Individual Essay Assignment:

Self-Reflection on Teamwork Experience

Compensation and Managing Employee Performance

Martha Aprina Tobing

19017020

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 Martha Aprina Tobing – 19017020
Individual Essay Assignment

Preliminary Notes
The materials and information provided in this report are solely based on the personal experience
of the author. Personal information such as name are kept anonymous to protect the status of the
personnel being mentioned, and solely for the purpose of completing the individual essay
assignment of Compensation Management and Employee Performance. This essay is not meant
to be used to criticize the individuals as well as other people. Information being included in this
essay is accurate and portrays the actual experience of the author based on the self-reflection
towards teamwork experience.

Best regards,
Author

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 Martha Aprina Tobing – 19017020
Individual Essay Assignment

As far as I can remember, working in groups has always been a part of my life. Being a final-year
university student, I experienced more teamwork experiences especially through group
assignments. I believe one important aspect in the university studies is the opportunity to work in
teams, for it developed me into a better person and I learned a lot from it. Here, I would like to
write one of my experiences during my university study in School of Business and Management
ITB. Before engaging into the story of my most memorable experiences working in team, it is
important to know the definition of teamwork. To my surprise, groups and team is not the same.
When group is two or more people having something in common, team is group of people working
towards a certain goal. In other words, teamwork is the process of working collaboratively with a
group of people in order to achieve a common goal. Practicing teamwork in educational levels will
benefits student for it can prepare the students of the teamwork that will be faced in work
organization that will be tough and bear bigger responsibilities.

The teamwork that I had experienced started last year for the project of Integrated Business
Experience course. The project was about the simulation of running a small business. Knowing
the project would last for 2 semesters, it took me some time to find a group. There are a lot of
things I considered, I need to be comfortable with the members so we can perform well that I also
can end up getting a good grade. I wasn’t the type of person who avoid getting to know strangers
or work with new people, but I felt the need of having one or two close friends. I wasn’t the type
of person who can easily communicate my ideas to new people because I do not want people to
thing of me as “Mr. Know-it-All”, I really hoped to have some of my close friends as the part of
the team. As one of theory of motivation, there are three needs – achievement, power and affiliation
that motivate a person in doing things (McClelland, 1988), I can say that I have both the need of
achievement and affiliation based on my motivation on how I choose the project team. Eventually,
I ended up in a team with 6 of my close friends. At first, I thought that it was super great, and
everything will be alright. I had never guessed that in the middle of the teamwork, one conflict or
more would occur.

After forming the team, although the team seems proceeding well, conflicts arose one after another.
Our first big task was creating a business plan, it was including the market research, forecast. We
could easily do a couple parts of the business plan because the tasks were not complicated and we
had the same thoughts regarding business strategy, organizational structure, etc. The first thing

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Individual Essay Assignment

that caused trouble in our team was during the Product Research and Development period. And
hereby, the storming stages that I thought would never occur, happened. Being a functional
organizational structure, I was chosen as the COO of the company and I thought that my opinion
held a stronger effect than the others in deciding whether we were capable on producing the
product, but sadly it was not. Initially, we plan on selling 3 product items, one them being a chicken
skin crisp. Knowing that the demand for this is quite high, and my subordinates had given effort
to find vendors, create the recipes and even found backup vendors made me vote to still produce
it. But the CEO and one of the marketing staff, without the considering and discussing with the
other members decided that the effort to do 3 products was super hard, that the chicken skin crisp
was no longer on the list. This made me as the one responsible in producing, feel that they did not
trust my division. And that is the climax of the conflict. Thankfully, all the members realized the
urgency in calming the tension between us that we cleared the miscommunication by discussing
the matter. During that time, I realized that our CEO as the leader of the team lack of leader power
due to our close relationship. For me, she was not the best leader because, more than once, problem
rose because she did not connect all the division, so there was a lot disagreement that was not
solved well.

