Summary Reflective Overview Introduction The first reflective learning journal I worte has bad achievement, since I was confused to write it with no direction and also I did not ask for help. However,the significant point is that I have learnt a lot from the first journal,not only knowing the structure of journal, but I also learn how to assess and improve my personal skills and interpersonal skills. From now on,I pay attention to the second reflective journal from week 4 to week7. I think I will obtain a lot of useful knowledge after following the pedagogical approach.
The Flashback of learning during the course Week 4 Assess To assess where the level of competency in problem solving ,creativity and managing conflict lay I drafted a questionnaire which comprised of, filling in the scores of the skill assessment from the chapter 3and 7 of Developing Management Skills ( David A. Whetten & Kim S. Cameron 2011). This data was compiled in the textbook for easy reference. Rather than making all of my conclusions based on empirical data I also used my observations from performance.
Having reviewed the data from the textbook of my questionnaire and realising I am lack of competency in problem solving and managing conflict,but have good creativity. Learn When I studied in the fourth week, I found the lecture always discussed the cases which we should read before, we had to solve problems from the cases and reflected on our experiences. It looked the students work in collaborative groups to solve open-ended problems. The role of the lecture was extremely like a facilitator. We have to collaborate and take responsibility for the group.
We have to organize the learning process by ourselves and create a solution together. According to managing creativity and conflict in projects, I learnt new to me there were two types of problem solving-analytical and creative problem solving and four steps of problem solving- define the problem, generate alternative solutions, evaluate and select an alternative, implement and follow up on the solution( David A. Whetten & Kim S. Cameron 2011). I think it is benefits to assist me in solving problems reasoningly and effectively, rather than facing are complicated, multifaceted and ambiguous.
Moving to the theory of conceptual blocks inhibit creative problem solving, I am confused that complacency includes noninquisitiveness. I realize that I do not ask questions while solving problems since I lose confidence to look for answers without complacency. Moving to interpersonal conflict, the one of major reasons is creative problem solving. During the class, the lecture supported conflict, however, I did not totally agree this point. For example, if group members face conflict and cannot manage well, the results will break the relationships, leading to negative influence on their performance.
On the other hand, I also learnt several sources of conflict, such as personal differences, informational deficiencies, role incompatibility and environmental stress, which I have experienced or have seen in the society. Sometimes, I chose to avoid the conflict. Actually, it was good and bad behaviors regarded to different kinds of people when I managed the conflict. I seldom picked other ways, such as forcing, compromising, accommodating and collaborating. Analyse I noticed that integrating and accommodating were two main strategies for managing interpersonal conflict employed by our team members.
While this looked like as a kind of strength than some teams, whereas it was a weakness in our case. Rather than dealing with our problems and differences out in the open, we avoided open conflict and defused situations as they arose. When defining a problem,my insight seemed too narrow and seldom catched the major step. I noticed Irish students were confident and creative to solve problems when we discussed about assignments. They avoided the conceptual blocks of creative problem solving to achieve better performance. I admired their competencies in problem solving. But they seemed to be confident evolving into forcing me.
I thought my own character tended to avoid conflict, so I might keep quiet when my idea was not accepted. And other two Asian students in my team also tended to integrate and accommodate. This led to delaying the storming stage of our team’s development and thus had a shortage on our team’s performance. Practice We communicated with Irish students about the situation, they also noticed that we were lack of managing personal conflict in our team. We decided to open thoughts sharing with each other whether wrong or right when we discuss the group assignment facing problems.
Then each member needed to provide evidence so that others totally accepted. The aim of the strategy was implemented to improve each person’s competency in problem solving and increase positive conflict. The effect of the approach would achieve in the next group meeting. Apply Indeed,I prepare to become a more effective problem solver, both analytical and creative, which is a good direction that promoting relationship and communication among team members. I provide effective strategies immediately when the team faces problems. Moving to manage personal conflict,I think I cannot be passive when communicating with team members.
Although my idea may not the best or most useful,I should fulfil confidence and raise my thoughts, that is also the reason why I further study to improve my profession. Week5 Assess To assess where the level of competency in motivating others,empowering and delegating lay I drafted a questionnaire which comprised of, filling in the scores of the skill assessment from the chapter 6and 8 of Developing Management Skills( David A. Whetten & Kim S. Cameron 2011). This data was compiled in the textbook for easy reference. Rather than making all of my conclusions based on empirical data I also used my observations from performance.
