INDIVIDUAL QUESTIONS FOR

REFLECTION
1. What did you learn about your behavior and your team as a group? What

surprised you? What behaviors were expected? (Include relevant terms and

concepts from the course readings).

a. Once the groups were announced along with the chance for an easy 10

points extra credit, I quickly took it upon myself to take the lead and make

the first post. I introduced myself and laid out what was needed for the

extra credit points. I also asked for feedback from the group to come up

with a team name. The first two people that responded created the

formation of the group status, me as the leader and 2 others as strong

leaders as well with high levels of engagement. One other group member

chimed in a couple days later suggesting harder to get into contact with

and not as engaged and the last member was even harder to get into

contact with. This really stayed true throughout the first assignment. I did

back off the communication getting overwhelmed with my other class on

top of this one plus home and work life so on of the other two highly

engaged leaders simply jumped right in and took over. He set up the

skype call and got us all together with the exception of I member, the one

who was very difficult to get a hold of. The other member who was highly

engaged volunteered to be interviewed. This has to be a little stressful to

explain your life story to strangers. The member who was a little hard to

get into contact with was engaged for the interviewed and did her part that
was assigned but nothing really above and beyond. The member who

didn’t attend the interview actually stepped it up and became very

engaged after realizing what was missed and was happy to be the editor

and assist anyone who needed help with writing as well. This member

also volunteered to be interviewed the second time around and remained

highly engaged from that time on, the behavior completely changed from

withdrawn to not. I was mostly surprised that the two other members who

were very engaged and able to jump in at any time to be the leader of the

group were both male. I thought with a group of three females and 2

males the odds were to have at least 2 dominate females and 1 to 2

dominate male/s. Of course, I come from a culture where leadership

positions are actually dominantly female. My thought did serve correctly

by the end of the project with 2 dominant females and 2 dominant males.

There was no basis in the group no forming of in and out groups and

everyone was polite and positive in their communications and with the

interviews. On the second interview we had a lot of fun with it and were

able to laugh a lot more. I really expected to have at least one member

not fully engaged. This usually holds true in any group assignment that I

have participated in. There is usually a procrastinator on the team and

usually that person is me. That is a behavior I try my best to not allow to

spill over into the group activity so the rest of the team isn’t affected by it.
2. Identify the ways in which you fulfilled your Psychological contract (Module 2)

and the Team Charter? (Include relevant terms and concepts from the course

readings).

a. For the first Team Charter developed another member took it upon himself

prior to the first interview to propose to the group. Everyone agreed to the

charter and didn’t add any feedback nor did I. Honestly, I was glad

someone else did it and I just looked at what I needed to do and agreed to

that. After the feedback I realized that was a very lazy thing to do and

when feedback was asked for and not received that is not helping out the

team. For the second time around the charter did change and I took

charge of the charter modeling a lot of what was done before and asked

for feedback from the team. There were some comments and all had

agreed to the charter. I had also made a list of questions breaking up

between the interview sections for the interviewee to study prior in order to

make the interview process go a lot smoother and ensure we get the exact

information needed. The team appreciated this addition work and found it

very helpful. At the end of the interview before everyone hung up I asked

if everyone was ok with the charter and if anyone had any questions about

it. We had some conversation and about the entire assignment process

as a team. This conversation done verbally confirmed the entire groups

approval and their own psychological contract to the team charter.

3. Identify elements of Your involvement in the team process that could be

improved upon in terms of your commitment from the Psychological Contract and
 the Team Charter. What was your personal struggle in the team

environment? (Include relevant terms and concepts from the course readings).

a. My main area that I can improve is meeting the deadlines set on the team

charter. I get excited and pumped up when we meet and promise the

team I will try and turn it in early even to make the process work easier.

