Importance of Teamwork, English homework help

Discussion

Importance of Teamwork

One of the most important skills to success in your career is the ability to work in teams to solve problems. Research by Smith and Forbes (1997) found that the ability to analyze and solve problems while working with others is a crucial skill for the 21st century.

• If your degree is in the business field, your career may depend on how well you can manage cultural diversity in a group setting.
• Much of what happens in the healthcare field occurs in teams. For example, physicians, nurses, physical therapists, and social workers may all work together to plan a patient’s treatment regimen, as well as to make decisions about when patients are ready to be discharged. Most major hospitals now have teams of physicians who will collaborate to develop the best plan for treatment. They may even bring in an “expert” from other major hospitals to become a part of the team – possibly through virtual meetings.
• The legal field always works in teams, whether you are in the paralegal field or in the criminal justice field.

In human resources or office management, again you will be a part of a team or network of people in which there must be team effort in decision making.

After reviewing the Week 8 Lecture and reading how teamwork plays such an important role in each of the above, answer the following:

• What role (Week 8 Online Lecture, “Effective Member Roles”) do you usually take when you are working as part of a team and why? (Task Roles, Maintenance Roles, Dysfunctional Roles and Formal Team/Meeting Roles)
• Do you like working as part of a team or would you prefer to work alone? Explain your preference.
• There are times when an individual team member could or should make an independent decision on behalf of the team. Think about the career for which you’re pursuing your degree; describe an example of when and why an individual team member could or should make a decision on behalf of the team.
• As a team moves through the stages from Forming to Performing (Week 8 Online Lecture, “Stages of Team Development”), what kinds of changes occur and how can they impact the effectiveness of the team?

Assignment (within 300 -400 words)

Each of us is part of some type of group or team. You are part of a group/team when you are in class, at work, with your family, at church, in most extracurricular activities, even when you are with friends. Choose any group/team in which you work together with others to accomplish a task and answer the following based on YOUR membership in that group/team:

• What is your group/team and what is the group/team trying to accomplish
• How were the members of your group/team selected?
• What is your role(Week 8 Lecture, “Effective Member Roles”:Task Roles, Maintenance Roles, Dysfunctional Roles and Formal Team/Meeting Roles) in the group/team?
• Describe at least two unwritten rules(also known as ‘norms’: an expectation that group members have about how others in the group will think and behave as a group; unwritten rules of group conduct) that exist within your group/team.
• Which type of Decision-Making Method(Week 8 Lecture: Autocratic, Democratic, or Consensus) does your group/team normally use? Describe the process.
• Using the communication lessons you have learned this week, along with any of the communication lessons you have learned up to this point in our course, what would (or will) you now do differently to help this or any of your groups/teams reach their goals?(Please focus on the communication lessons:for example, while the suggestion to ‘wash your hands before the meeting’ could be valuable, it doesn’t have anything to do with communication.)