Teamwork

1. Team Context

In the Business in Context course this semester, I worked as a team member in a small group in order to perform a presentation in a workshop about a dilemma our chosen company could face. The team consisted of five students which is the exact same size as the number at which productivity peaked that psychologist Ivan Steiner proposed (Yang, 2006). It is a perfect number as every team member had an important task and did not feel left out in terms of responsibility. The team was made up of students from various ethnic backgrounds. Each had their own culture and they all came from countries where English was not the native language. It is known that different cultures have different ways of going about tasks, have different interaction skills, and different beliefs. It can also be noted that not all countries have a strong faith in team based work and prefer solo work as opposed to working together to achieve a common goal. It was hard for us in the beginning of the process because of lack in teamwork experience, but we got better as long as we worked together and ironed out the rules of working as a team.

In successful teams, it is important to meet the emergence of two types of roles, which are task specialist and socio-emotional (Prince, 1989; Benne & Sheats, 1984; Bales, 1980). Thus, we divided specific tasks for each member based on their specialisations. For example, people who were good at communication were responsible for presentation performance, others did the preparation, such as giving opinions, taking notes, seeking information, and preparing for answering questions after the presentation. I have limitations in English communication skills, so I was given the task of preparation.

During our teamwork period, the norms of our team were developed mainly through two common ways norms developed which were through carryover from other experiences, and through explicit statements from the members themselves (Fieldman, 1984). Those...