According to the knowledge which I have possessed over the years is that the education system in United Kingdom was based on practical application of theories.
Surprisingly, the Professional and Academic Skills Support (PASS) module of MBA course in Staffordshire University helped me to gain the experience of applying the acquired theoretical knowledge for the accomplishment of the assigned outdoor activities in the Buxton Residential trip.Although, the module was meant for learning from those outdoor activities to develop one’s managerial skills, I have seen it as a continuous learning process that started from my under-graduate course, where I had the opportunity to come across some theories of leadership and team management. According to Knowles (1975), “We must learn from everything we do; we must exploit every experience as a learning experience…. It is a lifelong process. Keeping all these in mind, the PASS module has arranged its courses accordingly and thus gave us the opportunity to go through various outdoor tasks in Buxton Residential, with the help of which we can analyze and assess our personality to work accordingly in an organization.
Also, the indoor task of Poster Peer Assessment did the needful in understanding what team work is in an organizational background. The purpose of writing this essay is thus what we learn from this module and accordingly how can we improve on it, so that we could fit properly in our respective career jobs in the world of management.According to Schein (1980), group can be psychologically stated as a number of people who communicates with one another, mentally conscious about each other, identify each other as a cluster or group and corresponds objectively towards attainment of pre-determined goals. Within the first few days of commencement of our course, we were divided into 3 Poster Groups with the help of a psychometric test that we went through on the first day of our induction classes.
The reason was that a group can easily act on complicated tasks by generating innovative and varied type of ideas and implement quick decision, where needed (Schein, 1980).Also, this was the way to know each other better as we came from different cultural backgrounds. Grouping helps us to learn how to work in a group in an organization and thus how we can establish in our positions and develop our personality. Also, it helps us to reduce the feeling of insecurity (Schein, 1980) and thus grow our confidence.
When we started to do our poster work, unknowingly, we fell into the different stage models of group development, proposed for the first time by Tuckman (1965) that is Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing.In the initial stage of ‘forming’ (Tuckman, 1965), though we were not strangers to one another within the group, we came to know each other better by this time. We were concentrating more on understanding each other’s concept of thinking about the poster, but could not decide upon a single topic that we would like to work on. Thus, there was very little focus on completion of our task, because at that point of time, we did not have a clear view of what was needed to be done in the poster.In the second stage of ‘storming’ (Tuckman, 1965), we became psychologically aware of each other about what we actually want, and thus tried to impose our respective views over the other, which led to a small conflict between us. Fortunately, as a part of the same group, we agreed to a common topic and decided on its content at last, although in the formal stage, it was not preferred by me at all.
Thus by mutually settling on the topic, we naturally fell into the ‘norming’ stage of Tuckman’s third phase of group development (1965).In the ‘norming’ stage (Tuckman, 1965), all the differences were settled in between team and we headed towards a common goal. As time was running out, we strongly focused on completion of our task more than we did before. The methods of building the poster were worked out and we started to co-operate each other.
In the ‘performing’ stage (Tuckman, 1965), our group was all set with the necessary methods and arrangements after passing successfully through the previous three stages. Settling the conflicts and issues associated with the task aspects and the social aspects balanced the group members.Trust evolved as an impact and the members became more cooperative to effectively perform the determined task. In this way, we completed preparing our poster in time, and were ready to carry on the first success of our group performance which evoked self-confidence, in the Buxton Residential trip with the goal of acquiring the top position as a team. Town Trail is that type of task, where the ‘divide and rule’ policy (Berman, 2001) did not work properly in the initial stage, as it was a continuous process of searching the locations, and we needed to move together as per the directions given.Due to lack of proper planning initially the task was not being conducted effectively.
We decided upon to divide the team into two halves, where one half of the group searched for odd number of questions, while the other half searched for locations of even number of questions. By such planning we managed to complete the task timely which helped me to enhance the time management skills though there were certain faults in our conduct. My divided group failed to follow guidelines by not consulting the route-map and as such we lost our way.However we recovered soon and went back to hotel to find the other questions.
We were the last group to submit the answers as we utilized the time to continuously review our answers. As such at the end of the activity my team won. This experience helped me to gain an insight that we must utilize the most of the given opportunity since the rush of completing the activity could have an adverse impact. Next was the auction session, where we all in the team were confident enough to bid for the two jokers at any costs less than 75% of the amount given to us, and we succeeded in that.Naturally, we fell short of calculations and later for this, suffered a lot in the tasks, where we could not achieve 75% marks in those tasks, for which our amount got lessened very much.
