Interpersonal Relationships and Team Effectiveness Essay

Interpersonal Relationships and Team Effectiveness - Essay Example This project has taught me much more than I had imagined in the beginning. Surprisingly, majority of what I have learnt was from outside of the multitude of course books. During my project, almost all kinds of experiences occurred, from memorable to impressive. The major problem occurring in any team is ineffectiveness of team members and adverse interpersonal relationships. If team members do not have better understanding and acceptance of each other’s differences, then resulting conflicts might not let the group members work on an assigned project. If looked from a critical eye, those experiences have brought change in my personality and have furnished my understanding. I certainly developed myself in many areas after this project. This paper will be examining and reflecting upon my behavior and self-awareness and shows an analysis of my role with respect to my team. It also highlights the roles of my team members and ways through which we increased team effectiveness. The p rinciple purpose of this reflective essay is to examine our team coherency and team effectiveness while working on our group project. This process will be evaluated in the light of relevant academic theories such as communication, and leadership, as well as few models of behavior in team such as Adair-Action-Centered Leadership, Belbin Roles, Tuckman’s Stages of Team Development, and Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. ... On the very first day, many complexities occurred among us as team members primarily due to unfamiliarity with each other. Largely, these complexities were related to lack of interpersonal relationships with each other. Some of them included communication gap, fear, not listening to each other’s ideas, running away from assigned tasks, and egoistic nature. Some complications relating directly to projects were availability of group members at certain time and schedule for discussing project details, time, and schedule for discussing the project proceedings with professor, company to be selected for the project, assigned task, and responsibility of each group member etc. I had no idea about how to approach these problems and I had no clue what I could do to solve these problems. Rules of task were also not known to us due to which we acted independently. Each one of us was lacking planning, understanding, and communication. All the group members appeared to be astounded by the p roject. It was looking very hard to complete and I, as a group leader, was feeling fretful regarding how I would carry out the entire project with increased complexities among group members. The team consisted of five group members, which means several ideas for the accomplishment of project. Suddenly, the best idea came to mind. In our very first meeting, I was able to convince my group members for this idea. I explained the importance of this project for each of us. It was 30% of our course, so we all have to contribute substantial attention to this project. The goal of all of us was same, that is, getting as higher points for this project as we could. The first thing that united and created harmony among our team was our common goal of ‘achieving excellent