Reflection: Team Experience
I like working alone on projects and meeting the goals that I set for myself as well those that are set for me. However, after the team experience that I have had in this program, I now believe that two are better than one. Working in teams is very enriching regarding the experience that one gain. As much as working as an individual teaches someone to be responsible; a team can also teach one to be responsible and answerable to his or her peers (Kanki, Helmreich and Anca, 2010). A properly planned teams ensure that each member is responsible for a certain percentage of the project being undertaken. I have had a very nice experience working in the Bradman program. The teammates have been supportive throughout the program.
One fundamental lesson that I learnt during the program is that one may think that they know everything that there is to know, yet there is so much that they do not know. To accomplish our team objectives, we held discussions and exchanged ideas on various issues concerning our project. I surely learnt a lot during these sessions than I ever learn while completing projects on my own. Different team members have different qualities and levels of understanding (Settle-Murphy, 2012). Whenever any member of the team explained a concept to the rest of us, we could understand it better, and that would challenge me to work even harder to be like my teammates. When working alone, I usually run out of ideas before I can be through with the project that I may be working on. However, during our team sessions, everybody came up with different ideas. We had more ideas than we needed. We now had to sieve through them and pick the ones we deemed stronger in expressing our position to use.
Where there are two or more people, there will always arise differences. Teams are the same. People come from different upbringings, and they have different character traits. Some people get annoyed by the smallest of issues while others can stomach almost every. The key to sustaining a successful team is, therefore, laying down the rules of engagement during the formation of the team. In this way, there will be clear conflict resolution procedures. It is also important to have team leaders (Settle-Murphy, 2012). Good teams turn everybody into a leader. It ensures that everybody has been assigned a task that they are solely responsible for ensuring that it is accomplished. Such was the case in our team.
A virtual team is a concept that is currently thriving thanks to technology. My experience during our virtual team meeting was fantastic. However, I noted that time keeping is very important in such meetings especially when the meeting involves team members from different continents with different time zones (West, 2012). A slight delay can make one lose a lot but it is also unethical to keep other people waiting while it could be at night in their location and they are just sacrificing their sleeping time to attend the meeting. It is important to consider such matters as time zone differences while setting up virtual meetings. Unlike what I thought before, I realized that virtual teams are also caring and supportive just like other teams (Settle-Murphy, 2012). Virtual teams are built on trust and having confidence in each other since the success of the team lies on the cooperation of someone you may never have met before physically.
References
Kanki, B., Helmreich, R. and Anca, J. (2010). Crew resource management. Amsterdam: Academic Press/Elsevier.
Settle-Murphy, N. (2012). Leading effective virtual teams. Boca Raton: Auerbach Publications.
West, M. (2012). Effective teamwork. Chichester, West Sussex; Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons.
