Team Role Belbin Self Inventory Education Essay

I am taking a subject names Managing Your Professional Performance in my third year second semester for my degree course. Mr Vedha is the lecture for this subject. This subject is a course that designed for students in University of Gloucestershine to improve capacity for an individual before step into society. This course provides knowledge of working culture and to avoid culture shock for a fresh graduate going to work for the first time.

The objective for this subject is to encourage and assist students with using key theoretical frameworks for students in developing their professional development and practices. According to Ennis 1987, critical thinking and skills practice is required in this module for student to have the ability to reflect questioning or doubt and to think in a reasoned way in order to develop their personal development as individuals, professionals and also as team members. There are two of the activities are selected to be discuss in this assessment.

Activity 1 of the Module: Team Role – Belbin Self Inventory

According to Dr. Meredith Belbin, the definition of team role mean that “A tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way”. http://www.belbin.com/rte.asp?id=8 It is very important for everyone to know their strength and weaknesses. It is because we are able to strengthen our strength and manage our weaknesses. We can know the role that we are in order to improve efficiency while we are in a team.

There are nine team roles types. According to Belbin Team Roles Theory http://www.srds.co.uk/cedtraining/handouts/hand40.htm, the team roles consists plant, resource investigator, coordinator, shaper, monitor evaluator, team worker, implementer, completer finishers and also specialist.

Learning Outcomes/ Reflection

I am in team six in this course or class. I am delegated the work to finish the task given by Mr Vedha. Mr Vedha is given us a piece of paper with some question on it and ask us to answer it carefully in order to understand you better. There is a list of question that needed to be answer. It is a team role test. The objective of this test is to identify our team role.

The information of this theory may benefit us. After we identify our team roles, it let us to build good working relationships, develop high-performing teams and raise self-awareness and personal effectiveness. I am doing the test very seriously and I am having the score that describe my personality. I am a monitor evaluator. I also know that each team roles has it own characteristics and having the ability to contribute to a team. However, a team can’t have all the members with the same team. This team can’t be a prefect team because the strength and weaknesses are mostly similar for all members. On the other hand, the team can only be perfect with all members with different team role. However, almost people have a mix of roles. It didn’t mean a team must have nine people with different role to be a success team. I have dominant and subdominant roles. I am also a coordinator and team worker. My score is the highest for monitor evaluator and the score for coordinator and team worker is the slightly lower.

I learn that all team roles having different strength and weaknesses. I understand myself better after I done the test. I know about my strength and I also can manage my weaknesses. Co-ordinator is a person-oriented leader. The position that suit is chairman or the leader in a team. This person is trusting, accepting and is committed to the team goals and objectives. The weaknesses of a coordinator is do not stand out in a team and usually do not have a sharp mind. Monitor evaluator contribute to the team at the times of crucial decision making. It is because they are capable to evaluate competing proposal. Monitor evaluator having a serious minded and tend to be slow in coming decision making because of thinking over and the decision never being wrong. The weaknesses are mind feel dry and boring or even over-critical. This person is bad in inspiring other. Team workers tend to keep team spirit up by allow other members to contribute effectively.

I learn about the benefit that this test to me. I know the role play for me while I am in a team. There are a lot of advantages and a well balanced team is build. This team is a prefect team with less conflict and enhance tolerance between members. It maximizes the contribution of each team members and minimizes the risk of mistakes being made. Each members knows the task they responsible and having the prefect outcome at the end. I understand the task that I should complete and let all my team members to do their best in their part.

Activity 1 of the Module: The Skill Mix

I am in team six in this course or class. We are delegated the work to finish the task given by Mr Vedha. Mr Vedha allows us to complete our task in the class or library. We are decide to finish the task given in the library. We are complete our task in our school library with desktop provided for student. There are for member in our team. One of my team member names Tan Fhee Chin is search the meaning of SKE through online search engine. I and Lily are searching how to sustain professional development across a ten year period and Cheong Siew Chin is doing the presentation slide with Microsoft Powerpoint software.

From this activity, I discovered the advantage of work in a team.During lecture, Mr. Vedha had explained team is ‘a group of people working towards a clear set of objectives who identify themselves as a team and share a number of common values’. When time and resources are limited, a good teamwork is a key success for finish a certain task effectively. Teams can be seen as a management strategy for the combination of skills, knowledge, and experience as well as developing the individual and the organisation.

There are various types of teams. Our group did not appointed any leader and we take own responsibility to work together for this activity. Consequently, our group is verified as self managed team because everyone of us is accountable for individual performance.According to O’Connell, Doverspike and Cober (2002), self-managed work team is characterized by members who responsibility for taking the quality of the work process and sharing in the management of the team. As well Katz and Kahn (1978) suggested that when team voluntarily and spontaneously shared their own goals and leadership, can provide an organizational with competitive advantage through increase in commitment, personal and organizational resources brought to bear on complex tasks.

