Teamwork

We learnt that a lot of job descriptions look for people with good team-working skills. For example, Netflix and Yahoo. 

Netflix has said they would like employees who can "Work effectively with cross-functional teams, such as marketing and product development, across multiple time zones." also, Yahoo said that their employees need "Drive design, planning and execution of programs within the Yahoo Studio team.  You’ll manage vendor requirements, scope requests with Yahoo teams, and interact with creative designers to manage deliverables. Your attention to detail and background managing integrated solutions will be essential to your success. You build cross-functional relationships at both junior and senior levels inside and outside the organisation to ensure project success.  You’ll buy the first round.  You are passionate about the internet and its communicational possibilities"



We learnt about "boundary spanning", which we will be expected to do in later life, it is working with other teams, even outside of business to improve the quality of work. Katzenbach and Smith's theory (1993) really stuck with me from this lesson as I didn't know the difference between a team and a group. According to Katzenbach and Smith's theory, a team is "A small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable". 
A group- -Strong clearly focused leader
We also learned about Belbin's Role Stregnths.


A team- 
-Shared leadership roles
-Individual and mutual accountability
-Team purpose delivered by team
-Collective work product
-Encourage open ended discussion/active problem solving
-Measure performance by collective product

-Purpose the same
-Individual jobs
-Measures effectiveness by influence on customers
-Discusses, decides and delegates

Talking within the group about why teamwork fails sometimes, was the thing that stuck out the most for me in the lesson, I realised that in some of the times when I was in a team, I was doing some of the things that make them fail. For example I had sometimes neglected to elect a team leader, in which sometimes it should have been me. 

According to Belbin, I am an implementer. I do not agree with this. Although, whilst doing a task in lesson where we had to create a new product, I was a little bit of a implementer. I was mostly a Plant though as I did come up with a lot of different ideas. This has made me think whether I am an implementer at all. 
After said task, Esther gave me some feedback. She said
- That we were all argumentative and liked conflict, but this was the best way for the team to get the best ideas in this situation
-That there was no time keeper in our group and it was what we really lacked as we did not keep to our time limit
-That I had up to date knowledge about digital products, which showed as it was easy for me to think new products
-That I created lots of debate so that the team decided on the best possible product

That has made me think that maybe next time I need to take a back seat more so that the others can take control and listen more before I criticise their ideas.