ORGL 550 REFLECTION 1

ORGL 550 Reflection

Katie McGann
Gonzaga University
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Personal Reflection

One of the biggest benefits of the intensive ORGL 550 experience was the opportunity to

further explore my own leadership style in the presence of others who shared the same goal.

Good leadership in many ways can be more about a strong sense of self-awareness than mastery

of any specific subject matter. Over the course of the three days with the class, I experienced

how your ability to recognize what you do and do not bring to the table can be one of the single

biggest determining factors in how you influence a group’s or team’s dynamic.

The personal social styles inventory exercise revealed what I already knew to be true

about myself: I am predominately an analytic but possess driver type tendencies. Also, not

surprising, my lowest score came in the expressive category. For the peer evaluation portion of

the exercise, I asked my spouse and a former work colleague to score me to get a varied

perspective. My highest tally from each peer evaluator was in the analytic category with mixed

results in the other areas. Since taking ORGL 605, I have been more conscious about seeking

feedback, so this was a good exercise in checking whether my perception of myself matched that

of those closest to me, both at work and at home.

The evening of night two provided a unique opportunity for feedback that helped me

push the boundaries of my analytical default mode. As an analytic, I often ask probing questions

right off the bat; however, I then tend to step back and let the group digest things from that point

forward, continuing to analyze things on my own. An example of this occurred during the Tarp

Exercise. I asked the group if we wanted to allow for someone who had not taken a formal

leadership role to step into a direct leadership position. Silence. Kim then looked to me and said

“it looks like you have an idea about how to do this.” I honestly did not, but I could have used

that as an opportunity to charge the group with finding someone else who did.
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Later that evening Kevin H., myself and Elle conversed on our shields project and

solicited feedback from one another on our leadership styles. Kevin encouraged me to lean into

the follow-up questions and challenged me to more readily step into a facilitator role when

presented with a leadership opportunity rather than always being the one trying to analyze the

situation. This was an important take-away for me, and is a concept I am actively looking to

apply in my work life leadership.

Another key moment for me came during the Marshmallow Challenge. I noticed that I

kept questioning our methods, and in doing so may have held the group back from fully

engaging in the iterative process of trying different ideas. Borrowing from The Faces of Team

Pirates (Amundson & Zeller, 2006), I was being an intellectualizer. My goal was certainly to

help find the key to building the tallest tower, but by continuing to debate the validity of ideas, I

sucked some of the life out of the creative process. This realization harkened back to my ORGL

605 improv session, where we discussed the distinction between the creative and the evaluative

processes. Rather than always trying to devise the single right plan, an analytic quality, I need to

be intentional about creating space for what Tom Wujec (2012) called prototyping or the

iterative process – trying and refining an idea. The next day with the Nuclear Reactor Exercise, I

got a chance to practice. There were several times I defaulted back to analyzing, but I more

readily caught myself and engaged with the team in fully exploring each idea.

Organizational Reflection
Prior to this course, I was not familiar with Tuckman’s model for stages of group

development (as cited in Raynolds et al., 2007). Of interest to me was learning about the

“forming” and “storming” stages because so often what gets focused on is the “performing”

stage as that is where the results are perceived to occur. As someone who is continually trying to
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be a better leader, it was impactful for me to gain a framework for how groups develop and how

I can facilitate the process so the group does not get stuck in any one stage. This was especially

timely because in my current work environment, we are in the process of bringing on many new

team members and going through several changes in key responsibilities. Tuckman would

encourage us during this critical window to take time for the staff to “get to know each other and

become familiar with program systems and expectations” (Raynolds et al., 2007, p. 73). A key

concept of Tuckman’s model is that the process is continuous – invariably dynamics change and

the group must revisit prior stages (Raynolds et al. 2007). It would be easy for my work group to

fall into the trap of relying on our orientation program to facilitate the forming stage. But, it is

important to recognize the limitations of just focusing on the orientation of the new staff

members, and to revisit the overall new group dynamic. If we skip this step, we will lay a poor

foundation for us to have a productive storming stage which is equally critical to maximizing our

team’s performance.

What made taking ORGL 550 unique was that we did not just learn about Tuckman’s

model and conceptualize ways to apply it to our work lives, we actually experienced the process.

Almost without knowing it, the group went through all five stages of group development. The

most fascinating, though admittedly uncomfortable stage, to experience was the storming stage.

A recognizable moment of being in the storming stage came during the debrief of the Hot Lava

game. The group was at a point where it was trying to sort out how to authentically involve those

with a quieter leadership style. Prior to the activity, people had voiced concerns about not being

heard. Despite a renewed commitment to create space for those individuals going into the

activity, we failed and there was obvious tension about how to create any real change.
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What I found interesting about this conflict was that it did not occur sooner; it took until

almost the end of day two for the conflict to fully rise to the surface. This is telling of how

intentional a leader must be in building a strong foundation of trust among team members in the

forming stage. The timing of the conflict illustrated Lencioni’s (2002) first dysfunction, absence

of trust. Our class had deliberately invested a significant amount of time to build a level of

intimacy among the group over the past day and a half and yet it was still difficult to work

through our storm and did not occur until we were deep into the class. Up to that moment, we

had “tension. But there (was) almost no constructive conflict” about the issue (Lencioni, 2002, p.

92.). Class members passively commented about the problem in past activities, but this was the

first time we attacked the issue directly. The trust built over the last couple days finally got us to

a point where we no longer engaged in Lencioni’s fourth dysfunction, avoidance of

accountability (2002, p. 189). This was the first time we did not hold back and called out our

peers on our lack of commitment to the objective of making everyone heard. In a workplace

setting, the level of investment our class put into the forming stage is harder to find. It is

therefore incumbent on the leader to create opportunities for building trust among team members

if Lencioni’s other four dysfunctions are to be avoided.

Conclusion

The study and experience of Tuckman’s model throughout the course provided me with a

new lens through which to see my work environment. I gained a greater understanding of my

own leadership style, and a sense of how other leadership styles can complement my own. Most

importantly, I walked away with a leadership toolbox filled not just with theory but with tangible

skills to apply in my workplace environment.

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References
Amunson, S. & Zeller, M. (2006). The faces of team pirates. Equilibrium.

Lencioni, P. (2002). The five dysfunctions of a team: A leadership fable. San Francisco, CA:
Jossey-Bass.

Raynolds, J., Lodato, A., Gordon, R., Blair-Smith, C., Welsh, J., & Gerzon, M. (2007).
Leadership the Outward Bound way. Seattle, WA: The Mountaineers Books.

Wujec, T. (2010, February). Build a tower, build a team. [Video file]. Retrieved from
https://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_build_a_tower.