Belbin Team Roles has its particular strengths and weaknesses to identify peoples behavioral, and each has essential contribution to make a team. According to Katzenbach and Smith (1993), team is form of a small number of complementary skills people to committed common purposes or goals for which they are mutually accountable. As everyone had different perceptions, therefore various types of ideas could be produce. And I found the energy from group participation that made me feel more energetic to contributing some idea.

After we finish and return all the information on the paper, 3 of us must explain clearly to the presenter. Then I discovered that the most important teamwork skill is the ability to communicate effectively. Communication is the process of sending and receiving information among people. The goal of communication is to get and give information and to ensure understanding among people. Because when we explain, we need to express our ideas clearly so that the presenter can get to the point and understood easily. A perfect communication occurs when a thought or idea was transmitted to the receiver perceived exactly the same mental picture as the sender (Robbins & Judge, 2011).

Learning Outcomes

In this class, I learn how to sustain my personal development or my SKE to

Group Activities

The first activity was the title about communication skill while the second ones was the discussion about skill, knowledge and experience.

Group Activity (1)

There are some course works which has been required for further learning. Firstly, Mr. Vedha has separated my entire classmate into a few groups of five members. I was with Ong Sian Jie, Tan Khang Hai, Andrew Loh and Lee Zhen Hong in the same group. Secondly, Mr. Vedha has a brief explanation about what is meant by communication. Thirdly, it was the time for we to find the best solution about what is the preferred communication methods used is efficient. And so on, we started our own discussion. Each of us has given different tools of communication such as word of mouth, Facebook messenger, g-mail and etc. After our discussion, we had mutually agreed to pick Facebook messenger as the best tool for communication. The reason why we pick it because we found that nowadays a lot of people who are working within the organization has a high frequency of using Facebook to deliver their message. Although some of the organizations have create barrier for preventing employees to use Facebook when they are working. But it is undeniable that it is a trend for make the speed of delivery message more instant and accurate. Furthermore, use of Facebook messaging will avoid of misunderstand of pronunciation problem. Finally, Andrew Loh be the lucky man to output for our outcomes..

Reflection (Group Activity 1)

After this activity, I found that to communicate with my fellow friends, it is not as simply as I thought before. According to Elizabeth J. (1954), an individual’s self-image can be determined by the major direction of communication: the transmissions and the reception of information (Elizabeth J., 1954). When we are going to express information to the third party, it is essential to speak our voice with clear, relaxed and accurate. Besides that, we must make sure that our target audience can actually receive the message which we are going to deliver. To be a communicator is not easy but through continuing practice in front of people will improve our communication quality. It is because I believe that practice makes perfect.

Group Activity (2)

The second activity is about what is the proper value, attribute and belief is needed as a university student. Attribute is internal characteristic of people individually (SOA, 2005). Belief is the study that ‘what we see, hear, experience and feelings’ when we are childhood. Value is the perception that we deem it is important and can include framework such as equity, education and effort (BIS, 2011). In the same way, we have a group discussion in five members. Mr. Vedha gave us a piece of mahjong paper and required us that what is the value, attribute and belief as a first graduate university student who is in the workforce.

One of my group mates decided to use a funny way to present our ideas. We were using the marker pen which provided and then we start to draw the ‘variable’. For example, we drew two cars knocked with each other and by the way, a finger of ‘one’ beside of knocked cars. The answer of this crazy combination of pictures mean ‘chuang yi’ (creativity) in Chinese word. When we were presenting, we can sensed that our efforts had successful attract the audiences.

Reflection ( Group Activity 2)

What are actually good attributes, values and belief of a person who are new in workforce? Hardworking is essential and the key point. We must put more effort to attain knowledge and acquire skill when necessary for the job requirements. Besides that, our belief will lead us to determine what to do and what not to do. And so on, our value will indirect create superior outcomes for the organization.

Conclusion

In my conclusion, this course has teaches us so many guidelines to improve our personal performance and self-development. Some issues such as CPD promote that we must unstoppable improve our personal quality and capacity. Technology advancement made the organization requiring talent people who are expert, knowledgeable and willing to change. So that, we must try to update ourselves time-to-time in other to make our mind become openness. Furthermore, Kolb’s stated four elements of learning style: converger, diverger, assimilator and accommodator (Kolb D. et al., 1996). After the evaluation, I found that I am more prefer to be a diverger. Therefore, I will focus on enlarge my strength (creativity) to help my loyal organization to add value in future.

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