Team Dynamics

Team Dynamics is how a group of two or more that works together for a common goal. One definition of a team is: two or more individuals associated in some joint action. (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (1976). In the business & education world, these joint actions should have some mission or objective that achieves results like a research paper. My Team C has come together with a common goal: Writing a successful paper for week 5 on “What safeguards exist currently to ensure academic honesty & are they working?” For this to be possible we must learn how to work as a team.

Through completing the Team C Charter we have learned the dynamics of how we, as a team, will work together to complete our goal of producing a well written paper on time with equal participation from each member. Each team members has different strengths and weaknesses in our intelligences. We have members that are strong in Logical-Mathematical, Interpersonal, Musical & Visual-Spatial. All these levels of intelligences should make for a great paper. We also have different personality types in our group like the Thinker, the Organizer, the Adventurer & the follower.

We also addressed potential barriers that we may encounter, like scheduling conflicts due to personal or work related issues & technological boundaries, for each person may be on a different level in this area. Also, the time zone factor which is the biggest & you must prioritize it for the benefit of the team & the competency of each members contributions. Trust must be earned by the team members & leader through fulfilling duties, assignments, & commitments. (Temme, J. & Katzel, J. (1995)

The first step is communication which is probably the most important factor in team dynamics. So we decided to set ground rules for the team like checking in daily or nightly to the Team C forum, complete assignments as prearranged & discussed, as well as, do our best to attend scheduled team forum chat-room sessions. We have decided to set up Yahoo instant messaging for some communication, mainly due to the time zone problem. For emergencies we have exchanged personal information like phone numbers & private emails. Plus, Dan, our team leader can & should be notified in case of emergencies.

Planning & implanting are the next steps in producing a team project. We also evaluated our individual strengths & areas for improvement. This will help the team when it comes to planning for our goals & objectives. A team must a common set of goals & objectives, which each member must be actively involved with the our team research paper & sharing the responsibilities. Our team seems to have a wonderful variety of attributes to offer one other but of course there always room for improvement which we also noted for ourselves, personally. (Carol Carter, Joyce Bishop, Sarah Lyman Kravits.––2nd ed.)

Evaluation