Academic Reflective Report

Bochao Jiang

BUSM4176

s3515991
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Importance of Team Work

Reflection forms a vital part of the learning process and is increasingly gaining prominence.
It assists individuals to learn more and better about themselves and improve their skills. In
addition, reflection is an individual as well as a collective process (Lundgren et al. 2017). It
helps the team members in understanding each other by fostering new insights and preventing
misunderstandings and conflicts. When a team reflects together, they can coordinate their
efforts to attain goals. However, it is equally important to reflect individually about one’s
own role while working in a team. It helps in identifying, addressing, and correcting the
mistakes. Further, reflecting on teamwork assists in exploring the behaviours and activities
that have made them successful or ineffective (Shin, Kim & Lee 2017). Therefore, the aim of
this essay is to reflect upon my experience of working in a team and the way ethical, social,
cultural and team issues affected my individual as well as group performance. Additionally,
my learnings would be reflected upon to enhance collaboration in the future.

For the course of BUSM 4176, our class was divided into groups with five members each.
Leaders assist in increasing the efficiency to achieve goals by acting as a guiding force (Hoch
et al. 2018). Therefore, to streamline our working and make correspondence clear, we chose
to elect a leader by consensus. Afterwards, we took contact numbers from one another and
examined about the task. Cultural aspects in a team refer to the way people work together
towards a common goal and treat each other (Mohanty & Mohanty 2018). From the
beginning, we divided the project into smaller tasks and allotted these parts to each member
through mutual decisions. Further, the members shared their thoughts on the group’s topic
and the way we can best utilise everyone’s skills. However, the foremost challenge posed
after the group was formed was the way to organize the work to complete the project on
schedule. Therefore, we selected for each task, the roles, responsibilities, and the time period
by which they ought to be finished.

Effective communication leads to better team-building, collaboration, problem-solving, and

accomplishment of goals (Bonaccio et al. 2016). Thus, our group utilised social media and e-
mails to communicate efficiently and google docs for the completion of our tasks. The
protocols of communication were to maintain respectable and ethical conduct to uphold
decency towards each other irrespective of conflicts. Moreover, the leader examined our
work procedure to check the speed, efficiency, and consequently shift focus to the next aspect
as the time demanded. However, the delegation of work experienced problems initially as the
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leader was not firm with those members who failed to meet the set deadlines. Working
cooperatively necessitates a clear objective and an agreement (Chen et al. 2016). Therefore,
we changed our working style by collectively solving the challenges faced by us such as
problems faced in data-gathering. Moreover, the feedback was provided to each other for
highlighting both strengths and shortcomings to streamline our working. Thus, each member
exhibited skills in arranging data, material, and assets the team needed.

Our team was diverse in terms of gender, race, religious beliefs, and therefore, culture. To
realize the advantages of commendably managing a diversified team, both pioneers and
members must acknowledge their duty in understanding each other’s’ culture and differences
(Chang et al. 2019). Therefore, we tried to understand and appreciate each other’s
perspectives and ideas by establishing efficient communication. Moreover, diversity helped
us in gaining novel points of view, ideas, and more creativity. However, clashes occurred due
to members’ distinct ways of strategic planning and learning. Conflict can be defined as a
procedure that starts when a person or group view contrasts among oneself and another
individual (Trudel & Reio 2011). Thus, I realized that differences are unavoidable when
individuals work together as each one of us had different working styles, for instance, some
members intended to finish the task at once while others had diverse priorities. However, we
overcame these social issues by understanding the reasons behind other’s actions and giving
them the opportunity to justify and improve.

Equity of contribution policy helped us to maintain standards of work and prevent taking our
tasks irresponsibly. It is essential to oversee no member in a group is burdened with the extra
workload while others relied on them to do their share (Lacerenza et al. 2018). We tried to
achieve this, however, I noticed the work proved to be tedious occasionally as we could not
move onto the next stage of the task until everybody consented to proceed onward. Similarly,
there were individuals who consumed a greater share of the meetings by conversing time and
again. As a consequence of which, they were not allowing others to participate. On the other
hand, some members experienced issues to participate in the discussion. Therefore, we
allocated equal time to each one of us during discussions so that everybody receives the
opportunity to put forth their queries, ideas, and thoughts. Thus, equity of contribution policy
and our group effort to preserve and maintain it ensured equitable efforts and contribution.

I recognized that the importance of a group lies in the learnings that we gained from it.
Initially, I was sceptical about its significance, however, I learned that teamwork enhances
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our knowledge, communication, and collaboration skills. Moreover, our group’s strength was
the manner by which members from numerous backgrounds were able to supplement the
work by offering their noteworthy experience and skills. During the work, there were
challenges regarding various decisions and handling discussions. In the future, our action
plan should be to avoid delays in tasks from the beginning and scheduling proper meetings. It
is fundamental to not divert from the principal subject of conversation and when a group
realises that it is not gaining progress, the members should reflect on the key challenges
which are inhibiting them from advancement. Therefore, this essay reflected upon my recent
experience of working in a team. The way ethical, social, cultural and team issues affected
our individual and collective performance was discussed to provide directions for future
collaboration.
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Reference List

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