What is it?
In their critical thinking questions that conclude "Successful Teams and Conflict", Warwick and Rogers (2018, pp. 179) invite us to apply the ideas in the reading to our personal experience.
Write one comment that responds to both questions.
The order of the questions seems logical: question 1 asks us to reflect on our own experience working on teams, which will review and apply the five stages of Tuckman's account of team development to our own experience, after which we can move to our own approach to conflict management. However, can address the two questions in the opposite order if you prefer.
The questions to respond to in one comment
- Think about when you have worked on teams. Did you develop in the manner Tuckman describes?
- Which conflict management styles described in the text is your dominant style? What do you think are the strengths and weaknesses of this style?
You have 18:00 minutes to plan, write, and edit a response to both questions.
I suggest you divide your time roughly as:- planning = 4:00 minutes -
- Which specific example(s) from your experience will you discuss?
- Which details should you include to make them effective examples?
- What main ideas do they support?
- ?
- writing = 10:00 minutes - it's much easier to write when you have planned
- editing = 4:00 minutes
A useful strategy - as usual
Imagine you are writing for someone who has not read the question you have chosen to answer or the article that the question follows up. Your aim is to clearly communicate your response to that reader, so it might help to paraphrase the question at the start of your response to it.
Reference
- Warwick, L. & Rogers, L. (2018). Skillful 4: Reading & Writing, Student's Book Pack (2nd. ed.). London: Macmillan Education
My first idea about working on teams is that I don't do it, but even under the Covid disruptions, I have done projects as part of a team. A better example to see how Tuckman's four stages of a team's development might work in real life seemed to me, however, to be the very short-lived teams that are common in professional development activities that I've regularly done of the years. These teams typically exist for only about 30 minutes, and rarely more than an hour. However, even in that short time, at least some of Tuckman's four stages are clearly evident. A few years ago, to be very specific, I was on a team of six or seven people where we had to construct the tallest possible construction that would stable without any support except spaghetti and short pieces of string. The first stage was very much like forming: it was "What do we do?", "Let's start!", "No, we need to agree on a plan." "How about elect a leader?" As Tuckman accurately describes it, everyone acting like an individual who just happened to be sitting around the same table. Thankfully, we did quickly choose a leader, although the storming stage that followed was hard work for the leader, whose authority was ignored or questioned by the competing members of our team. Meanwhile, other groups seemed to be making plans and moving to the construction stage. Once we had settled on a building strategy, things went more smoothly in a sort of combined norming and performing stage, although even when we were half way through, there were still opposing voices being raised to suggest a different approach to the one that had been loosely agreed on.
ReplyDeleteI think that that particular example of a team showed that when most poeple's preferred strategy for resolving conflict was competing that things did not go well - our spaghetti tower was not in the running to win, and looked in imminent danger of collapse. I suppose my preferred way to deal with conflict is either avoidance or compromise, with an inclination to competitiveness. If it's something I don't care about, I'll avoid or go with accommodation, but if it's something that matters to me, like the correct understanding of Aristotle's ideas about the good life, competition to push others to agree with me is how I often behave.
On the other hand, if money is at stake, I'm more likely to collaborate, such as when I'm on a team working out the best course to offer and how the course should be implement it.
DeleteMaybe I don't have a preferred style of dealing with conflict in the teams I'm in.
Based on my own experience, when I initially worked at a small group of four people at a company, I found our group had generally developed like the manner Tuckman. After I had entered the group, I was explained my roles and responsibilities so that I could perform my work well. Then, after a few months, conflicts had noticeably occurred but most of them were minor not that serious and our team members were able to solve by our own without a leader. The remaining two stages were difficult to differentiate but as we move beyond the storming stage, we had a clear and sold goal and consensus towards our work. On top of that, we tended to enjoy helping each other in order to finish and deal with problems more quickly.
ReplyDeleteI believe that I am compromising-style person when it comes to management at work. One of the main benefits is that this make everyone still happy with the agreement as well as the conflicts or arguments are eliminated. Unfortunately, I would say this measure might have a detrimental effect on the results of goals or work if team members take side on relationship too much instead of work objectives. Therefore, it is necessary to be aware of using this style of management.
Since I started working full-time jobs, I have worked on teams and I think most of my experiences on teamwork are a bit different from the model that Tuckman describes on team development. As I can recall it, Tuckman's forming and storming stages are relevant to my experiences. For example, I used to work in the banking industry where I would be responsible for leading sale teams of 10 to 15 people, and at the beginning of my team development, my sale teams were new to each other and they worked together like what Tuckman mentions at forming stage--they used to be polite and harmonized. However, as the time went by and they had lots of sale targets to hit, they would not coordinate, but complete each other, and this kind of conflicts would keep going on. My teams couldn't get on the common goals well.
ReplyDeleteI think my conflict management style is completing, because I used to work in high competitive industry and in sale department which would need me to become aggressive to be able to drive my teams and my own targets. In fact, I think most of people, especially in the business, are aggressive.
