Team Member Contribution example essay topic

She is the person of compromise who attentively listen to the other opinions and ideas. "F" is a student from Toronto. She is a very active, organized and a person of "agendas". Much of her behavior reflects the strict and formal hierarchical corporate environment. She tend to be very official in her approach but the high level of formality seems to compromise the flexibility of the team and not rarely causes frustration among the other members. However, this level of corporate formality, obviously, seems to serve well many members of the team, taking advantage of such organized system of notes, appointments, meetings or future agendas.

She is the kind of person who always tries to push her ideas forward but on the other hand she doesn't seem to pay always attention to other opinions and arguments. She behavior confronted her with other members of the team. "G" is an international student from South Korea. He is a quite but committed member of our team, ready to give his own contribution whenever he can. The pressure that he faces from the language makes him not very active member and as a result he tend to be in a position where he agrees with the decision made by the majority, without raising any question or objection.

However, his technical and especially designing skills surprised anyone who saw his work at the IT project, where he prepared all presentation slides designs and other graphs and diagrams included in it. The experience that we had so far in our team revealed that working in an highly diverse team in which members come from different profession, work environment and cultures is an challenge and hard work, however a commitment work and a careful coordination makes it the most efficient and creative one. From the outset, the team members were faced with the challenge of making a diverse team work. Everyone has to join the forces in order to complete successfully the appointed assignments and projects. It was clear for everyone that as a self managed team, where its members have different expectation, capabilities and skills; negotiating the rules of engagement and the norms of behavior would be the first step to undertake. It was agreed that each team member has to work cooperatively as part of the team, sharing at the same time the same right and privileges.

It was also agreed that all team members will try to create a atmosphere of openness where everyone will feel comfortable expressing openly different point of view. In addition, every member will try to avoid negative competitiveness, and conflict situation that may arise during this time, as well as dividing the workload fairly and related to the skills of every member. The norms and rules agreed at the start serve the team well and help everyone to get involved and play his / her part. Because half of student were international students, it was decided that the rest of the team will try to support and pay special attention to these members, as well as to try to clarify and precise all the point raised and discussed in meetings or during the projects work. However, as the team got more involved in the assigned projects and task, it was being obvious that other issues and problem were affecting the team performance. Communicating effectively has been one of the most challenging issues that our team is still facing.

The international students, due to the time constrains and high studding material volume, have been for the most part of the time under the language pressure. Despite the effort of the other member and their progress in this matter, this problem is still evident. Many of them do not express their ideas or opinions afraid of any embarrassment of not speaking the language correctly or afraid that other might use the language difficulty as a weapon to reject their proposals or ideas. On the other hand, many Canadian born student, despite their willingness to involve the other students in discussion, speak fast and use a lot of slang and colorful expression that do not make sense for members who don't understand those. As the days goes by, and the new student start to fill more confident, communication problem continue to prevent member's involvement, affecting as a result the team performance.

Another problem the team is facing with the issue of communicating effectively can be referred as the problem of expressing the ideas non in a concise and clear way. Sometimes, members who are asked to give their own opinion or argument about a subject do not try to be as concise or concrete as everyone would be able to understand their thought. It was assessed from the team members that the main cause for this problem was the lack of preparation and the knowledge on the discussed subject. As the time constrains has been evident throughout this period, such time consuming problem has increased the pressure on all team members and affected the work performance. Some other communicating effectively problems that the team is facing are related to certain rules and norms respecting like interruption of a member during his / her discussion, as well as the issue of giving the chance to everyone who want to present his argument or offer a solution, etc. On the other hand, taking advantage of the resources they are having at the school has helped the team to increase the communication with each-other.

The use of e-mails, same-time connect tool, postings in different learning space, has the communication easier and more convenient. The most important factor, however, is that the members who have been less active in the face-to-face discussion due to their communication skills, seem to be the most active ones in the virtual work, fact that has brought some balance in the part of contribution every member gives to the team work. As the team-member contribution stands at the very basis of the team work, every member in our team, from the outset, had agreed to give his / her best contribution at every single task or project assigned to us. As part of quality objectives and time constrains, he team had decided to give every member the part of project or task that is in the area of his / her skills or expertise. In this way, the job get done faster and the quality is higher. At our recent IT project, "A" and "B", who have extensive experience in the IT technology, were involved in the research and overall architecture of the project; "C" was involved in legal and privacy issues ("C"-is in the joint program MBA / LLB); "F" was involved in marketing and sales issues; "G" completed the design-presentation part; and the rest of the members prepared and completed other parts of the project, which were closely related to their skills.

