PSY 302 Week 3 DQ 2 Team Dynamics

Week 3 DQ 2 Team Dynamics

Although originally an Eastern concept, team culture has slowly been integrated into the culture of the American workplace. As we learned this week, there are several types of teams that one can be a part of: self-managed work team (S.M.W.T.) , manager-led teams, cross-functional teams, project teams, virtual teams and more. Based on your reading this week, consider the following:

Using your previous experience as a team member, describe a team experience that lacked cohesion and/or was inefficient. After reviewing the components of team composition (i.e., personality, cognitive abilities, diversity, size), that are listed in your course text, describe how the components correlated to the challenges your team faced. Additionally, describe one of your positive team experiences and how these components were essential to the success of your team.

Your initial post should be a minimum of 250-300 words. You must use at least one scholarly, peer-reviewed source that was published within the past five years and is cited according to APA guidelines as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.

I have the experiences of working in a team and many of these were negative. Any team work needs effort from the team as a whole. When I worked as manager, I noticed that managers in charge of the day and night shifts did not share their decisions. That is why we had no idea what the other manager did. This lack of communication put us in negative scenario. Sometimes I found that anyone calling out sick in the day time was not passed on to the manager of the next shift. So the manager for the next shift felt completely puzzled as to how to manage the absence of the staff. However, I cooperated with the night-time manager to solve these problems that arose from the day manger’s not sharing information.

According to Youssef (2012, ch. 9.3), it is a complex task to form a team as the team needs to have individuals with different attributes that are needed by the team and at the same time it is difficult to configure those attributes for the team members. Researchers have pointed out different characteristics that affect the team but among all of these four are of most importance affecting the whole team. The team size and its diversity are important. Also the personality and cognitive ability of the members are important. Members’ personality can have much effect on the team performance. It determines whether the team can act together. I and the night-time manager come with sound personalities and at the same time we act considerately for two of us. That is why we two become a very good team. At the Sonic we two also looked for right staff to work in our shift. We tried to see which members build together a good team so that we can use to mange extra work. We also discussed how we can get the job done efficiently. In all these cases our personality mattered most.

In fact, when I had the liberty to choose the members for the night team, I enjoyed a very successful night shift. A manager needs to know which members can work together well and who are brighter than others. The brighter fellows can help the lesser ones. When the store manager found out that our efforts resulted in more sales in the night shift, he agreed to let us manage our way.

Youssef, C. and Noon, A. (2012). Industrial/Organizational Psychology. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.