As software engineers or problem solvers, most of the time we have to work in a team to solve complex problems. One of my experiences working as a team was when I worked as a Software Engineer and had to work on a project that none of the team members had experience with that technology before. In my opinion, the development process is similar to what Tuckman described. We form our goals and objective with support from the team leader. Everyone understands their role and works toward the same goals.
ReplyDeleteThe dominant conflict management styles in our team are mostly collaborating and accomodating. We collaborate to reach mutual team and individual goals. However, in some aspects that someone lacks related experiences, accomodating conflict management style comes into account. The person with more expertise will lead the task in this case.
A time I had to work in a team was during a group project for a Thai class. Our development did go according to Tuckman’s theory. During the forming stage we all were too timid to express our opinions, but we all agreed about the topic and the way we were going to present it; although it took some time to have a clear consensus. After a while, I think this was when the storming stage happened, we had some conflict of who was going to do what role, but it was solved by my friend, the leader, who quickly assigned the roles fairly. Although there were some small arguments after that big conflict, we eventually finished the project and was ready to present it.
ReplyDeleteI think my dominant style is accommodation. Although the accommodation style helps stop the conflict quickly, and helps preserve the relationship. I think the down side is that it only works well when the other person is more of an expert or really does have a better solution.
Based on my experience, when I worked as a team to conduct a little research, we did a forming state. In this state, we normally choose the person in charge of the project. The leader will assign tasks suited to everyone. Then, we do our own jobs until the work is done. In my opinion, I assume that we process just two states of Tuckman. In my situation, I think we used a compromising strategy in order to avoid any serious conflict. If there was any conflict, members who didn't care how the work was done wouldn't give any participation. So, compromising was used to get every member to participate, but it might not be the best solution.
ReplyDeleteWhen I work as a team, I found that I also adopt some manner that Tuckman describes. Compromising is my dominant style that I had at work place for my previous project. I faced a lot of conflict in the previous project due to the pandemic situation. I could not worked in a normal situation, therefore, we had adapted work plan and work schedule to fit with crowd control that government had announced. I worked as a project manager for drama. We were facing difficulty to shoot our drama in a limited crews size. Government allow only 50 people for the shoot. Our team in total were 110 people. So there were arguments between team members when we try to limit the crews size. I coordinated with each team members, and I had scheduled time in and time out for each members, so then they could work on their duty without workload. For example, art team members need to have clock-in and clock-out time differently depended on their position. Setting team had to arrived the set first, and needed to finish everything and went off set before the shooting team arrived. They could not hang around during the shoot even to take care the set.
ReplyDeleteTo relate Tuckman four-stage theory of the team development with my work, for me I work as a team on a construction project. In the forming stage, I already knew who is the leader which is the project manager so he assigned everyone tasks to do, although we have the same goal to finish the building. The storming stage, as my team which have people in various fields, such as structure engineers, mechanical engineers and architects, sometimes we have differences opinion when there have to adapt or change something from the drawing. Me, as an architect care more about design but for engineers they tend to worry more about how the building will work, so leader will compromise in this situation.
ReplyDeleteI think my conflict management styles is accommodating. I used to be the youngest person who work in a team, so I just listen to others opinion and agree with them because I don't want to make the wrong decision. And from that time, now I still am a accommodating person because I don't want to say no or have problems with any people.
When I was medical student, I had to work on team several times, especially the last three years. Most of the team work projects were a problem-based-discussion, an academic activity which students are randomly classified in to groups of eight and are given a problem related to topic to discuss together. I think that Tuckman's four stages of a team's development cover what happen during my team working experience very well.
ReplyDeleteOn the first day that we were assigned in a group, the progress of the discussion seem extremely slow, everyone just sit on the same table and read a source individually. The atmosphere seem very quite and polite as everyone looks so concentrating that no one want to interrupt. These events can be described as the forming stage. Fortunately, one of the members started to ask why we do not choose leader. After we had elected a leader, the profession seem far better. The leader broke the wall among each members by talk about something outside from the project first and let everyone members introduce themselves. So all of us known each other’s personality and preferences better. This pushed the group forward to storming stages. Every members were confident enough to express their ideas. Though many concflicts occured, we discussed it reasonably until we get a concesus to solve the problem. I thought this conflicts is not disadvantages but advantages, as our discussion did not any ideas from the danger of groupthink described in Skillful. After we got the goal and everyone knew what to do, the norming and performing was going so fast that I could not recognize to tell here.
I think that my preferred way to deal with conflict is either accomodatinng or compromise. My nature is extremely relaxed and I normally avoid to have fight with any coworkers or friends. In field of medicines, topics to learn is very widespread that no one can specialize in all of them. That is why doctor are classified into many subspecialty. This make accomodating get the major popularity from the field of medicine as consulting always necessary when treating patients with specific diseases. This help patients get the right management. In contrast, the weak point is that there are many hospitals that has limited specialties, especially in rural area. Accommodating might not work there when there are no one who os proficient with the issue.