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“Reflecting on My Group” Yuvakumar Naga Sindhura (n6994059) The purpose of this essay is to understand the development of strategy for a five star resort hotel. The process of development within the team and the understanding of the conflicting ideas. The strategy was meant to be developed for a fictitious resort hotel which consists of 150 rooms, with no specific location. A group consists of two or more individuals who work and interact with each other to achieve a common goal (Bartol, Tein, Mathews, & Martin, 2005).
I worked with Ehsan, Armeen, in order to brainstorm and discuss possible strategies that could be possibly developed for the upcoming resort hotel. As a group we were unproductive as my members were unable to move without a location in mind and hence stagnated in formulating a strategy, which proved to be a major issue. Hence leading Inkpen (1996) (as cited in Bauerschmidt, 1996) to demonstate the presence in the absence of strategy. Mintzberg (1973) as cited in (Selveg, 1987) focuses mainly on the purpose of the decisions, who is involved in making them, how preferences are evaluated, and types of environments ideal for the mode.
Therefore Mintzberg thus laid prominence on the process by which strategies surface, rather than on their content. But a personal strategy has been developed providing a direction for growth and success. My personal strategy formulated is an all-season resort destination of choice for visitors and residents, specializing in world-class alpine skiing and recreation facilities with a local historic and cultural focus, nestled amongst pristine forest terrain and rugged mountain ranges. This essay discusses and reflects upon our collective involvement and the processes and stages that we progressed.
In this essay we shall explore Tuckmans(1965) stages of group development (forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning), also defining the inputs, practices, processes and outcomes of working together in a group, along with the explanation and application of group cohesiveness, relevant member roles and leadership values which were supposed to be apparent within my group but lacked as everyone had opinions to what the leader had to say. As group members begin carrying out tasks and activities, eventually a team is evolved. Teams go through five stages of development as identified by Tuckman (1965), as cited in (Miller, 2003).
Mostly all our meeting were held in class, our group had five undeceive individuals who only spent time discussing and brainstorming on what should be done first like the strategy, mission, vision or the values, rather than making a beginning. Therefore no progress was seen, even though worksheets were given during every class to guide us accordingly. Strategy was anticipated but was not fully present in the conflict of making one and it is believed that in this process the notion of strategies are in transition (Bauerschmidt, 1996).
Therefore identifying group tasks and goals and building relations with each other was minimal. Tuckman(1965), as cited in (Miller, 2003) states that during this stage it is important that team members learn about each other, recognise the attitudes of other members and establish the goals and purpose of the group. During the regular interactions in the group meeting, we developed a positive relationship with each other, which is one of the key points suggested by (Tiosvold, Hui, Ding, & Hu, 2003) who supports the traditional idea that relationships are crucial for effective team performance.
As a group we had different attitudes, values and cultural backgrounds, which could have thought to cause conflict within the team, but indecision was the highlight throughout, as some others in the group were skeptical of whether they were going the right direction, hence their opinions were not voiced and ideas were not shared both ways. It became a one way flow of ideas or discussion. But we experienced positive and friendly attitudes and exchange of ideas on varied topics, mostly apart from the topic of presentation and the assignment, thereby increasing our knowledge. As a group we experienced minimal cohesiveness.
Cohesion in a group involves the level of purpose and commitment to the team among members (Dwyer, 2005). But due the difference in understanding and the mode of communication, the group ended up splitting into half, getting into sides where individuals understood each other. Cohesion is also linked to the input of knowledge and skills in a group, a group should have similar cultural backgrounds in order to be effective, to which I agree as all the members of our group came from different cultural backgrounds, with different values, efficiency and effectiveness, hence direction lacked in rder to achieve our goal. Groups with diverse attitudes and backgrounds are alternatively said to be more creative and flexible and make better decisions (Bartol et al. , 2005). I further refined the personal strategy formulated previously to develop a clearer direction for the growth and development of the organisation. The revised version of the strategy is an all-season resort destination of choice for visitors and residents, specializing in world-class alpine skiing and recreation facilities with a local historic and cultural focus, nestled amongst pristine forest terrain and rugged mountain ranges.
Offering personalised attention and facilities to physically unwind. It has been found in literature that the content and process of strategy emerge as two distinctly separate, but related concepts, and there appears to be no direct underlying relationship between strategy content and the process of strategy making but there is rather a relationship arising from and which is attributable to the holistic nature of an open social system (Van de Ven 1979 as cited by Seveg, 1987). Next stage of group development is storming; this is the stage when intra-group conflict and hostility can arise.
All members of our group worked well together, but with a lot of challenging conflict. I believe we lacked the values of leadership skills, which did not give us the reinforcement to perform better. The ability to influence and develop individuals of a team, in order to achieve a worthwhile vision which meets the current needs of everyone and everything required by the form of work (Cacioppe, 2001 as cited in Volckmann 2005). Leadership skills portrayed at least by a member is required for a team to stay focused and move towards their goals.
Leaders appear everywhere, depending on the circumstances that require them to exert leadership (Wheatley, 2005). This was least reflected by the chosen leader or the other members of the team. A self-managed team is an unsupervised group of people responsible for a task; they are given complete control over group membership and behaviors. Our self-managed team as in all other teams consisted of differing group-task roles, group roles fall into three categories; task, maintenance and self-orientated.
Group-task related members help the group develop and accomplish its tasks and goals; and the group-maintenance, members within my group provided differences of opinions constantly but had a good level of interpersonal relationships with members, which to a level fostered group harmony but still resulted in ineffective group work (Bartol et al. , 2005). As my group progressed to the norming stage our relationships, goals and plans were still unclear, but we had to head off our ways to complete the assignment.
Even though most of everything that we were supposed to do was unclear for us, we came to a consensus decision where the expression of cognitive conflict among members of the group is encouraged without allowing an explicit group interaction (Priem, Harrison and Muir, 1995). We then progressed to the performing stage of group development. This stage entails the development of interpersonal relationships, problem solving and achievement of performance, but was our performance a successful one?
It is evident that there was lack of clarity throughout, but good level of interpersonal skills were maintained, however problem solving as a team lacked. At this stage I personally thought of revising my strategy for th resort management as it was long. The all-season resort destination specializing in world-class alpine skiing and recreation facilities with historic and cultural focus, nestled amongst pristine forest terrain and rugged mountain ranges away from the hustle bustle of daily life.
Offering our customers personalised attention and facilities to physically unwind. After trying to put our heads to the requirements of our assignment we tried one last time to gather thoughts together thereby entering the adjourning stage, this involves goal accomplishment and the ultimate movement away from the group (Miller, 2003). We met together for the final time and reflected upon what we gathered and if what we gathered was sufficient and appropriate for our assignment.
Overall, as a group we came to the mutual agreement that we as a team had no goal to achieve and our time was insignificantly wasted as we lacked an understanding of what we were to do and how we were to go about it. In conclusion the final strategy personally created was what remained for the organisation. As a group we departed our directions in order to formulate a strategy for the upcoming resort hotel. According Tuckman (1965) as cited by (Miller,2003) stages of team development we were unable to fit as we really did not understand our task at hand.