BSBWOR502 Lead and Manage Team Effectiveness Assignment

Answers:

My first Job Description:

I did my first job a business content writer in a multinational company. My job was to write literatures for the consumer products in such a manner that the product would attract a greater number of people thus entailing the enhancement of the product sales. Since I was newly recruited, I had to undergo certain training process for more than twenty days where I was taught to understand the writing process as well as the techniques for product description. During the training process, I learnt many a thing about my job profile and the working tactics. However, it was not possible for me to comprehend the entire procedure during my training period. The company worked on different consumer products according to the clients who would hired us for designing the content of the given product or services. The company had different teams specialised on particular subject topics. There was a web- designing who would deal with the works on information and technology. On the other hand, there were advertisement writers who used to write contents for the advertisements and promotions. Our work was to write literature about the products or services. The company had global clients across the countries. Hence, there was a consistent work flow.  

About the Team Leaders:

Our team had a team leader and an assistant team leader. Both of them were deployed for the same duties. Their work was to allocate the tasks to the writers so as to bring best quality writing for the products. The more the writers could produce within the given deadline, the more our team could get clients for the next tasks. In order maintain the work flow, we were instructed to meet the deadlines and write quality product literatures.  There were different writers who had different working characteristics. The team had more than twenty content developers and they were handled by the leader and the assistant leader. To me, both of them were the best team leaders in the company. I could distinctively watch the difference between our team leader and the leaders of the other teams in the company. The distinctive nature was quite vivid. We could easily trace the behavioural differences among the leaders. I was quite fortunate that my team leader possessed the leadership characteristics in a different manner. I would like to appreciate the coordination between the TL and the ATL. During the absence of one, the other was succinctly able to skilfully tackle the entire team. Both of them had democratic leadership qualities. They used to give complete freedom in the decision making process about any task provided to us. According to our expertise we could easily decide whether e should accept the task given t us or reject it. Since we had the full liberty in the decision making process, we could easily work n the products we were confident at.

In terms of leadership quality, it can be said that our team leader and the assistant leader used to encourage us and foster our ideas on the product innovation and writing techniques. There was no discrepancy in among the employees. Everyone would be dealt with equal ideal force.  In order to ensure our working purpose, job responsibilities and roles we were given proper outlines of the company’s working ethic and culture. I identified that the best quality of the team leaders were that they would never lose their patience level during hardship. They would never yell at the subordinates if the latter would make any mistake. Our team leaders would always be at our side as it was all about the performance of the entire team. The value of the team was highly fortified by the efforts and collaborative approach of both of them. they seemed to be ideal leaders as they could easily identify the problems related to the operations as well as the employee relation. The most influencing characteristic traits of both of them was the personal attachment they created with the employees.

The personal relationship was highly fostered and it was quite fruitful in the performance of the team. I can remember an incident when I had some personal issues that were hampering my professional work. I was not able to perform during the working hours. It was vivid on my face. I was not wven asked about my problem because they could easily understand that something was wrong within me. They took immediate action by awarding me with the best newcomer in the team. With the motivational award I revived my working energy and started giving production of work.  I was later asked about my problem in personal.  

Our team leader had te tendency to provide us with everyday feedback that could bring positive competition among the team members. Our works were evaluated with the number of task we would successfully complete in a day. Since we were provided with the daily feedback we could easily evaluate our daily performance level by comparing with the other members of the team. There was no harsh competition. It was all positive and was further driven with encouragement by both the leader and the assistant leader. The reward policy introduced in our team was quite innovative as it would motivate us with the advancement of our performance level.

Other characteristic traits of our team leaders was developing policies and the procedures in order to ensure the responsibilities that ought to be shouldered upon by every individual working in a team. the most interesting and the unique trait of them was that they gave more importance to the team than to the individuals. They made us believe that performance of the individuals would determine the performance of the entire team. The belief about the entire team made us work in a collaborative and assisting manner. Selfless assistance to the fellow employees definitely advanced the performance of the entire team.

Development of the Performance Plan:

Every day performance plan was to be developed in order to specify the working objective of the individual employees.  Performance plan could help us set a target of our own that could be a descriptive target or formative one. However, once the target was set we were given full support from the leaders to achieve the target. Most of the companies have monthly target. However, our team had built its own target policy. We were instructed that we would need to set our target on the daily basis so as to ease the entire process. While judging the level of leadership of our team leaders I have calculated different leadership models and theories. Through the theories I managed to understand the actual leadership tactics used by the team leaders in terms of the development of the performance plan. However, there are different dynamics that could support and hinder the performance of our team.

Group Dynamics:

According to Kurt Lewin who actually coined the term group dynamics, it refers to the impacts of the distinct roles and behaviours taken on by the leaders upon the roles and behaviours of the employees.  Therefore, the behavioural and characteristics pattern of the team leaders are channelled to the members of a team or a group.

Analysis of Group Dynamics:

IT was obvious that the behavioural pattern of the team leader and the assistant leader was almost same in professional manner. Their dealing with the professional assignments and the responsibilities was directly channelized to the employees thus impacting upon the behaviour and nature of the entire team. this is how  the performance of the entire team was entirely dependent on the active intervention of our team leaders. In a long term view, group dynamic s had a negative impact upon the employees. First, continuous intervention of the team leaders could snatch and minimise the innovative working method of the employees on the other hand, it could also let the employees stay in a blank state of mind in their absence, which means absence of the team leaders only led to inactive work effort.  Kurt Lewin found that group dynamics might have two different effects upon the team. If the leaders impact upon the team through positive dynamics the team could enjoy positive group dynamics and of the leaders had negative vibe upon the team the entire team would be disrupted because of negative group dynamics. However, I opine that positive group dynamics have some limitations as the team members might not come up with positive innovative approach so as to create opportunity for working improvisation.

Our team had positive group dynamics because of the positive working approach of the team leader and the assistant leader.  Both of them were equally industrious in terms of motivating the team with their personal view point about a subject. It was certainly helpful for the employees who wanted to get guided every single minute because of lack of competency. Such activity does not provide scope for an employee to become a leader because leadership needs completely new idea and the employees affected by dynamics cannot go beyond the idea once implemented by the team leaders and once concreted idea is not easy to be revamped with a new one. Though our leaders gave ample freedom to practice work with ideas developed from our brain, the final decision and the rectification would again bring back the implementation of the idea they would project. Hence, there is a meagre limitation in the workplace.