REFLECTIVE ESSAY

Posted: December 21st, 2022

REFLECTIVE ESSAY

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Reflective Essay

Business planning is a rigorous and arduous activity that involves lengthy deliberations and research among the team members. The team has to consider several aspects of the surrounding environment that would influence a business and determine its success or failure. To this end, the team must be cohesive and harmonious to allow each member to make their contribution effectively. Each member should bring a unique characteristic and capability into the group that complements the others. Similarly, each team member has a different leadership contribution to make using the unique capabilities possessed by the individual. Altogether, the different strengths of each member add up to build a solid and high-performing team that overcomes any individual and collective weakness within the team members. This reflective essay provides insights into my experiences as a business planning team member. My participation as a member of the business planning team contributed significantly to my team membership and leadership capabilities, particularly in the multicultural setting, considering that the membership of the business planning team has members from diverse cultural backgrounds. Similarly, the lessons learned during the York Strength program constituted significantly to my leadership and cross-cultural working aspects during the business planning team activity.  

Activities performed as a team member

Each member of the business planning team was assigned a particular task based on their interests, preferences, and strengths. I was assigned the task of gathering information about the external business environment surrounding our proposed business. For this task, I performed a PESTLE analysis to gather intelligence on the political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental factors that would influence our proposed business. Consequently, I searched for information over the internet and surveyed people already operating businesses in the industry to understand the different macro-environmental issues confronting their businesses. In this regard, I administered questionnaires and conducted interviews. After that, I collated the information presented my findings to the team. I used different digital technologies to communicate my findings to the team, which helped me express my intended messages better.

Process and Approach used as a Team Member

The team leveraged the strengths of each member to maximize our contributions to the team. After defining the tasks we needed to accomplish, we brainstormed the characteristics that each team member brought to the team. These were based on the personality types of each member, which are the leader, team player, researcher, expert, planner, creative, and communicator, as proposed by Forsyth (2018). The different personality types among team members are based on the Great Eight Competency framework, which identifies eight competency areas needed to have a complete, effective, and high-performing team. This framework identifies great eight domains; leading and deciding, supporting and cooperating, interacting and presenting, analysing and interpreting, creating and conceptualising, organising and executing, adapting and coping, and enterprising and performing (Krumm et al. 2016). An effective and high-performing team requires the members to bring in the eight competencies from their collective personalities.  

In our team, some members had more than one personality type. However, after brainstorming on these issues, the dominant personalities were identified while all personality types were considered to ensure that the different personalities were accommodated to complete the team. I took over the role of the researcher because of my ability to search for information and analytical skills. Therefore, I brought in the analysing and interpreting domain using my personality type. I used these skills to identify information sources to provide in-depth information about the macroenvironment around our proposed business and analysed it to determine their potential effects on the proposed business. I formulated questions and sought answers from credible sources on the internet and the community around York University, United Kingdom. Similarly, based on the great eight competency framework, the dominant domains used in the business planning team were interacting and presenting, and analysing and interpreting. Therefore, I employed my skills in analysing and interpreting information and communicating it in a structured manner using different communication media. In the same vein, the role assignment following the identification of the personality types from the brainstorming session was based on the 9 Belbin’s team roles and the Myers-Briggs personality type models (Fekry et al. 2019). We had to take a psychometric and personality test to determine our personality traits and the team roles they would fit best in. the findings from the Belbin Team Inventory test revealed that I fitted best in the team as an implementer, which is an action-oriented role. Similarly, the Myers-Brigg personality type indicator revealed that out of the 16 different personality types that the test indicates, mine was the ‘the thinker’ type because I scored highly in introversion, intuitiveness, thinking, and perceiving, thus being classified as having the INTP personality type. This was the first time I was taking personality tests, and this test revealed that I enjoyed generating solutions for problems and spending solitary time formulating these solutions and how things should work. Therefore, I tend to be very logical and objective, while being flexible and unorthodox in my conduct. This information helped the members assign my role in the team, which would capitalise on my personality and behavioural tendencies. However, besides leveraging my positive aspects as the thinker, I needed to address my personality weaknesses, such as difficulty in disclosing my feelings and inner thoughts, struggles with rule-following, susceptibility to self-doubt, and insensitivity in certain instances.      