Having reviewed the data from the textbook of my questionnaire and realising I am lack of diagnosing poor performance and enhancing motivation,as well as empowerment and delegation. Learn Turning to the theory of motivation, I found that good performance is linked with positive motivation and vice versa. The purpose of this week I noticed to learn diagnosing poor performance. After learning, I realized that ability was also needed to consider with motivation when diagnosing work performance problems. A person’s lack of ability might inhibit good performance ( David A. Whetten & Kim S.
Cameron 2011). Therefore, I noticed that the former role was enhancing individual’s abilities before fostering a motivating work environment among achieving better performance. I could comprehend the definition of empowerment, but I wondered if the empowerment was a kind of motivation. Because providing freedom for people to do what they want to do rather than the power, I thought it was a kind of reward belonging to motivation. Researchers claimed that the lack of courage to delegate properly, and of knowledge of how to do it, is one of the most general causes of failures in organizations ( David A.
Whetten & Kim S. Cameron 2011). I noticed that it was significant process that when people empowered to delegation, effecting the development of group performance. Analyse There was a negative effect on our team performance due to differences in ability and language skill. When there was a division of work, some team members could proceed with their own tasks, but some require to give direction. The problem was not that people did not ask for it when previewing the requirement of assignment, it was only at later stages of assignments that they realised assistance was required.
This led to some parts of work needed to be redone within the shortage of time. I was always one of group members and needed to assistance while doing the assignment. Indeed I could comprehend the guideline of assignment, so I did my part of assignment following my thoughts. However, some group members denied my contributions and needed to follow their directions, but I actually did not understand their meaning whether I seemed to be lack of English language or ability. I wanted to contribute my work on our group, but the boundary of some opinions might be too narrow.
Practice To better develop performance among our group, we decided along with each person to discuss the guideline of assignment before dividing each part of group work. Due to language problems, we did not speak to each other instead of writing key points down, avoiding misunderstanding and wasting time. On the other hand, we chose one of group members who spoke with less accent and others could listen clearly, so the one seemed to be a delegator, assisting other members to exchange opinions when each member could not understand meaning.
The effect of the approach would achieve in the next group meeting. Apply Regarding to improve our group performance, I have to enhance my individual’s ability whether language skills or learning ability, before the team leader motivate members. Otherwise, the lower ability can not implement motivation effectively. In addition, I need to expand the scope of communication and contacted with different kinds of foreigners, which is an efficient way to improve my language level and is familiar to their accents.
The learning ability is required to foster in the existing experiences, I may ask some hard-working classmates to share learning skills. Week6 Assess After I learnt the subject of developing management skills and went on writing reflective learning journal for 5 weeks, we made a sense of weakness then adopting the way of creativity problem solving, it seemed to have great progress. On the other hand, I fostered own ability in problem solving, and I could come up an idea to share my group members when confronted with unslovable problems.
We had different opinion for one topic then we implemented positive conflict, rather than keeping avoiding, compromising and accommodating. From my observation, each member had improved their personal ability when we discussed the assignment, like me, I did not have more extra assistance to understand the direction of my part of work. Learn Besides learning the behavior of problem solving, managing conflict and motivation, the effective team to be designed required other key components, such as good communication, mutual trust, effective leadership,negotiating skills and so on.
I found that it was useful to help the situation, when tasks required multiple skills, judgment, and experience among designing effective team. I also noticed that not all designed teams met effective outcomes, the risky would occur when individual employee resistance to teams is strong. Where the national culture is individualistic rather than collectivist. When an established organization places high values on and significantly rewards individual achievement (Leigh L. Thompson,2011). By the way ,I was confused that the textbook indicated that group-serving was one of elements in the theory of are we a team.
What belonged to group-serving. Analyse We had such poor time management in our group due to a lack of communication. We failed to sit down and agree on the same opinions when assessing the assignment. This led to not only various styles of answering but also various quantities of work within these answers, which led to additional stress to put on some team members and development of some latent conflict. In our second written assignment, even though we felt we had addressed the issues, we still faced to re-scheduled meetings due to a lack of communication.
We made full use of our time to plan our next two group assignments since we had no assignments due on a week. Then we looked busy to have group meetings and everything seemed to be on schedule. Practice To improve communication and time management, we decided no longer leave a meeting until every team member had clearly written down their work assignments and that we all understood what was expected from us. Then we picked a messaging application for phones-WhatsApp, which everyone could get free of charge.
