Working in teams and groups has over the years been promoted as one of the best approaches to achieve great results not only in a formal environment such as in organisations but also in informal environment. The proponents argue that working in teams and/or groups create a platform to promote social facilitation and control as well as tap the synergy associated with teams and groups (Glassop 2002). On the other hand, some argue that groups and/or teams have a disadvantage in the sense that they create room for groupthink, which promotes irrational decision-making. Furthermore, Sunstein and Hastie (2015) reiterate that groups can easily contribute to social inhibition and social loafing whereby some individuals fail to make any meaningful contribution with the hope that the other members will perform their tasks. Despite the conflicting perceptions towards group and teamwork, there is a need to observe that creating a platform for people to work together plays a critical role in promoting improved performance. This essay reflects on our teamwork as we prepared a presentation on Performance Measurement System at Google.
多年来，团队合作一直被视为在正式环境（如组织）和非正式环境中取得巨大成果的更佳方法之一。支持者认为，团队和/或小组合作创造了一个平台，以促进社会便利化和控制，并利用与团队和小组相关的协同作用（Glassop 2002）。另一方面，一些人认为团体和/或团队有一个劣势，即他们为群体思维创造了空间，从而促进了非理性决策。此外，Sunstein和Hastine（2015）重申，群体很容易造成社会抑制和社会游手好闲，一些人无法做出任何有意义的贡献，希望其他成员能够完成他们的任务。尽管人们对团队和团队合作的看法相互矛盾，但需要注意的是，为人们创造一个共同工作的平台在提高绩效方面起着至关重要的作用。这篇文章反映了我们的团队合作，因为我们在谷歌准备了一份关于绩效衡量系统的报告。
To begin with, the initial stages after the formation of our team proved to be difficult and as such, we were unable to make significant progress towards achieving our goals and objectives. Notably, after the formation of our team, the members assumed that since we knew each other because of being students from the same class, we would be able to work on our project easily and probably emerge as the best team. However, to our surprise, the initial stages were marred with disagreement and conflicts between members, particularly regarding the best approach that we could adopt to ensure that our team was effective. For example, while some members thought that it was necessary to appoint a leader to lead our team, others argued that there was no need for a designated leader and instead, each member could act as a leader depending on the circumstances and the tasks we were working on. The disagreements and conflicts during the initial stages of our team reflect the stages of team development as highlight by Bruce Tuckman’s team development model. In reference to Bonebright (2010), Tuckman’s model promotes reiterate that team development goes through four main stages namely forming, storming, norming and then performance. Whereas not all teams goes through the entire stages as proposed by Tuckman, I think our team’s experience reveal that after the forming, we moved to the storming stage, which was characterised by a high level of disagreement and conflicts among members. Importantly, I think the underlying factor to the disagreement within our team was individuality, with each person thinking that what he or she proposed to the team was the right way of doing things. Researchers and scholars agree that during this stage, a team risks total failure that could lead to its disintegration (Bonebright 2010). Nonetheless, in our case, we managed to address our differences since the failure to address them would have contributed to the team failing in its presentation.
首先，我们团队成立后的最初阶段证明是困难的，因此，我们无法在实现我们的目标方面取得重大进展。值得注意的是，在我们的团队组建之后，成员们认为，由于我们是同一个班级的学生，所以我们彼此认识，因此我们能够轻松地完成我们的项目，并可能成为更好的团队。然而，令我们惊讶的是，成员之间的分歧和冲突破坏了初始阶段，特别是关于我们可以采取的更佳方法，以确保我们的团队是有效的。例如，一些成员认为有必要任命一名领导来领导我们的团队，而另一些成员则认为没有必要指定一名领导，而是每个成员都可以根据具体情况和我们正在处理的任务担任领导。我们团队初始阶段的分歧和冲突反映了Bruce Tuckman团队发展模型所强调的团队发展阶段。参考Bonebright（2010），塔克曼的模型重申团队发展经历了四个主要阶段，即形成、冲击、规范和绩效。虽然并非所有团队都像塔克曼所建议的那样经历了整个阶段，但我认为我们团队的经验表明，在组建之后，我们进入了攻势阶段，其特点是成员之间存在高度的分歧和冲突。重要的是，我认为团队内部分歧的潜在因素是个性，每个人都认为他或她向团队提出的建议是正确的做事方式。研究人员和学者们一致认为，在这一阶段，团队可能会面临彻底失败的风险，这可能导致团队解体（Bonebright 2010）。尽管如此，在我们的案例中，我们设法解决了我们的分歧，因为未能解决这些分歧会导致团队在陈述中失败。
Apart from the disagreement and conflicts among members in my team, there are other challenges that threatened our success. To begin with, I think as a team we did not plan well our meetings and as such, we only met a few times, which was not sufficient to allow comprehensive participation of members. With this in mind, members were forced to be as brief as possible to ensure that we complete our presentation on time. Speaking from this point of view, I observed that some members were reluctant to make contributions for fear that they would be asked to be as brief as possible. Therefore, some of our team meetings were characterised by low morale among some members who felt that the team lacked an environment to promote self-expression. According to Herzberg’s 2-Factor Theory, there a different factors in a workplace that either promotes or undermines the satisfaction levels of employees in such an environment (Sanjeev and Surya 2016). For example, while motivators such as achievement and recognition promote a high level of satisfaction among employees, hygiene factors such as relationship with leaders and work itself promote dissatisfaction among employees. From Herzberg’s 2-Factor Theory, I think the process of preparing the presentation undermined the motivation levels of some team members due to the fact that it did not give room for members to fully speak out their ideas and as such, this limited their contribution in the team. Furthermore, due to limitations on the amount of time one could use to make a contribution in the team eliminated opportunities for members to gain recognition for their contribution, leading to low levels of morale among members.
除了团队成员之间的分歧和冲突，还有其他威胁我们成功的挑战。首先，我认为作为一个团队，我们没有很好地计划我们的会议，因此，我们只举行了几次会议，这不足以让成员全面参与。考虑到这一点，成员们被迫尽量简短，以确保我们按时完成报告。从这个角度讲，我注意到一些成员不愿意发言，因为担心要求他们尽量简短。因此，我们的一些团队会议的特点是一些成员士气低落，他们认为团队缺乏促进自我表达的环境。根据Herzberg的双因素理论，在这样一个环境中，工作场所中有不同的因素会提升或降低员工的满意度水平（Sanjeev和Surya，2016）。例如，虽然成就和认可等激励因素可以提高员工的满意度，但与领导的关系和工作本身等卫生因素会导致员工的不满。根据Herzberg的双因素理论，我认为准备演示文稿的过程削弱了一些团队成员的动机水平，因为它没有给成员充分表达想法的空间，因此限制了他们在团队中的贡献。此外，由于可以在团队中做出贡献的时间有限，消除了成员获得其贡献认可的机会，导致成员士气低落。