I also considered the nine strengths developed by the York Strength programme, which I had attended before embarking on this business planning project. The York Strength programme develops several individual strengths based on one’s passion and unique capabilities. The strengths include authentic communicator, relationship builder, digital connector, resilient achieve, agile learner, self-improver, pioneer thinker, problem solver, and organisational fit seeker (University of York n.d.). The specific strengths I leveraged to develop my leadership and cross-cultural working skills included being a problem solver, agile learner, resilient achiever, and authentic communicator.

Leadership

Each member exercised their leadership skills in leading the team through the various tasks assigned to each member. My job was to gather intelligence on the macroenvironment surrounding our proposed business. I used my leadership skills to lead the team in understanding the macroenvironment surrounding our proposed business.

Besides, we also selected an overall team leader to guide us through the business planning project. Observing and supporting my team leader made me realise the complexities of leading a team of individuals with diverse competencies, abilities, personalities, and temperaments. Team leaders require specific skill sets to lead their teams effectively. Stobierski (2020) identified seven skills pertinent for team management, which are effective and clear communication, openness, ability to delegate, decision-making, emotional intelligence, problem-solving, and organisation. Team leaders also employ specific leadership styles that help them guide their teams to complete their tasks successfully. Aga et al. (2016), Karriker et al. (2017), and Suttle (2022) suggested that participative, distributed, and transformational leadership styles were critical for leading teams to success. Specifically, participative leaders promote collective decision-making by involving the team members in the process before arriving to the final decision. This style encourages creativity and productivity in a team environment. Distributed leadership involves the sharing of leadership roles among team members, democratising the leadership roles, and promoting information sharing and learning from each other within a team setting. Similarly, transformational leadership promotes the realisation of the team members’ full potential through encouragement, coaching, mentoring, and setting high standards for the team members. From these styles, I learned the importance of symmetric interdependence that enables members rely on each other for the overall success of the team. Symmetrical interdependence considers all members as equals with equal contribution and reciprocity (Forsyth 2018). This is a critical foundation for developing trust in the team.  

I used the lessons from the York Strength program to lead my team members in my designated task and in supporting the team’s leader. I encouraged the team members to learn from each other and apply the learned knowledge, stay on the task resiliently, which using the challenges encountered as a trigger to achieve more in challenging circumstances, capitalise on the opportunity to analyse complex information and formulate solutions for complex problems, and communicate authentically, respectfully, and honesty, while employing emotional and cultural intelligence.

Cross-Cultural Working Environment

My team comprised people from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Therefore, it was pertinent that I employ my emotional and cultural intelligence in working with diverse team members that have different cultural origins and experiences from mine and different temperaments to ensure that we worked harmoniously. Emotional intelligence involves identifying one’s emotions and those of others, and using that knowledge to regulate one’s emotions and understand the emotions of others to ensure that the working relations do not destabilise or antagonise the emotions of team members (Lievens and Chan 2017). In addition, conflict resolution is improved when team members employ emotional intelligence because the emotions of team members are not used to escalate but rather resolve conflicts within the team. Similarly, social intelligence is about understanding the capacities and capabilities of oneself and others and the ability to learn from the successes and failures of oneself and others in different social settings (Lievens and Chan 2017). When working with a multicultural team, it is necessary to be curious about the lives of other team members without being intrusive, actively listen to others without interruptions, understand the diverse needs of the different team members, and develop empathy. In addition, cultural intelligence is critical for the effectiveness of a multicultural team working in a cross-cultural environment. It is the ability to function effectively in different cultural contexts requiring the understanding of different cultures and bridging those differences to make the team cohesive, harmonious, and effective (Ang et al. 2020). The combination of these three intelligences is critical in functioning effectively in cross-cultural settings.    

Similarly, I had to utilize my knowledge in conflict management to help address any conflicts that emerged in the team that would have influence our teamwork negatively. This way, I supported my leaders using the emotional, cultural, and social intelligences I had developed over time. Communicating effectively in a socially-appropriate manner while remaining culturally appropriate and emotionally sensitive were critical in resolving conflicts respectfully and fruitfully, such that valuable lessons were learned from the conflicts among the team members.

