Week 8 – Team work.

Working as a team member has been a very interesting and challenging process for me. In both my personal and my work life I usually have sole responsibility for outcomes, and I found it hard to give up control of what I was doing for this assignment.

In all aspects of my work and sporting life I function as a leader.  I was not born a natural leader and it has taken hard personal work to develop the traits and skills that can make a good leader. In other spheres I have learnt to tackle tasks in ways that work well for me and in this project it was necessary to relinquish some of my own ideas about the shape and scope of the assignment to be an effective part of a balanced team.

Belbin's roles present a comprehensive and interesting way to look at both people and their roles within the team.  I found my team members brought so many positive aspects to the group. The team was balanced and worked well without the intrusion of the negative aspects of the Belbin-defined roles which could have made the task much more fraught.

It was a team decision that I would act as team leader and editor for assignment three. I believe my leadership style falls between the Shaper and Coordinator. I am highly motivated and task focused - aspects indicative of a Shaper. The Coordinator aspect is reflected in my determination to discover where each person's strengths lie and to use those to provide maximum benefit for the team. Furthermore, I am happy to find the strengths in others which make up for my own weaker areas and have no problem with other people who are highly motivated - in fact, I want them to display strong and consistent motivation as this moves the whole team forward.

I see Michele's role in assignment three as the Implementer. She demonstrated discipline, worked well to deadlines, and took great care to produce what was needed in a timely fashion.  Michele completely avoided Belbin's Implementer pitfalls of inflexibility and resistance to change.  As an example of Michele's Implementer characteristics she, when I sent her the audio recording from Skype which wasn’t great, she took it upon herself to re-record her audio so it was up to her high standards. Michele's attention to detail and determination to produce work of the highest quality, especially during the wrap-up of the assignment, showed a clear tendency towards a Completer-Finisher role as well as the afore-mentioned Implementer role.

We were fortunate to have Katherine's input. She was the Plant who started the process of design for the power point presentation. Katherine's solid foundation here was imperative to the over-all assignment and without this developing the presentation would have been a longer and more arduous task.

Katherine, too, became a valued Completer-Finisher in the proofing of the finished product as she picked up small errors which I had missed. Her attention to detail was appreciated.

I think for assignment three, Michele, Katherine and I complemented each other very well. The presentation was a team effort and without the willingness and motivation of the team the assignment would not have come together as well as it did. I believe our small team of three people was well balanced, enabling cooperation and a sense of working together for a common goal. Although small in number, the team was a useful amalgam of the action, people and thought oriented roles espoused in the theoretical underpinnings of Belbin's team structure.

Michele and Katherine  - thank you for your time and effort.

Regards,

Cameron

Mind tools. (n.d.) Belbin's Team Roles. Retrieved from 

         http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_83.htm