What ended up happening on both assignments was the target was not

met. I did however ensure I communicated with the team why and what

my new delivery date would be. This communication to the editor in

particular is important so they know I am aware of it being late and they

know I am working on it. My main struggle on a team environment is

having to wait for everyone and rely on everyone to do their part especially

when it is for a grade. If I am going to be late on an assignment that is on

me but in a team if I’m late on an assignment it affects everyone. I am

good at the pre-planning process, dissecting the project and deciding what

steps should be included in pre-planning. I am also quick at reading

personalities and seeing talent therefore, I can delegate jobs of the

planning and pre-planning fairy well.

4. Identify the most important concepts you have learned from the Team experience

and/or this BIS/343 course? (Incorporate relevant terms and concepts from the

course readings)

5. How will you use this learning to improve both personally and professionally in

your work with groups and teams? What is one concept you can implement
immediately? (Incorporate relevant terms and concepts from the course

readings).

a. I really enjoyed learning how to identify the different type of teams and the

characteristics of each of those teams. A lot of my jobs have and working

in teams have always been manager lead teams. It wasn’t until recently

stepping into my new role and working on my recently ended large project

with the project team for the past three years I was able to experience

both self-managing and self-directing teams. It wasn’t until taking this

class that I was able to really distinguish the differences, how the teams

were formed and why the organization choose to go that direction. Using

the self-managing and especially the self-directing teams they were able

to get a large number of tasks completed in a very short amount of time. I

also thought it was important to learn about the difference between

creativity and innovation. I always thought they were one of the same for

the most part, you must have one to have the other. I don’t think it is as

easy of a concept to grasp and I believe it would be beneficial to focus

more on this concept then we were able to. The text does a great job on

explaining the concept but my thought is many students especially those

who have not really been exposed to the work force do not understand the

importance of innovation in the corporate world. In order to keep moving

forward the next best thing constantly needs to be thought about. Same

goes for quality. One of the most amazing things about quality

improvement process is you can come up with this amazing process and
spend all this time of doing research and collecting data. Then when a

plan and workflow is agreed upon its implemented and follow up data

proves the new plan or workflow is working you turn around to go back to

the drawing board to figure out how to make it even better! Lastly, I have

to say an important concept to learn about is virtual team work and how it

works. It is not something new to me as I lead a team for several years

that had half the staff teleworking and the other half on campus. Being a

leader of a team with teleworkers and making them feel just as part of the

team as those who are on campus is not an easy task because you

basically have to be in multiple places at once. You cannot be away from

your computer for long period of time but you cannot stay in your office all

day either. I found using a laptop was helpful and also always

communicating with the team where I was going to be at all points of the

day. For the virtual team you have to watch what you type and how you

type it, reading a message is up to the interpretation of the receiver. If it is

a sensitive message at all or depending on the person pick up the phone

and just call them so they can hear your voice. We also scheduled

monthly one day visits in the office where they would come and work on

campus and we would meet to go over quality and also give them a

change to give us any feedback of how they are doing and if they needed

anything. I think its important for people to learn how to interact with

virtual teams because that is the way of the future.

6. In three (3) sentences or less what is the one concept to pass on

to people working in a team environment?

a. Team cohesion and trust is a requirement for a team to be truly successful

and productive on any project they are working on. If there is no team

cohesion or trust everyone will only be interested in self-gain ignoring if

any actions will hurt the team or the project. If there is one member of a

team that tries to break up team cohesion and trust that is building that

member of the team needs coaching and if that doesn’t work almost

immediately then that member must be removed immediately.

USING THE SCALE BELOW, RATE YOUR TEAM AND YOUR PERSONAL
PERFORMANCE
1= Strongly Disagree 2= Disagree 3= Agree 4= Strongly Agree

NAME OF TEAM Overall Team MY personal

Performance performance

PREPARATION 3.75 3
Research, reading, and assignment
complete

ATTENDANCE 4 4
On-time and stayed for duration

PARTICIPATION 4 4
Contributed best academic ability

INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS 4 4
Positive and productive

BETWEEN MEETING COMMUNICATION 4 4

Initiated and responded appropriately

EFFECTIVE USE OF TECHNOLOGY 3.5 4

Used multiple forms of technology for virtual
meetings and communication
OVERALL PERFORMANCE SCORE 3.65 3.5