While we also decided to send email to communicate each member and required every member to switch email to their own mobile phones. It was convenience and fast way to check emails rather than logging on the laptop. We would look for all the different tools and selected the one which best fulfilled our needs. That helped team members would be instantly available for discussion or assistance. Apply I need to foster my communication skills, which has effect on relationship and trust, as well as group performance.
At first time, I should enhance my listening skills, sometimes I find it hard to concentrate on some speakers, I will try repeating their words over in my head, the way reinforce their messages and help me stay focused. Week7 Assess To assess where the level of competency in building effective teams lay I drafted a questionnaire which comprised of, filling in the scores of the skill assessment from the chapter 9of Developing Management Skills (David A. Whetten & Kim S. Cameron 2011). This data was compiled in the textbook for easy reference.
Rather than making all of my conclusions based on empirical data I also used my observations from performance. Having reviewed the data from the textbook of my questionnaire and realising I am lack of competency in building effective teams. I think my necessity and primary mission is the way to foster an effective and motivated team member in a group at current learning. Learn I found I was still confused that the difference between a group and a team. The textbook stated that seemed the scope of team was more widely than the group.
In addition, I thought there was new to me that the theory of three key skills to high performing team performance, that is diagnosing and facilitating team development, leading a team and being an effective team member. Suddenly,I realized that it was a difficult task to perform team performance. I was interested in diagnosing and facilitating team development. This skill stated that forming, norming,stroming and performing formed the stage of team development. From my observation, these four stages had significant influence on team development. Analyse
At the beginning of forming our team, I found that the dominant culture was individual, rather than collectivist. There was no output interaction, and it was evident that there was absolutely no team spirit. When we decided the suitable time for the next group meeting, some members always delayed time without informing, the situation seriously affected other members’ hours. This led to delay the forming stage of team development, therefore the rest of stages also would be effected. As we knew, the time was important to the team so that was also a reason we almost submitted the assignment before the early deadline.
Each member explained that problems had arisen repeatedly but that no one ever took the time to investigate or to solve the matters, since we lacked synergy among the team. Practice We planned to build our team spirit was a prerequisite for teamwork. Generally, we totally agreed to set the scope of time, each member attended the meeting ,who may be late about maximum 10min. If someone could not attend on schedule, he or she should inform other members before starting the meeting. Then other members would recode key points after the absentee catched the work schedule.
Apply I think the theory I have learnt is meaningful for me and my team. That is we should adequately implement the four stages of team development to meet better group performance, depending on how effectively the members developed and utilize their communication skills. The team spirit is the prerequisite for teamwork, which is building mutual respect and trust included in the stage of forming, rather than individualism. Next step is fostering commitment to a vision and overcoming tendencies toward groupthink that can occur in the norming stage.
Then storming stage pays attention on managing conflict since our team tends to positive conflict, instead of integrate and accommodate behavior. I believe a high-performing team will be achieved if our team carries out these steps. Conclusion I improve my reflective learning journal based on the lecture feedback. For example, the lecture wrote that my reflective learning journal did not follow the learning cycle when reflecting on the material each week, so while writing about weekly reflective learning journal following the pedagogical approach.
I find the pedagogical approach provided opportunities for me to apply and develop my process skills to find out things for myself. I am thankful for an appropriate method particularly about writing reflective learning journal. I could express my whole idea freely on it. I would see it as the most effective and appropriate tool for a quiet student like me. It is very beneficial to me because with this reflective journal, I will be able to evaluate my mistakes in the past and to reduce the same istakes or potential mistakes in the future. I would also see reflective learning journal or reflective thought is an effective way to improve my performance. Therefore, I will adopt and apply it for the next couple of weeks. I think that the 4 weeks ‘investment’ in this course has made me received my big dividends which are obtaining the new way of thought in using reflective journal, understanding the importance of teamwork and how to improve the team performance, as well as how to become a creative problem solver.
I learnt the importance of being active at the very beginning of lecture’s session which may result in obtaining the other students’ trust to speak on behalf of them. As a team, I found it easier to accomplish complex tasks since we enhance each ability then divide the tasks about who is responsible for what. We also had learning cell which initially made me learn how to collaborate with each other and to work as a team. Reference David A. Whetten and Kim S. Cameron (2011), Developing Management Skills,Eighth edition, USA: Pearson Prentice Hall. Leigh L. Thompson (2011),Making the Team, 4thedition,International:Pearson Prentice Hall.
