What Now ? Take-aways from this week

What Now ? Take aways from this week

Now that the team project has been handed, that a bit of time has passed and that my thoughts on this elective are clearer it is time for a quick sum up of the Dos and Don’ts I have to keep in mind for future team projects.

Reminder of my previous goals:

Through the last two blog entries I was able to make a short analysis of my role in the team, the way our team worked and set myself some short-terms goals for the team project and activities of the week.

• I wanted to be less autonomous and interact more with my teammates by delegating more tasks to my colleagues. 
• I decided to go straight to the point and stop losing time by doing extensive researches on my own. The aim there was to have a more global overview of the project. 
• Lastly I wanted to take my leader role more seriously by showing more assertiveness and expressing my concerns to the team.

What actually went on:

• About autonomy & delegation: 

It took us time to define a specific role for each member of the team. Because we didn’t know each others before and since it was a short-time project (only two weeks) I found it difficult to do a strengths-based task assignment. Instead, we opted for a volunteer based task assignment: whenever a task was to be done, anyone who felt able to do it could express it and deal with the task.

For example, we had to translate the questionnaire in french, transcript the interview, put the report in shape or collect the data from the questionnaires. Those seemed to me like baby steps in the project that I could have done fast and easily but I made an effort to not jump on those occasion and let other team members take care of it. Thus I gained time, the work was shared more fairly and every member contributed by doing something he was at ease with.

I thus remained very autonomous on the completion of my parts of the project but managed to give some freedom to my team members in the way they completed their task. This way, I feel like I made the most of my « specialist » role, focusing on my area of the project - Team practices & processes-.

• About time management & extensive research

For this project our team had not a lot of time. Even though we were granted a longer deadline we wanted to finish the project on time and be as effective as possible.

I thought this short time would be a good way for me to remain focused on my area of expertise and to not lose time on thorough researches. In order to have the theoretical background necessary to the completion of the project we agreed on reading one chapter each of the syllabus, take notes on a shared document and then all be able to use it.

To be honest, it was a complete fail. People read their chapter, used them but skipped the sharing part. Speaking for me, I ended up reading the whole syllabus, « just to be sure » I wasn’t missing something and my time management was in the end not optimized in this group project.

• About trusting my guts and be a good leader

At some point during the week we agreed to make me the project leader (reminding deadlines to people, dividing the tasks …) and Corentin to be the people’s leader (piloting the motivation of people, enhancing cohesion, making sure everyone is still on board…).

In the facts the leadership style was very different since Andrea and I took the lead. I guess this happened for the following reasons:

• The main one would be that we conducted the interview with Mrs. De Carvalho. This gave us a good credibility later: we knew exactly the subject and were sort of one step ahead (when the other teammates were reading or doing the transcript of the interview we already thought and debriefed about it) 
• Andrea & I were the two students from our team to be in the HR track. As silly as this might sound, our teammates expected us to be more effective in this course and its requirements that were listed as HR ones. This course was under our specialty so we were to lead this team. 
• Finally our expectations were not the same. It is in my personality to not only want to pass a class but to pass it with flying colors. It is not a choice or a will but more of a state of mind to provide my best in any kind of situation. It was therefore obvious to me that this project should be not only done but very well done if ì wanted to be satisfied with it. In parallel, my teammates did not measure the stakes of this project the same way and directed their efforts toward other courses or simply had lower expectations. This wish to do better probably help me to drive my teammates and endorse the leader role. 

I think that understanding this last point (different expectations) helped me to be a better leader and to have the adequate level of assertiveness. Especially because this project was a short term one, I could not expect my teammates to upgrade their expectations to mine. Instead of being too assertive and asking them to dig deeper, do better or more, I simply encouraged them to do the best of what they could to do and were willing to do. It worked for this project but is not the most efficient solution for longer ones where higher commitment is necessary.

Reflection & Development Project :

All in all I was able to improve on some area but there still a long way to go for me to be a better team player. Focusing on the 3 areas mentioned earlier, here are my development axis for future team works.

• Delegation 

So yes, I delegated but to speak the truth, only on tasks that I considered as minor. I did not exclude anyone who wanted to be involved in a major task but it seemed inconceivable for me to miss one. For exemple, Anyone could participate to the interview itself but I could not not be there when it happened. My development plan would thus be to, little by little, continue to delegate and accept to not be present at every step of the process. This way all the teammates would be empowered and the benefit for me would be to focus on my area of expertise, this relates directly to the following part.

• Researches & Time management

To improve my time management I have to limit my researches to my area of expertise and this is always a fail because I can’t help but getting interested by subjects related to other tasks. My development plan is thus to plan ahead some devoted time to research and to stick to that time slot. Most of the time I derive from my initial topic of area and end up in the limbs of Google Scholar. Making a plan to organize my researches (timely and by topic) is the best way for me to stay focus.

• Leadership role

At last I think I am not yet ready to properly lead a team on my own. However, teaming up with Andrea made me more confident in this role. Therefore finding a paired leader on the same wave length as me could be a first step to develop my leadership skills and still learn some leadership behaviors from my pairs.

Once I feel confident enough I can thus endorse the leader role fully.