Describe your most recent experience working in a team.  Using that, identify the following:
•    Define each of these roles: Encourager, Gatekeeper, Harmonizer, Initiator, or Summarizer.
•    Which role did you play as well as each of the members of your team?
•    How effective was your team? Meaning, did you achieve your desired goal?
•    Reflecting on the experience, what would you have done differently? Explain.

 

Outline

Title: Working in a team

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            A. Conclusion

Working in a team

            Working in a team is excellent, and the experience is usually considered an effective avenue for thought-sharing towards achieving a common objective. The members of a team share ideas that aim at a common goal, and work is divided amongst yourself to achieve efficiency. Comradeship is developed and the creative concepts shared are meant to uplift the team's spirit, and the organization will benefit in terms of positive growth. However, a team will not always experience a smooth relationship since there is always a clash of personalities, free-riding individuals, issues of blame, and people that prefer to work independently as they consider it to be more productive. Therefore, teamwork can be both beneficial and favorable if the strategy used is resourceful.

            I have recently worked in a team, and team members' involvement was both of assistance and disadvantageous. Almost all the team members were cooperative, and they did not pose a problem towards achieving the common objective that we had set together in the beginning. Some of the team members were there to ride the wave with others and not help in realizing efficiency in our dealings. The goal of our team was to increase sales in the cloth line store that I was working in. Together with the team members, we agreed on the main ideas and points to be followed and the interval breaks that we were supposed to take to achieve our shared objective.

Most of the team members were encouragers as they could raise the team's spirits with both minimal and maximum responses to the issues being discussed as a group (Zavala, 2014). The encouragers were active in reminding those who were contrary to what we had discussed in the team members' meetings. The encouragers were helping the gatekeepers in maintaining the required level of communicative sense of balance in the group. Gatekeepers try their best to be transformational in the controlling and moderating task, and they are known to take the role similar to that of a supervisor (Zohar & Luria, 2010). The team members are usually captured by the managing actions of the gatekeepers of the team, and whenever they see the gatekeeper, they almost immediately align by the team's agreements.

            There are always struggles in the team of the selected members due to differences in opinion, or when the gatekeepers tend to correct others, it might go overboard. I realized that some team members were quick to calm the situation. For instance, two team members in our team were at each other's throats as to who was supposed to stand by the entrance and welcome the clients. The argument had heated up until two team members decided to be toe on the heel to calm the situation down. The ones who calm the differences between team members who have had differences are the ones who are referred to as harmonizers. Harmonizers will give way for the truce to take over the conflict, and the team members can be excused for a certain amount of time for the mediation process to take over instead of having a spill-over to other members (Hollingsworth et al., 2021). The harmonizers take the role of conciliating differences between disagreeing team members.

            Sometimes, it would reach a point the team members would run out of ideas and topics for progressing the objective of the teamwork. However, some members would develop strong contributory points to see the team through a particular phase. These team members were a gem since they helped the group open up their minds towards accepting the flexibility instead of being rigid on one they were familiar with. According to Aime et al. (2014), the person who comes up with contributory points when others are stuck is called initiators. The initiators in our group could move the members with their innovative ideas, and they could trigger constructive discussions among members. Without the initiators, I do not think the group's objective could have been realized as quickly as it happened.

            I realized that we could forget the significant points and ideas raised whenever we had an important meeting with the team members. At the end of the discussion meeting, team members would start asking questions concerning the most obvious things. But thanks to several members who would volunteer themselves to explain everything discussed in the meeting slowly and clearly. They could summarize the main points addressed by the team members, which ensured that everyone was on the same frequency of thoughts. When I did my research, I realized that this kind of team member who would summarize the key points was referred to as generally as the summarizers (Aime et al., 2014). Also, I realized that the summarizers always had a notebook and a pen that they could use to record everything that we were discussing, something that the others did nothing about. The summarizers were very crucial in every undertaking of the team towards realizing the common objective.

            The team was gifted with a full capacity of individuals capable of ensuring quality control for efficient results. After specific interventions of the team members in several discussions and exertions, the organization recorded the highest percentage of profit returns in a very long period. I played the role of the gatekeeper since I can provide reproof in a very humble but persuading way. The skill of persuasion is essential in my supervisory undertaking, and it has helped me to climb rank to sales department manager recently. The general aptitude of having the capability to deal with every personality in a team has made me know the right choice of words to use in persuasion and reprimanding.

            The other team members were well organized. Within no time, they classified themselves as individuals that could deal with the threatening situation to hinder progress. The encourager, gatekeeper, harmonizer, initiator, and summarizer groups were well represented and almost balanced. The understaffed group was that of the encouragers. Still, I was constantly chipping in to help whenever I could since I also had an inconsequential capability to influence people to contribute to the topic.

            The team reached its goal in a brief period, something that was not expected. We had underrated ourselves by giving ourselves a timespan of six months to achieve the objective of increasing sales. But according to the half-year report put together, sales had gone up by a more significant margin than the expected one. The team members were as determined as I was since I had spelled what the positive sales report could mean for the organization and employees in general. A reward was promised, and the team appraisal objective was in place for efficient realization of results. The team's intervention inspired the regional manager. He sent over a group of individuals from the region's branches to survey what had happened to increase the sales within a short period. The sent individuals were surprised at the simplicity of the team members, but the determination they were showing was not something that could be hidden easily.

            I was surprised by the team's effort to continue increasing effort and work to the set period when the group agreed it could dissolve. The determination the team had was immense, and I was more delighted to be part of them. However, most of the team members were grunting themselves on how some particular team members were being favored more at the expense of their efforts. Jealousy was brewing in the team, and being the gatekeeper, I had no means to address the issue since I was favored. As the favored few, it would have sounded unfair and conceited to discourse our feelings to the other group menbers of how we would also help them realize their inner desires. We waited for too long, which could have broken the team spirit even before we could have reached the set timeline for the team. The team was about to crumble, but we could address the issue thanks to the harmonizers and initiators that the group was blessed to have. Perhaps we could have handled that earlier instead of waiting for a later date, leading to catastrophic results.

            Teamwork should be organized, and all the team members should be involved in decision-making to avoid conflicts later. The encourager, gatekeeper, harmonizer, initiator, and summarizer groups are critical in the team's goals.