Team-building

A team is “a small group of people with complementary skills, committed to common performance goals, and mutually accountable” according to Johannes’ slide. A group of learners with a common assignment is NOT necessarily a team, it’s much more than that. This journal entry aims to explore the importance of team-building and why it is crucial during a design process or in ANY other context that involves teams.

There is generally a similar pattern when a team or group processes a task. They comes in three rings, one including the other. The inner circle would be task processes, then the transactional processes, then the outer-most ring would be the non goal-oriented social interactions. All of these build upon each other to build the team into reaching their goals. Forming groups, we had to discuss the relationship between the second and the third circle, and how these contribute to the efficiency of task processes.

We concluded that the task process are actions to reach the goal, transactional processes include every meeting, every e-mail, and every information share, and the non-goal-oriented interactions include everything else, such as socializing in a informal setting. These are all important group dynamics that build upon each other, if a team does not commit to non-goal-oriented interactions, the team might be stiffer with one another and the end-goal might be harder to reach. On the other hand, if a team pays too much attention on informal interactions, that wouldn’t be an efficient team either due to lack of focus towards the goal. There must be a balance within the three rings for a more successful outcome.

What are group dynamics? Group dynamics are unspoken communications in group discussions. They’re non-verbal, including expressions, movements, tone of voice, selection of words. Members are generally not aware of these communications and they’re usually more genuine than verbal communications. Group dynamics play a significant role within any organization, and the important thing to remember with these structures is that they’re made up of people with different ideas, motivations, background, and sometimes even different agendas. Important aspects of a group that works well together is how individuals interact with each other and how individuals react with the group. Positive relationships are important in a group, and understanding them is equally as important. In order to develop good group dynamics, we must first develop good relationships.

In any platform you can find about team building, you can generally find six important steps to building a successful team :

1. Focus on roles.
2. Value each role.
3. Communicate.
4. Set goals.
5. Celebrate successes and failures.
6. Know each other.

Many argue that communication is the most important aspect of successful team-building. Teams that communicate complete projects in a quicker and more efficient amount of time than others. They also are more accurate in their work than others. Effective communication also allows team members to understand their roles and the roles of everyone else on the team.

As a designer, learning the importance of developing good group dynamics is essential. A designer could work with a team of other designers with similar skills, but it’s also very likely that they would come across working with people who tend to work with other mediums and master in other skills. For example, designers work with programmers, back-end developers, engineers, and other roles quite often as an innovations team. So it’s important to pay attention to group dynamics when members have complementary skills.

An assignment given by Johannes was to create a group contract and establish ground group rules as an exercise. Here it goes below:

GROUP RULES

In collaboration with Nefeli Alousi, Therese Casio Persson, Monica Posmaesi, and Julija Rukanskaitė

I. Ground rules

1. Attendance

• How often we meet is dependant of the workload, however the minimum is once a week.
• We could meet one of the days when we don’t have any lectures or before/after a lecture.
• And the time we spend is between 30 min – 3 hours.
• Planning together and concluding after each meeting.
• If necessary, appoint a chairperson
• Everyone communicates about their upcoming absence or as soon as possible, using a group communication tool. The reasons for absence should be discussed. Absence is acceptable in regular meetings but not in oficial group presentations / examinations.

2. Tardiness

• We have a common goal to be on time. In this way we respect each other’s time.

3. Enforcement

• If anyone breaks the group contract, that person buys one round of (alcoholic) beverage. (haha)
• The person does a thorough explanation to why they have broken the group contract.
• He or she will be forgiven if they have brought something edible. (haha)

4. Information Management

• One person should be in charge of taking notes for every meeting and depending on the kind of information, either take photos and share with the group through drive or post the notes in a shared document.

5. Agenda Building and expectations

• To get everyone involved
• Equal work/involvement/contributions
• To pass the course
• That everyone can express their feelings thoughts
• That everyone feels good
• To have a common goal
• Divide the writing equally and do the presentations together
• Write together in google docs, preferably in the same room or through skype

6. Confidentiality

• As long as all group members have agreed in sharing information about our work, all actions shall remain between the members.

II. Developing a Productive Team

A healthy team is built on trust and respect of every team member.  Every team member should always be considerate of the different group members individual personality types and experiences of working in a group. The team should always strive towards optimizing the group work by being aware of the members strengths and weaknesses. The team should always have the projects best interests in mind and not let personal issues interfere. The team should also find a way of communicating which is comfortable for every member.   

III. Decision Making in Teams

Everyone should be informed and participate in decision making.

Types of decisions:

• Low involvement: could be made just by members that are present;
• Medium involvement: should be made by consulting every member;
• High involvement: should be made by reaching mutual consensus.