The result of this was that the project was done in time, the grade was satisfactory for any one, and everyone was happy. The size of our team apparently has played a role in the member contribution as well. This issue is visible not only in the projects or assignment work but also in the social behavior of our team. Very often the team seems to be divided into mini-team, advocating often contradictory solutions or approaches.

Considering the volume of our assignment, a smaller group would have been more flexible and suitable. In that case, tasks overlapping would have been avoided and each member should have felt the sense of indispensability, and having a more visible and distinct contribution in front of the others. The contribution of every member is for our team very important. Every idea or solution counts and every supportive fact makes the argument of the projects stronger and more convincing. Often, it is a the right answer anyone has been looking for. The new approach that "B" offered in the Management Skills assignment, a subject in which he rarely gets involved, was a turning point for us.

It was realized that this was the most adequate choice for the given situation. As the pressure of deadlines increases the contribution of the members increases as well. At this time Team members tend to intensify their interaction, discussions, becoming at the same time more involved not only struggling to resolving their part of the work but helping the others in different way as well. The deadline our group had on the IT assignment, made the group to work for over ten hours a day, completing tasks that otherwise would have need days to get done. Another factor that influenced the performance of the team is the decision making process.

It was agreed from the start that we would listen to the points of view of each member before making any decision and trying whenever is possible to achieve consensus and where this would not be attainable the decision of majority will prevail. As part of this commitment, one of the things that have characterized our team during this time is the dedication to achieve consensus in any decision made, whenever possible. Up to this moment, every decision made by the team is done in consensus. In doing so, members have contributed to keep the unity and harmony within the team, stimulating at the same time a higher connection and collaboration. The leader of the team has played an important role in the decision making process as well. As the team decided not to have an appointed leader, rather an emerging leader, based on skills and expertise he might have on the project we would be dealing with.

The result of this approach is that the leader, being the central person who has the obligation and enjoys a higher influence for this project, can reveal more effectively the supporting facts, advantages and disadvantages of the specific options; as a result, helping the other members to make a more informed decision. We found, however, that the decision making process in a highly diverse team is rather difficult. Moreover, the tendency of "B" and "F" who very often try to push their ideas and solution forward, made this issue more sensible. It was concluded that in order to avoid complications of conflicts situations in the decision making all member will pay special attention to this process. One of the way to achieve this has been reflected in the persistence in respecting and enforcing the team agreed norms and rules; giving the equal right to express opinion and argument to every member; considering extra time and attention and for the member who might need it; etc. In this way, no alternative was overlooked and a fair decision was made as a result.

-- One of the suggestion that will help the team members in achieving their goals is distribution of tasks among members in a way different from their area of their skills or expertise. One of the main goals that every member has to achieve in this program is to learn new skills and familiarizing himself with different new approaches and experiences. After all, how pathetic would be if each member, after the program, will find himself with the same skills and abilities without taking advantage of all possibilities and resources provided to him. It might be obvious that such approach might ask for some trade-offs between quality of the work with skills developed; however, the sacrifices and investment would meaningful and worth doing.

Another of the suggestion that will impact the performance of our team would be to work to improve the working environment, in which members would feel comfortable speaking freely; sincere feedback whenever possible, as well as stimulating team members involvement in assigned project and other social activities alike. In doing so, the contribution of the members would be higher and a better quality of the work will be done as a result. Moreover, team members will be more connected to each other and feel more motivated in doing the joint tasks that will reward them equally. In the success that the team has achieved so far, despite the contribution, commitment and discipline demonstrated by every member, the diversity of the team, which we thought would be for us an obstacle, turned out to be an important factor that gave us a remarkable impact on the success. Having the chance to look at 360 o at every solution or choice, makes the team aware of all possibilities available, and the most suitable and meaningful answer is chosen as a result. The team has started to understand that the commitment and the sacrifices to foster such productive environment is finally paying off.

Finally, one of the changes that would make a big difference on our team performance would be by appointing a more stimulating and meaningful task or project, a rewarding one; with a real life application, which will challenge the team to push its limits. Many team member hold back to give their full contribution just because most of the tasks appointed to them seem to be formal, for educational purpose, not directly related to the real life events. The "bell-shaped" grading system also is a factor that makes the evaluation process neither encouraging nor rewarding. The initiative that GM of Canada announced few weeks ago, inviting all student teams at the York University, and some other Universities in Ontario to participate in an contest for the best presentation, promotion, and public relation of one of his new car models "Pontiac VIBE". The winning team will have the chance to win a summer internship, working with a GM specialist to put the project working in real life. It seamed that our team might need a challenging and significant project just like that.