Don't Freak, It's Public Speaking...

Hello, welcome to week eleven,

Today I’m writing on something most people dread, and this is public speaking. I will be honest when I read that we would need to be doing a seminar which involved public speaking I almost ran for the hills. Just the thought of speaking in front of a crowd is enough to make me disappear quick smart, but, I had committed to doing the paper and it would be time to deal with it.

Once we had got into the group and received the information regarding our seminar it became obvious that the idea of recording ourselves for the seminar would be easiest. Our group is spread wide, we also all work and have family commitments, so we organized a weekend evening and we smashed it out. It wasn’t without its troubles; four of the five members were obviously struggling with the talking despite it being only to our group and the camera.

We had Nathan in our group, who was extremely confident in his ability to speak and he seemed to thrive on leading us through this. We all had our troubles forgetting words, stumbling on words we had used a thousand times and having the ability to make our speech flow. As a team I believe we really pulled together, we understood that the majority were struggling so there was never any pressure applied, the atmosphere remained in good spirits which helped immensely and we did very well. Some will no doubt see our seminar and see all our faults, but, I believe we all learnt from this, we all grew from it and I personally came away with more confidence in myself and my ability to speak. If you had asked me to speak to people I do not know, even just to a camera, a year ago I would have laughed and left the building before you would realise.

I found the beginning of this recording to be very frustrating for myself. I knew my topic, I knew the statistics and leading into the session I was confident in myself. I started my first section of my talk and made a mistake with a statistic, this hit me hard, I lost my thoughts and felt as though I knew nothing. I quickly regained focus after some group laughs, mainly at my cussing of myself. I gathered my thoughts and controlled by breathing. I think I did well overall, I stepped up to something that has always been a stumbling block for me and I feel good walking away from something that was a very good learning process for myself.

I quickly would like to take a moment to thank my group, we have worked well throughout this entire semester but most importantly for myself, they made this seminar assignment the best it could be. They were supportive and kept it very relaxed which helped immensely.

Ryan. 

Week 9: Team Work

Hello, readers and welcome.

Week 9 is proving to be a big week, late nights and lots of coffee, group report taking shape and the process of editing and revising has begun. This week’s blog is going to analyse the workings of my team and diverse roles within our team environment. I have split the post into five sections under their own headers. Enjoy.

Team Start-up

Our team was initially set up using our course forum. A post was put up looking for fellow members within the same location, we had several respondents and we went with the first five members to respond. We quickly formed a private Facebook page to get to know each other better. There was no thought process around the idea of what roles we would have or would be asked to take up, however it became clear we all wanted the same outcome and we clicked as a group quickly. Our group consists of five members, they are: Jade, Bridget, Shaun, Nathaniel and myself, and we make up the self-named group LabRats.  

Leadership

Upon starting our group report we acted on the instructions of our lecturer and voted a leader, this resulted in Jade being elected as team leader. What was obvious to me from the start was that our team was highly motivated in wanting the best possible marks and therefore I found the need for a single leader of less importance, this proved to be the outcome as a few of our members took up leadership roles in different ways. Our team has functioned almost entirely on what Lewin describes as the Laissez-faire model, in which the team makes the decisions and the team is highly motivated. Having been in many team environments I have often found a lack of a single leader can cause the environment to turn negative and seem directionless, what has worked well in this group is the willingness for multiple members to step up into a leadership role in some form to keep the momentum of the group moving forward. I believe this aligns with McGregor’s theory. Theory Y, which said if the job is satisfying the people will commit, they will seek responsibility and use skill, creativity and imagination to overcome problems. We all wanted the same result, therefore, the members were all willing to be leaders in their own way.

Team Roles

Before I delve too far into the roles that our team members played and continue to play, I just wanted to inform you, that I am using the Belbin Team Roles, full descriptions can be found at http://www.belbin.com/about/belbin-team-roles/.  I have listed below (in no order) the group members and the roles I have witnessed them take up and occasionally step into as needed:

Jade: Team Worker, Monitor Evaluator, Plant  

Bridget: Team Worker, Plant

Shaun: Completer Finisher, Monitor Evaluator, Coordinator

Nathan: Shaper, Implementer, Coordinator

Ryan: Coordinator, Team Worker, Resource Investigator

As we can see from the list above, we have most members taking on roles which Belbin mentioned as leadership within team roles, these being: Coordinator, Shaper and Monitor Evaluator. This meant that no matter the circumstances we always had a member or multiple members ensuring the work was flowing along and keeping everyone motivated in their own way. As an example, we decided to have a face-to-face meeting, Jade (our voted leader) was unable to attend due to family reasons yet the meeting continued smoothly mainly due to Nathan's ability as a Shaper and Shaun’s role Monitor Evaluator. There have been countless occasions throughout our time as a group when members have not only stood up as a leader but also applied different team roles, listened and allowed others to lead. The saying “too many chiefs not enough Indians” doesn’t seem to apply or it certainly hasn’t up until this point. I believe strongly that the combination of roles we have in the team have complemented each other very well. Not only did we have multiple leaders but we also knew how to work together to get the most from each other’s strengths.

Weaknesses

Nobody is perfect, you don’t get strengths without weaknesses. In a team environment, you can certainly strive for the perfect team. I’m not saying that our team is perfect and due to the short length required for the teamwork we won’t reach perfection. However, we have not been affected by any of the allowable weaknesses stated by Belbin. This certainly doesn't mean they aren't there, they just haven’t come to the forefront of our work. Several reasons could be:

• We work as a team but we are distance students located far apart, therefore we work alone, in our own time on, our own accord
• The short length of time in this group environment hasn’t forced the weaknesses out

Though I acknowledge that there will always be weaknesses, with the reasons above and the distinct roles the different members have taken on means we have nullified any possible weaknesses to this point.

Strengths

Perhaps one of the team's best strengths is the ability to have members use their roles positive attributes to overcome another roles weakness, even though I believe this may have been occurring without us realizing.  Furthermore, communication has been pivotal in the team's success till this point, the communication started very early in the process through Facebook messenger and has allowed the team to function to what I believe has been an exceptional level meaning we have been efficient and effective in completing tasks set by our tutors and our own set targets.

Concluding Thoughts

In conclusion, I am extremely happy with the progress our group has made and can only see it continuing if not improving through the final week of the report. We have functioned well as a team and have respected each person's role/s within the group. I am very excited to see our finished product and hope that it justifies our group efforts.