make it more logical than before.

However, we were not work well in the term of finding correct tools. I think correct tools will make team coordination much easy, particular for the jobs that need a team to identify what tasks are to be completed, who should be assigned to them and when the tasks have to be completed. But we only used QQ, especially the texting feature, to communicate with each other. Sometime we wasted a lot of time to negotiate a specific problem that might be resolved easily through face-to-face communication. For example, when we exchanged ideas about which industry or products both of our two teams wanted to move in, our team and the evening team nearly implemented the next plan in two different ways, because of misunderstanding the word “accessory” (our team interpreted as clothing accessories, but the evening team interpreted as dinnerware accessories.).

Therefore, if we adopted voice chat and video chat, such as Skype, to optimize our communication channels, our coordination would be more effective than before. However, generally speaking, I think our team coordination is high-efficiency and meet different teammates’ interest, strengths and needs.

1.3 Team Decision

In our team, I think all of my teammates consider about the different influence of negotiation styles and we hope our team decision achieve a win-win results (Table 1) and benefits for all of us. Meanwhile, I believe teamwork can provide important opportunities for individuals and the group they work for. When teammates make decisions, a good teamwork atmosphere can make teammates closely together.

Table 1 Negotiation Styles

When we made a team decision, every members of our team hoped the decision would be the best interest of the two parties, our team and the evening team. Paramount to the decision was to improve both sides’ positions and to preserve the relationship of the two parties. We usually concerned about substances and goals in order to get what our team wanted (I win), but at the same time we also concerned about the relationship between my team and the evening team in order to let them get what they wanted (They win). Meanwhile, they did the same thing as what we did.

For example, when we discussed about how to operate our virtual company, they had a strong enthusiasm to express their opinions that benefitted their team. However, after their statements they would like to hear our ideas about the virtual company’s operation that benefitted our team. Unfortunately, some parts of our ideas damaged the benefit of the other team. For example, they treated our catering company as a servant company for their company. According their ideas, our catering company needed to design sweetmeats based on their clothing design. However, this idea would influence our company’s development. When facing this problem, my team communicated with them and expressed our concerns directly. Then after serious negotiation, my team and the evening team made some changes in our own plan, and both of us decided to establish a theme shopping store where consumers could have a chance to buy their clothes and taste our food which would be benefit for our two parties.

Therefore, our team decision is no longer attributable to any single individual or team. We make a win-win team decision that meets the best benefit of our two teams.

1.4 Team Conflicts

According to the Virtual Teams Survey Report in 2012 (Table 2), virtual teams were very different from co-located teams in managing conflicts (70%). Even though conflict is an inevitable characteristic of all teams, the lack of enough visual and auditory communication seriously inhibits a team’s ability to manage conflict in virtual team.

Table 2 Differences Between Virtual and Face-to-Face Teams

The first conflict I want to introduce was that some of my teammates were not happy to wait on completion of task dependencies. Because sometimes some tasks could not be started until other tasks were completed, but they usually had a lot of other works to finish and their time was limited. For example, the person who was assigned to analyze our virtual company’s business model or key resources could not start her tasks until the person who introduced the operation of our virtual company finished. In order to resolve this conflict and make our teamwork efficient, we decided to identify a deadline for the person who needed to complete the tasks that were necessary for the following tasks. In addition, we also made a serious discussion about the whole plan clearly. So if the person who was responsible for the following parts wanted to start her tasks early, she could do it and didn’t need to worry about going off track.

The second conflict was the discussion time conflict between our team and the evening team. As we know the teammates in the evening team are part-time students. They have a lot of jobs to do in daytime and their free time is generally at night after 9 o’clock. However, the members in our team are full-time students. We generally need to have class in the morning at 9 o’clock. So we can’t stay up quite long at night. Sometimes when they discussed with us, they couldn’t reply immediately because of job problems or family problems. Even though our team negotiated about the time conflict with them, both of our teams didn’t put forward a satisfied resolution. So we just ignored this conflict and sometimes the discussion time always couldn’t fit everyone’s free time.

The last conflict was that we used a lot of time to reach a decision. In our team we tried to respect everyone’s opinion and at the same time everyone would like to express her own ideas about every question. In addition, after a person expressed her ideas, we had a strong tendency to ask others’ opinions. Even though this process gave us a good opportunity to communicate with each other and understand the others’ opinions, we usually wasted a lot of time on discussing or persuading some person giving up her half-baked ideas. To be honest, we had aware this conflict existing in our team. However, in order to keep fair and maintain our good relationship we just discussed this conflict implicitly. For example, we told each other that we should briefly express our opinions and shared our ideas immediately and directly. However, the conflict didn’t resolve very well, so we just let the conflict grow.

1.5 Technology

In our virtual communication, we only used QQ, especially the texting function, to communicate with each other.

On the one hand, QQ made our communication more convenient than face-to-face communication. When we communicated with partners, we could also search the Internet to find some useful information in order to support our analysis or suggestion. In addition, QQ encouraged us to communicate with others more rational, and it gave us more time to organize our languages and enhance our presentation skills. Because when we exchanged our ideas into text, we would have extra time to organize or polish our expression. The expresser’s clear and rational expression would help other teammates exactly understand her ideas and make our teamwork effectively and efficiently.

