Team Dynamics

After analyzing the results from the survey, we think our team works well over all but have some little problems that need to be fixed. The most important problem in our team is efficiency. We can see from question 3 “The team cannot integrate diverse viewpoints” and question 23 “Team meetings are not productive” and question 27” Team members are not effective at making decisions”. Team members vote more for “Agree” or “Neither nor”, the question 3 even got a “Strongly agree”. We think that there are several reasons lead to these problems. First, during our meeting, it always happened that when we have disagreements on one issue, one team member stated his or her opinions, then another just stated his or her argument but did nothing to the former ones, or even got no response. We often fell into long silence without discussing the disagreements, it wasted a lot of time. Once one of the team members even said directly “We really have problems in communication”. This is the second problem in our team, communication. The third problem is participation. Every time we worked on one team project, we felt that not every team member really participated in that progress. Some team members seemed to be out of their mind and didn’t have any opinions. When we had disagreements and asked for their opinions, they couldn’t reply anything. We think it is an essential reason that not only leads to the problem of efficiency but also to the problem of long silence. Because you can’t expect someone to say something when he has nothing in his mind. So get everybody participate in is the first step. Another point needs to be improved is that we really need to speak out what we think no matter how small it is. Our team members don’t like talking too much. This is another reason leads to long silence too. And we couldn’t integrate viewpoints if we don’t have viewpoints. On the other hand, the long silence made our meeting lasted for a long time, we usually need three or four hours above for meeting. One’s brain can get tired and slow after such a long time, so the ideas come out more slowly, as a result the efficiency becomes lower and lower. It was a vicious circle. What’s more, as we can see, question 15 “A few members do most of the work”, two members vote for “Agree”. It is another symbol shows that not every team member really participated in. And since there were only part of team members taking responsibilities of the team work, it won’t be hard to imagine the efficiency of our team wouldn’t be high. Last but not the least, our team need to build more creativity. See the question 33 “Team members brainstorm creatively”. Two members vote for “Neither nor”. We think creativity is also an important element which influences the efficiency. When we met problems of one issue, it often took long time for us to come up with a good solution. Another example is our interim project presentation. The professor told us we need to dig more deeply. We had much source in our hand, but we didn’t use them well. We think it is because we lack creativity to analyze and find the key points which are hidden in the source.  But our team actually did a good job in many other aspects, see the question 5 “Team members have articulated a clear set of goals.” And question 9 “It is not clear what each person in the team is supposed to do”, most team members agree that our team has a clear job arrangement, everyone knows what he or her is expected to do. And the result of question 14 “Every member does his or her fair share of the work” shows that everyone has finished their own part well. Another positive aspect of our team is that the atmosphere of our team is very harmony. Actually we planned to name our team “Asian harmony” at the beginning. We can see it from question 26” Team members support each other.” All team members agree with that. Although our team has some problems in communication, every team member are totally free in expressing their opinions in the team. We can see this from the results of question 25 “Members express their feelings freely in the team.” Four team members vote for “Agree” and another is “Strongly agree”. The most important thing is that our team is becoming better and better, as the question 31 “The team keeps getting more effective all the time” shows, all of us vote for “Agree” or “Strongly agree”. To be honest, we five cooperate much better than the beginning as we get familiar with each other, and we believe that we will keep moving on.

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