Lessons Learned and Skills Built During the Team Membership

I learned several valuable lessons about teamwork and being an effective team member. For instance, I learned that I have a functional and psychological role in my team based on my skill-set and personality.  I realised that although a team may have valuable technical skills that enabled each member to contribute uniquely to the overall team performance of the tasks, their good work could be easily undone if the team could not work together harmoniously and cohesively. In this regard, people skills were equally as important to technical skills in high-performing teams. The right mix of technical skills and personalities was critical because of the technical and psychological synergy it elicited in the team (Winsborough and Chamorro-Pewmuzix 2017). I realised that the psychological component was particularly important in multicultural teams because it promoted cross-cultural working practices in which members appreciated the cultural diversity and used it positively to enrich the team’s performance. This was the first time I was working closely with people from cultures that are starkly different from mine. Therefore, I gained insights that helped me realise the bias in the stereotypes I had of certain cultures, and appreciate their uniqueness after understanding various cultural aspects from the perspectives of my team members belonging to those cultural backgrounds. 

I developed several skills during my experience in working as a team member during the business planning activity. For instance, I developed my leadership skills by experiencing the effects of leadership in making a functional team. I learned that team leaders need to have a battery of leadership skills that can be deployed in different circumstances surrounding the team at different times. Apart from marshalling each member to make their best contribution to the team, team leadership plays a critical role in ensuring that the team keeps to the task according to the set plan and resolves conflicts speedily to prevent them from derailing the team’s efforts and focus. Similarly, I developed my practical, emotional, cultural, and social intelligences by dealing with team members drawn from different cultural backgrounds and with diverse social experiences. The practice I got from participating in the team activity particularly developed my practical intelligence, which helped me to understand what works and what does not in a complex team setting when undertaking a challenging team exercise.

Conclusion

My experiences of working in the business planning team delivered valuable lessons for advancing my personal and career development and growth. As I reflected on these experiences, I realized that I had gained many personal lessons in leadership and working in a cross-cultural environment. In summary, I learned the importance of distributed and participative leadership in managing diversely-constituted teams. Similarly, I realised the value of practical, social, emotional, and cultural intelligences in working with diverse team members in a cross-cultural setting. These valuable lessons were bolstered by my experiences in the York Strengths program. The York Strengths program contributed significantly to my developing leadership and cross-cultural working skills that are critical for my personal and professional growth. I built on my resilience, learning agility, authentic communication, and problem-solving. I believe that these lessons will help me improve personally and professionally as I prepare for the world of work after my studies.

Reference List

Aga, D.A., Noorderhaven, N. and Vallejo, B., 2016. Transformational leadership and project success: The mediating role of team-building. International Journal of Project Management, 34(5), pp.806-818.

Ang, S, Van Dyne, L and Rockstuhl, T 2020, ‘Cultural intelligence’, in Gelfand, MJ, Chiu, C and Hong, Y Handbook of advances in culture and psychology. Oxford University Press.

Fekry, A., Dafoulas, G.A. and Ismail, M., 2019. The relation between student behaviours in group presentations and their teamwork modalities using Belbin and MBTI analysis. Procedia Computer Science, 164, pp.292-300.

Forsyth, D.R., 2018. Group dynamics. Cengage Learning.

Karriker, J.H., Madden, L.T. and Katell, L.A., 2017. Team composition, distributed leadership, and performance: It’s good to share. Journal of leadership & organizational studies, 24(4), pp.507-518.

Krumm, S, Kanthak, J, Hartmann, K and Hertel, G 2016, ‘What does it take to be a virtual team player? The knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics required in virtual teams’, Human Performance, vol. 29, no. 2, pp.123-142.

Lievens, F. and Chan, D., 2017. Practical intelligence, emotional intelligence, and social intelligence. Handbook of employee selection, pp.342-364.

Suttle, R 2022, ‘Leadership styles & team building’, Hearst. https://smallbusiness.chron.com/leadership-styles-team-building-4833.html

University of York n.d., ‘More about York Strenghts’, https://www.york.ac.uk/students/work-volunteering-careers/skills/york-strengths/framework/

Winsborough, D and Chamorro-Pewmuzix, T 2017, ‘Great teams are about personalities, not just skills’, Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2017/01/great-teams-are-about-personalities-not-just-skills