The best tools to describe what I meant is by using the situational leadership theory. According to
this theory, there are 4 types of leader based on the task and relationship behavior which are;
telling, selling, participating, and delegating (Hersey, 1984). During the teamwork, the CEO
mostly used low task – high relationship towards each of the members but because we have
different types of follower readiness level. Especially, the members’ readiness level consists of
me and 3 other members were at high readiness level (able and willing) where the rest 2 members
are at moderate readiness level, so applying one behavior was not compatible for everyone.

Being a COO and having two subordinates, I also had the opportunity to improve my leadership
skill. At first, I was having a conflict on working with my staffs for they both were not very
responsive towards tasks, but I learnt that instead of wishing they could change overnight, I should
change my way of leading them. I succeed on doing these, because they work as whenever I gave
them tasks. Referring to the situational leadership, I did the right thing of doing the selling behavior
(high task – high relationship) towards my staffs which had the moderate readiness level (unable
but willing).

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Individual Essay Assignment

Setting the way of interacting and working in team stated that we had passed the norming staged
and had a settled team dynamic. Our team dynamic was not all good, but it was suitable for us to
perform well. As a small group only consists of 7 people, we made sure that every decision made
was known and considered by all members. After the conflicts, we tried to always share our weekly
progress to avoid miscommunication. Due to our friendship, we also tend to have trust, always
supportive and help each other. We were open to and with each other. At first, we struggle to put
the boundaries of working professionally as a company and socializing as best friends, but we
managed to separate both. The teamwork really gave more values to our friendship for it shows
how we had managed on solving internal conflicts, and it only strengthen our relationship as
friends and work partners. In this team dynamics, our company manages to perform well.

During the performing stages, we had various tasks, we had different roles too, so it was ambiguous
to state my overall roles. But one of my obvious roles can be seen when the team was writing the
group report. Based on Belbin team roles model, my roles during that task was the Completer
Finisher for I was doing the editing, finishing and formatting to the design. I was chosen to do the
task given I was good in checking grammar, plots and missing information, I was also good in
formatting the numbering and paragraphing, although I was not and expert in editing the report to
the designed layout, I had to learn to do it for I was the completer of the tasks. The disadvantages
of this role are being the last one to start working, I needed to wait for all the members to complete
their role before doing mine. Sometimes after completing my job, other members wanted to change
their work that I needed to rework and rechecked their works again. But the role fitted me well,
because I was a deadliner person anyway, so I was fine working in the rush.

Well, after doing the project and running the business, the team needed to be dismissed at the end.
although the group of our friendship remained until this day. I learned a lot about teamwork, about
other members and more about myself. The perks of being friends since the very beginning made
them already know about me and me to them. But even that way, there was something that they
hadn’t seen in me and something I hadn’t known about myself. As the Johari Window theory stated
there will always be the open area, blind area, hidden area and unknown area, so was I as a person.
I always present myself as cheerful, cooperative, communicative and fun especially to my friends.
My close friends had also known I was bad at time-management and stress management, this is
the part of the open area and being friends this area is big enough for us to able to work directly. I

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Individual Essay Assignment

also realized there was this hidden area I never really want to show that I was less-assertive and
lack of self-confidence. That is why I was scared when I hold the responsibilities of COO. But
along the time, I learned to minimize this weakness that it wasn’t there anymore. I learned one
thing from my team’ feedback, I am very bad at controlling my emotion when I was under-
pressure, fortunately, it didn’t affect my performances drastically. After this experience, I learned
that I was very adaptable in the team that I could change the strategy to manage or influence others
given the lack of experiences I have on leadership. Atlas, being in a new team was interesting and
educative.

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Individual Essay Assignment

References
Belbin, R. M. (2010). Team Roles at Work. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Hersey, P. (1984). Situational Leader. New York: Warner Books.
McClelland, D. C. (1988). Human Motivation. New York: Cambridge University Press.