End of Semester Reflection

Heather Gennette

LDRS807: Leadership in Teams and Collaborative Environments

Reflection on Project Experience

Leadership in Teams and Collaborative Environments was my first class in my pursuit of

a MPS. To say I was nervous would be an understatement. Thankfully I had a great team to get

me through. Both of my team members had taken classes before this one and helped calm my

fears about starting this journey. We often spoke about our team assignments via text and used

Zoom three times for our face-to-face meetings. When we met, they were very easy to talk to,

and it seemed that we had instant chemistry. We all agreed on our communication norms,

deadlines, and who would do what for the Team Competency Project. With such a short amount

of time, I believe we were able to establish cohesiveness and trust that allowed us to complete

our assignments on time. We had a great balance of strengths, and I would say we distributed the

work reasonably well. When it came to the final chapter, we each took on a section, and we all

contributed to the introduction and conclusion.

Our first week as a team was a little rough because we had a change in teammates.

Before Yvonne joined us, Luka and I exchanged phone numbers and had a brief phone

conversation about planning our face-to-face virtual meeting. He helped me tremendously when

I had questions about the first analytic memo and also provided me with an example he had

written from another class. Because Yvonne joined us a little later, Luka and I talked about and

put together the initial report. I think Luka is knowledgeable and well-spoken. His contributions

to each assignment were thought out and eloquently done. He was a great asset to the team, and

if given a chance, I would absolutely work with him again.

 As I said, Yvonne joined the team a little bit later in the first week of the class. She was

an excellent addition and did her fair share of work. Yvonne was not able to meet with us at our

first Zoom meeting, but she was such a great sport and agreed with everything Luka, and I had

written. She stepped up when it came time to do the chapter prospectus and set up an outline for

all of us to work on. Yvonne did have trouble getting her part of the assignment done by the

preset deadlines. Regardless of this, we worked quickly and were able to complete each task

before it was due.

I had a lot of questions and was very green when we started this course. I tried my best

to be the one to maintain communication because I knew that was one of my strengths. I wasn’t

really confident in my writing skills with the assignments, but I knew I was good at research and

formatting. I liked to keep the team on task and make sure we were meeting deadlines.

I thoroughly enjoyed working with Yvonne and Luka. I made a comment on one of my

responses during the week team resilience was a topic about this class, possibly being better to

take during the Fall or Spring. Jennifer Hopkins made a great comment that additional time may

provide more opportunity for conflict. That made me wonder if more time would have hindered

our cohesion and created more conflict. I still believe that more time would have alleviated

some of the stress of the short timeline of the assignments, but I think Jennifer brought up a great

point. Being able to share the workload of the project with my team made this very challenging

project a little easier to bear over this short semester.

Reflection on Peer Evaluation

Evaluations are not my favorite because, as I said in my self-evaluation, I’m not into

conflict. I really try my hardest not to be offended or to offend but I actually liked this part of

the project. I really appreciate all of the feedback from fellow team members. I value their
opinion and hope to use this information to better myself as a team member in future teams. The

pattern I see in my feedback from my team members is that I like to get things done, but I put too

much on myself and should allow others to help me.

I would agree with both of my team members thoughts on my strengths. I do always try to

stay positive. When we were communicating, I would find ways to lighten the mood and say

something funny and upbeat. I am also a stickler for deadlines and persistent in my work. One

of the comments said I was always “checking in and following up,” which I think correlates with

communication. I had said in my self-evaluation that I believe my greatest strength is

communication, and I was glad to see that someone mentioned that in the feedback.

Both of my team members suggested that I do too much and maybe should allow others to

step up or delegate. I absolutely agree with this feedback. I have often thought to myself while

doing tasks, “I might as well do it myself if I want it done right.” During the chapter project, I

took it on myself to do my section, the practical implications, and formatting of the paper. I had

taken off some time from work and had extra time to work on this part of the class project. Luka

did a lot of the Initial Report and Yvonne did a lot of work on the Chapter Prospectus. So I

thought I would make up for that with doing more for the Final Chapter. I liked the comment that

although my willingness to do things can be a great attribute, it can possibly lead to social

loafing. I spoke to this in one of my analytic memos, and now that I think more about it, I

wonder if I could be the reason this person loafs. My deep desire to do well has allowed this

person to take advantage of my skills. This person will sit on his phone during meetings while I

raise my hand to do most of the work. Now, after all of the material provided in this class, I see

that this is my greatest downfall. I hope to do better at delegating responsibilities.

Plan for Team Leadership beyond this Semester

 I plan to use a lot of what I read in this class as I work in teams very often. I have learned so

much that I can implement to help the performance of future teams I will be a part of. The two

things I will use to challenge myself are how to effectively handle team conflict and trying

harder to give responsibilities to those on my team to prevent social loafing.

I do not like conflict and try to stay away from it as much as I possibly can. I tighten up and

lose my words when there is any sort of negativity that arises at work. I maintain my positive

attitude and optimism and hope it brushes off on those that maybe the “Negative Nancy’s” of any

group I am a part of. I know that conflict is common in team efforts because of all of the

different perspectives and personalities that may not work well together. I would like to hone

my skills in conflict resolution to be a better leader in team environments. With the likelihood of

conflict in teams, I plan to use the information provided about anticipating conflict to try to

diffuse negative situations before they happen.

I would also like to work on being a better team player and a trust my team to do more work.

Trust has been a common theme in almost all of the articles we read in this class. It is something

I do not give out freely after being burned so many times. As I said before, I strive to do my

very best when it comes to large, complex team projects. I know that with this team that I will

do better than I would by myself. I volunteer to do as much as I possibly can to contribute to the

effort, but most times, I do take on too much. I have been working on letting go of some of the

responsibilities in some of my work teams. I have removed myself from groups that I know I am

being taken advantage of and let the hand of the social loafer I mentioned in my analytic memo

go. I want to continue to work on working more cohesively with my team members and not be

overbearing.
 All in all, I really enjoyed this class. Although it seemed very stressful with the time crunch of

all of the assignments and team projects, I feel like I have gotten a lot out of everything that I

have learned. The theories, concepts, and skills that were discussed in each of the learning

modules are all something I can put to use in my current job. Now that I have this class under

my belt, I look forward to knowing more about the world of leadership.