We did not consider the negative impacts of playing the joker and at the end of the day when we realized that seeing our total marks, it was too late. The only good thing about the auction session was that it was a unanimous decision taken by all the team members, so no one could be blamed for this.The outdoor activities of the Buxton Residential trip was designed for the purpose of developing certain aspects of managerial ability like team working skills, communication skills with a focus on effective listening, skills of managing time efficiently, helping to explore issues of team planning and lastly, to get use to the other fellow students. Each of the tasks required activity leaders whose purpose was to co-ordinate the management of strategies and completion of activities with making an effective use of team member’s conceptions and abilities.Since there were all total ten tasks for us and we had five members in our team, we decided to give each team member an opportunity to lead in two tasks. In this way, I got the chance to lead my team in Team-Ski and Orienteering.
In my first task as a leader in Team-Ski, I understood the task well and was able to co-ordinate it properly with my fellow team members and thus, we planned efficiently. Though I was able to give enough motivation to my team members to complete the task well, however, we fell short of time for which we did not receive any marks in the task.That time I realized the importance of time in an organization and thus learnt about the consequences of not meeting the deadlines of a job given. Thus Heaney (2001) mentioned in one of his article that “if we can manage our time more effectively, we achieve more and there is a greater sense of achievement. ” Failing to achieve success in my first task as a leader, I ensured that we must complete the task of Orienteering within time and were succeeded in doing so.
Strategically, we planned well for the task by dividing my team again into two groups containing two members and three members respectively.I strictly mentioned to the other group that whatever be the situation, we would start returning to the spot before five minutes. We followed that as well, and thus achieved score of 75 out of 80 for effective time management, as we were short of only one flag. In addition, effective communication between all of us stood in good stead of efficient team bonding, which helped us to achieve 100% in the team score.
As Nurmi (1996) said, “There is no law of nature to determine the effectiveness of teamwork.It is up to the team leadership to make the team perform by getting the resources of the team out in the open, build them up for a synergistic outcome and even to reinforce the team resources by way of team learning. ” We demonstrated good team bonding also in the tasks of Nuclear Fluid, Mountain Rescue and Stepping Stones and as such we scored 100%, moderate and average in those tasks respectively. In Nuclear Fluid, our leader was able to motivate enough all the team members in the process of guiding us well towards the goal.Though we planned tactfully to put taller persons in the front and short heighted persons in the back in the task of Mountain Rescue, we dropped some amount of water in our way for which we lost some marks. In Stepping Stones, four of our team members except the leader were able to cross the river four minutes before the allocated time.
However, we decided to bring our leader also to achieve higher score, and in the process, the time ended, resulting to lose one extra member for which our score got reduced more.Though our tutor pointed out good team bonding between us, he also pointed out lack of consideration of the time factor. Fault in the choice of strategy resulted upon heavily in the tasks of The Walker, The Gutter and Blindfold Square. We took a lot of time in practicing the first two above mentioned tasks, for which we fell short of time again and scored zero in The Walker, though we managed to score some points in The Gutter. In both the case, the leader failed to communicate properly the task with the other team members and thus there was lack of understanding among us about the planning strategy of those tasks.
According to Jackson and Parry (2008), shared leadership such as team leadership are initiated through collective power, shared values, shared identity and distributed responsibilities that necessitates effective communication that would prevent the notions of authoritarianism and fear of potential loss within the team. While in the Blindfold Square, though I had a better plan to finish the task effectively, due to the domination of the leader in that task, I remained silent and decided to go with the group. Subordinates may fear repercussions if they challenge the leader’s view or they become too dependent on and trusting in the leader’s judgment” (John Hayes, 2010 : 160). Later, our tutor appreciated my thinking, but also pointed out that I must communicate my ideas with others when I think it’s suitable. Then I realized that blindly following a leader is also not good for an organizational job, until a follower applies his own brain in it.
As Sy (2010) suggested, according to the Implicit Followership Theory, there is always a need to regard followers as an important component within the managerial activities by the concerned leaders. There should be a critical understanding behaviour between the leader and the followers that would enable successful accomplishment of objectives. However, I must point out also that good choice of strategic planning helps us to finish our task within ten minutes for which we scored 100 in the Traffic Jam.To conclude with the essay, I must say that the residential study trip to Buxton was a useful session as it helped me to shape up the skills within me which are required for successful management and team work in future in the organizations where I will be placed.
Overall, it was an enjoyable learning experience, and I will strive to continue such learning in future. Therefore I am grateful to the Staffordshire University for giving me the opportunity to expand my managerial skills for the purpose of enhancing my leadership pursuits.
