Reflections of another…

I think developing a team agreement was a good first project because it allowed everyone to have input into how they want to work as part of a team. Our team came up with some good strategies to work together and an action plan if we do struggle.  We put a lot of emphasis on the various roles that exist within our group and tried to identify what other roles we are lacking in.

I think the team process has worked quite well so far with most people putting equal effort into the finished agreement. Hopefully as we get into more depth with the project plan everyone in the team will get more of a chance to contribute.

The only challenges or difficulties we may face are the same as those you face in any group or team situation – people have lives and they will always be more important than an assignment or project.  I think it’s always important to maintain that perspective because if you don’t have that consideration of each other how will we be able to work together?

Another difficulty may be that people are hesitant to throw around ideas and talk things through for fear of offending or being confrontational.  In my mind talking about an issue and putting your point of view across is just another way to come to an answer which isn’t necessarily your own, its not always about what you argue for being right, its just looking at it from another angle.

But I’m very pleased to say overall the team process so far for me has been rather hassle free.

As a ‘Brainstormer’ I guess my contribution to the team will be based around developing new ideas and solutions (failing so far).  It is only early days yet though. I’m looking forward to getting underway with the project. I completely understand why it is important to go through the team roles and the strengths and weaknesses of your team and development of a uniform team agreement but it can be a bit stifling for someone like me who just wants to – for lack of a better word – brainstorm and dissect what needs to be done and think about how we can approach this project.

With saying that, I think it is very important to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of not only your other team members but also yourself, because in a perfect world a team should be much more efficient than the multiple efforts of individuals. Simply because with a well coordinated team, skills and abilities are drawn from right across the spectrum hopefully resulting in the output being more perfected and holistically developed than that of an individual or a collection of individual efforts.

A weakness our team does have is that no-body has a preferred team role of a ‘coordinator’ which may or may not be a problem depending on how self directed the team decides to be. We have appointed a team leader which will make up for much of the weakness of not having someone who is naturally inclined to that type of role. However to balance it out we do have quite a few team workers which will mean getting in and getting the work done once decided upon shouldn’t be to arduous

According to the Queedom test my team role is ‘Brainstormer’ (plant, creator – innovator, innovator) – which is probably true because I enjoy complexity, imaginative ideas and the construct of concepts. The description also says Brainstormers love a challenge which I definitely agree with cause I feel challenge stimulates growth which I try to strive for in my life.

The strength of this preference is the imaginative side and the tendency to not be bounded by previous ways of doing things and are comfortable departing from the norm.

The weakness of this preference is the inability to come up with a plan of action because the stream of ideas is continuous and the attention to detail sometimes isn’t there. They also have the tendency to repeatedly change the plan and not complete what they originally set out to do.