However, on the other hand, because of the limitation of text, typing time or typing speed, one person’s ideas were very hard to be explained quite detailed. We wasted a lot of time to negotiate a specific problem that might be resolved easily through face-to-face communication that provided the person more opportunities to explain her ideas without the detention of transfer time. For example, when we discussed about how to operate our virtual company, our team wanted to explain our general ideas first and then gave detailed description. However, after we explained the general ideas, they tried to think based on their incomplete understanding and even started their tasks based on the wrong understanding. Therefore, I think this communication technology hampered our team’s work in some degree.

2. Team Processes

2.1 Team Commitments

When we first came together, some commitments made by our team members. For example, we committed everyone should express her own opinions and suggestions directly. Because we thought team commitment could increase team unity and ensure peak performance within our team.

2.1.1 My Commitments to Group

Head Coach Green Bay Packers (1959-1967) and the Washington Redskins (1969-1970) said, “Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.” Therefore I believed my commitments to our group might have a strong influence on the effectiveness and success of our team.

My commitments to our group required me to overcome the personal perspectives of my teammates. Because I thought everyone had the way he wanted to act, think and act. I shouldn’t judge others based on the most superficial grounds, but demanded that others consider my character and personality, not just my look and snippets of conversation. I should reflect on my own strengths and weaknesses, and constructively analyze my teammates’ strengths and weaknesses, because I hoped I could devote my personal energy in achieving our team’s goal.

In order to achieve my commitments to our team, I also made two specific goals: 

The first goal was that I should promote trust among our team by encouraging my teammates to examine and share their strengths and weaknesses. For example, when we discussed who completed the part of collecting information and data about how to operate a virtual company, I encouraged my teammates making an independent choice based on their own strengths and weaknesses. In addition, I also raised their spirits with encouragement and support.

The second goal was that I should respect and promote diverse or even conflicting opinions, not in a personal way, but by encouraging passionate arguments to be surfaced and heard by everyone. So when a person had some different ideas I always hoped others pay attention on the person’s ideas and tried to give her enough time to explain her views.

At last, I think I keep my commitments to our group very well. I try my best to respect everyone and her ideas, and I give everyone an opportunity to express her opinions and avoid adding my personal perspectives to a person. Moreover, I create an atmosphere that everyone can choose her favorite and skillful tasks to complete. Therefore, I believe even though some problems may exist when I carry out my commitments, such as wasting time to state everyone’s opinions, the overall outcome is good, because we keep a harmonious interpersonal relationships and efficiently complete our final plan.

2.1.2 Group Commitments to Me

Group commitments to me were that we should make our assignment right and try our best to design an ideal virtual company. When we first met each other, we reached this group commitment. Because of this group commitment, every member of our team had a strong degree of commitment to the team effort. The concrete performance could be reflected in the following actions.

For example, everyone had a high passion to participate in our team discussion. Even though sometimes they were really quite busy in their jobs or family works, they would like to notify the others in advance about her difficulties to take part in the team discussion. At the same time, the teammates who participated in the team discussion had a strong enthusiasm to negotiate with others. When they had some good ideas or confusions, they could raise their opinions directly and politely.

In general, I think our group commitment had been kept very well. All of my teammates completed their tasks conscientiously. Meanwhile, when my teammates faced some confusions or problems, they would like to communicate with other teammates and they could listen to others’ suggestions in order to make a perfect project.

2.2 My Concerns

2.2.1 My Shared Concern

According to the theory of knowledge management, my concern that I had shared with my teammates was that I thought everyone should express her ideas directly. Because I believed others would not understand one person’s opinions exactly unless the person showed and explained her opinions. 

For example, when we discussed with the teammates in the evening class, I found that some of them were a little shy to express their ideas. However, I felt they might have some confusing points or their own ideas about what we were discussing now. So I proactively asked them about their ideas. In the beginning, they were still quite shy to voice their opinions. But after I told them the importance of sharing each other’s ideas in a team, they changed their perspectives and were very glad to share their opinions with others.

Therefore, I shared my concern about knowledge management with my group, which I thought was very important in the team cooperation.

2.2.2 My Unshared Concern

My concern that I didn’t share with my teammates was about how to organize a virtual team, because I thought organizing a virtual team was a quite complex and difficult task.

According to several studies, I found that collaboration across distance was more difficult than in a physical team. Potential issues included difficulties in communication and coordination and a very limited connection to establish trust. Meanwhile, physical distance decreased closeness, which then led to a significant potential for conflicts and misunderstanding.

In addition, virtual team was really a quite new field for us and we didn’t have rich experience in organizing a virtual team. Meanwhile, the limited time was also another reason for us to organize and coordinate our virtual team, because of heavy workloads among the evening team and heavy homework among our team.

Therefore, I retained my concern about organizing a formal virtual group and just let our group was organized naturally.

2.3 Evaluation

Generally speaking, I think our virtual team is very successful. In the one hand, we built a very harmonious interpersonal relationship in our team. When we were discussing, everyone listened to others opinions seriously, and at the same time if there existed some different opinions or questions, anyone in our team would like to accept others’ comments and suggestions with humility. So we had been respectful in our team and had established a rapport with each other.

In the other hand, we completed our tasks on time and effectively. In our opinion, this assignment was a bit hard and complex for us, but in order to successfully complete it we almost organized six meetings to discuss. In every meeting, we always assigned different tasks for our team members to gather information or think about their creative ideas. No matter how hard the tasks for them, everyone would finish it on time and share their opinions with others in the next meeting. Even though sometimes the opinions were not quite mature, our attitudes were very active and serious which was a quite important guarantee of team success.

Therefore, I think our virtual team is successful and I would like to have a chance to cooperate with my teammates. 

Reference

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