When I was going to college… the first time, it was the most
dreaded three words “get into teams”. I
should probably examine my trust issues because trust was something that
perhaps does not come naturally to me. I don’t trust. I do not have many past examples
in my life to make me feel as if trusting and letting go of my safe control and
hoping for the best is an ideal attitude. Successful outcomes are by good
design and preparation. I had so many ups and downs with math in high school
that honestly my family did not think college would be such a good fit for me.
I brought home my first ever straight A’s during my first semester of college.
It was one of my proudest accomplishments and was not the last time I received
them, for the record. Sadly like a sucker punch to my ego my ‘mom’ asked me if
I thought getting a two year technical degree would be more sensible because
she could not see me making it through four years of school and with a trade at
least I would have something to fall back on. By the time I was a junior in
college I was not going to trust someone who showed up to class to merely just
pass the time with my tuition money and my one chance to prove to myself and
others that I could overcome those prejudgments I faced in those early days at community
college.
Group work team leader? More like group work czar, dictator
of winning only. Sometimes I gave others a chance, but not everyone is as high
strung as I am. In Spanish we had group quizzes. The team thought there was too
much material to thoroughly cover so we would routinely break up sections and
that person would inform the team during the quiz on their assigned subject
matter. Secretly I studied all of the material. I did not trust. Luckily I had
this inclination because sleepy partner or lazy friend would show up and when
the quiz started say, oops, I didn’t do my section, I guess we will have to
guess. Not cool. There was no charter, nothing to hold us accountable for our
responsibilities, actions, or inactions.
Flash-forward (cough) years later from my college graduation
with my Bachelor’s degree and I have embarked on another educational pursuit.
This time it is a Master of Science in Leadership and those diehard habits of
refusing to relinquish control will no longer fulfill the requirements of group
work. Entering into group work now it is hard to tell if you should proceed
with arms wide open or with your battled armor ready, but I get it. There is a
lot on the line when you are pursuing a graduate degree, it does not come easy
and it does not come cheap; I know how much it is per credit hour.
Acknowledging the high importance aside, I am taking an
online class and am paired in a virtual team. It is blend of being a natural
work team, since we share the same type of work due to the structure of the
program; however, just like a temporary task team, the band is going to break
up in nine weeks. Parting is such sweet sorrow. I hope. We have an uphill
battle because my team was composed of individuals in Indonesia, the UAE, and
Afghanistan. I am holding it down for America and am representing from Florida.
While I am sleeping, I have a team member that is twelve hours ahead of me. He
already knows if Halloween is going to be a good day or not before I even wake
up!
This is a factor that surely inhibits our ability to make
decisions and solve problems, as phone calls and text messages are not really
an option. It is also not like we can set a block of time aside and work
together in real time. We have been relying on our handy, dandy discussion
board within our class and it has been doing the trick for central
communication. To throw a wrench into the mix, my previous team member from my
class prior to this ended up dropping the course. We received a new member at
the beginning of week two while we had already begun input into our team. But
hey, I have a buddy stateside (I think) so it is half global, half local! This
week we are focused on the formation of our team and have been preparing a
charter, which will guide our processes and operations and also create a
backbone for problem solving and taking corrective action so that no one can
fall asleep on the job.
Right out the gate during the first week I received a super
intense email from one of my team members that wanted to feel us out and ask
some probing questions, I think just to see if we are on the same page. It
asked things like how much time are you willing to devote to the team
assignment, outside of our other assignments and, what type of grades are we
interested in receiving. Bad Casey was tempted to say that a “C” only gets you
on academic warning if it is the first time. But alas, as much as I want to
tease my teammate…in my mind… to ease the tension, I appreciate an honest,
direct approach. Just because I did not say it myself, does not mean I was not
thinking it. Something like that could have been an issue concerning the
authority or power for our team. There was a great deal of worrying about “me”
and the high concern for self could have dominated and overthrown the focus instead
of really being about the team, but rather being about the task accomplishment.
Are we here to learn? Are we here to get certain grades? Are we here to
collaborate? From that there was a step back and we were all able to share our
voice and those mirages that you thought was trouble on the horizon was just a
little bump in the wavy pavement. No big deal.
In full disclosure I wondered if I was going to end up on
the other side of my former group work czar character from years past, not just
with one team member, but all of them. I have kept a watchful eye on my
classmates whether we are attached as a team or not. I noticed how early, how
eager and active they have been in the class discussion boards. I would say I
am a middle of the tier, I show up on time to the party. Not too early and not
fashionably late. I like talking but make a point to share extra if I feel I
have something important or useful to say. I also noticed in the creation of
the charter that a potential obstacle mentioned is that we may not all approach
assignments the same way. I cannot help but feel this is directed at me, but to
be fair, it is probably an accurate assessment. I have never exactly fit in,
but what I think my team is starting to learn is that I can blend in as much as
I may stand out. Glitter is my favorite color and I may seem too involved with
pop culture. My examples lean toward the modern, the artistic. I am not
strictly academic in tone or voice. I am a younger lady while my team members
are gentlemen; of course we are going to think differently. The way I see it is
that I am a Taylor Swift; they may be a Garth Brooks, an Allen Jackson, and a George
Strait. We all do the same thing (country music… leadership…) but have a
different way going about it, but at the end of the day there is room for us all
to be wildly successful. There is not one right way. I hope this is something I
can share with my team, or anyone I encounter, really. The things I think that made
me feel apprehensive, will ultimately be very positive behaviors for our team
to be successful in completing our tasks. An honest, direct, cohesive, timely,
driven, thoughtful contribution is what I expect to see from us. Now that we
are past establishing who we are, I think we are going to hit the ground running
with collaboration and not fret about competing with each other.
Some positive interventions that I have witnessed from the
charter process alone ties in with our collective concern for high quality work
and to make a charter that will be able to stand on its own. The idea was presented by one of our group
members to synthesize and clarify our individual input and summarize the work
into a different type of document, a word document versus the standard form. It
is something I have never seen done before. It is not a difficult thing to do,
but it shows how our team is willing to push for a little bit more than is
usually done. Frankly, we are such quick communicators that instead of
procrastinating and dragging our feet with our responses we have been quick
with the decisions we have made. We know what we want, it has been made clear,
and we are ready and willing to go out and get it, which is really what a
high-performance team is all about.
Reference: Brown, D. R. (2011). An
Experimental Approach to Organization Development (8th ed.). Upper Saddle
River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
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