graduate development programme- report

7/29/2019 Graduate Development Programme- Report

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Graduate Development Programme

Work Based Assignment 1

M3.11 Building Team

M3.30 Understanding the communication process in

workplace

Sushil Goswami

SAP ID: 01060136

Graduate Mechanical EngineerTata Steel UK

Port Talbot


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Trust & Confidentiality

How do you develop & maintain trust at work and why confidentiality is important in

building and maintaining trust at work?

Trust is important to any organisations performance. In work teams with high trustenvironments, they work with more effectiveness and the people work harder, better

whilst feeling more positive about their workplace. When trust exists in a work team or

organisation, the cost of doing business is less and everything else is easier and morecomfortable to achieve.

The process of building & maintaining trust at work can be summarised in following

ways:

1. Establish and maintain integrity & confidentiality Integrity & confidentiality arethe foundation of trust in any work team/organisation. In simple words, this

means keeping promises & being truthful/honest to your colleagues. Atworkplace, work colleagues may sometime wish to seek support/advice on issues

that they may be facing owing to reasons at home or/and work. In such instances,

it is very important to maintain the confidentiality of the conversations that youmay have with your work colleague. It may be embarrassing or humiliating for

them for if such information becomes public. Confidentiality lays the foundation

of open and honest communication in the workplace with the assurance that

information will not be shared with those not intended. This goes for theinformation shared & accessed at workplace relating to the organisation.

2. Treating all colleagues as equal partners Trust is established when even thenewest colleague, part-timer or the lowest paid employee feels important and partof the team. Being appreciative towards the actions & achievements of the

colleagues is crucial to making them feel as an integral part of the team. Thismeans valuing inputs from all colleagues and encouraging them at all levels toshare their ideas to improve business. This also includes listening with an open

mind even if you dont ultimately choose to follow a suggestion made by a

colleague. This kind of behaviour is equally reciprocated and improves the trustamongst the team.

3. Pushing forward on shared, rather than personal goals Trust is formed when theteam has a common goal and they feel that everyone is pulling together toaccomplish a shared vision/goal, rather than a series of personal agendas. When

teams start achieving goals, the colleagues trust one another.


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Team Development

Describe the difference between a group & team using examples from your workplace toillustrate this difference.

Briefly describe the stages of an established model of information using the examplesfrom your experience to illustrate the process.

According to Katzenbach and Smith,A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a

common purpose, set of performance goals, a common approach, for which they hold

themselves mutually accountable.A group is just a collection of people with something in common, such as being in the

same place or having a shared place.

According to Tuckman, there are four key stages that a team goes through, namely:

There is also an additional/final stage termed as Mourning when the team eventuallybreaks up or a team member/members leaves the team.

Forming Stage:

1. People are put together.2. People are unclear about the goal/goals of the team their roles within it.

3. Important to discuss the purpose of the team & individual roles & responsibilities.

For example, when I joined the company as a graduate mechanical engineer, I was

allocated to Asset Improvement Team for 12 months long placement by HR. At thisstage, I was unaware of the purpose of the team and more importantly my role within it.

When I joined the team, the line manager explained the objective of the team and my

responsibilities towards it.Storming Stage:

1. Team members test each other & leader.

2. People try to establish themselves by being loud, organising others etc.

Forming

Storming

Norming

PerformingMourning


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3. Important for leader to be assertive & listen to all concerns whilst keeping

everyone focussed.

For example, the first risk assessment I attended in relation to the project that I amcurrently working on exhibited the aforementioned characteristics of storming stage in

early days. Team members were unclear about the objective & structure of the risk

assessment, often leading to loud arguments and little progress during early days of RA.Norming stage:

1. People start to understand each others skills & personalities.

2. Certain ground rules are established.3. People start to feel confident.

4. Open challenges take over from loud arguments.

During the Norming stage of the team for R.A., the team members established some

ground rule with regards to challenging others about their views and opinions. The teammembers started to recognise & appreciate the skills & personalities of each other.

Performing stage:

1. Team starts to perform.2. Team members start to help & support each other & understand each other a lot

better.3. Team members play to the strengths of their colleagues within the team.

The R.A. team during the performing stage started to produce a valid & well-assessed

document. The common observation was that team members understood each other a lot

better and respected each others opinion while recognising strengths of their colleagues.We felt free to come with new ideas & ways of doing things.

Mourning stage:

1. This happens when a team eventually breaks up often due to fulfilment of theteam goal.

2. Sense of loss among the team members.

After the 3 days long course at Ashorne Hill, the learning group that I was part of, hasoften expressed a feeling of missing the opportunity afforded to us via this training course

which allowed us to sit together and contribute to each others personal & professional

development.


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Team Roles

Explain the benefits of knowing your team members preferred roles (if possible, you

should illustrate this by briefly describing the Belbin Roles of a few your team members).

People working in any team-based environment often have two roles:1. Functional Role

2. Team role

While functional role is attributed to ones academic & vocational skills, team role is atendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way- Dr

Meredith Belbin.

The Belbin team role profile indicates how an individual will behaves and operateswithin a team and concerns their tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with

others in a particular way. The nine team roles identified by Belbin are as follows:1. Action-oriented Roles Shaper, Implementer, and Completer Finisher.2. People-oriented Roles Co-ordinator, Team Worker and Resource Investigator.

3. Cerebral Roles Plant, Monitor Evaluator and Specialist.Now, the question arises What can be gained by identifying peoples preferred team

roles? Knowing peoples preferred team roles makes it easier to work effectively withpeople when you are given some expectations of their tendencies and preferences.

As per Belbins research, a balanced team - one with the greatest chance of developing

fully effective working arrangement - would contain a balance of these team roles.Besides, every team goes through a phase of activities during which some team roles are

better able to contribute than others.

The information provided by identifying team roles is useful at many levels:1. Self-awareness : Knowledge of ones own team role/roles allow one a unique

insight into the perceptions that one holds about himself/herself. It is only by

knowing ourselves that we have any chance of achieving our full potential &improving ourselves.

2. Tool for effective teams : As mentioned before, team members have two roles

within the team: Functional role & Team role. While functional role is concerned

with getting the job done, Team role is concerned with the job is done.Knowledge of team members Team roles allows one to draw upon the strengths

of each other while managing weaknesses at the same time.3. Tool for effective team/staff selection : Traditionally, staff selection is based upon

functional roles usually defined by an individuals eligibility for the job.

However, research shows that a very weak correlation between the eligibility for

the job and actual job performance. Selecting team members for a specific job

based upon not only functional role but also incorporating Team roles profiles isa proven method of selecting teams with higher performances. Team roles help in

deciding the suitability of a potential team member for a particular team. The

same applies for staff selection.4. Tool for career planning : When making career decisions, it is imperative for one

to consider his/her natural talents and behavioural tendencies. Belbin profiling

enables one to become more self-aware in discovering ones strongest & weakest


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team roles. This allows one to work upon his/her blind spots paving way for

making better career planning & choices.

To illustrate this using an example, a Monitor Evaluator (ME) is someone who is bestsuited to analyse problems and evaluate ideas and suggestions. He/she would be very

good at weighing problems/ideas/suggestions in terms of their pros and cons. Generally,

a ME is an unemotional, prudent and serious minded individual who, to many outsiders,may appear as dry, boring or even over-critical. Characteristics like hard-headedness,

sound judgement, discretion and clear thinking are MEs strengths but often suffer from

weaknesses like lack of imagination and ability to motivate others. They often appear tolack warmth and feelings for others and may be sometimes perceived as hypercritical.

In my team, Mr. David Jones (name changed) is a Process Safety Engineer. He is very

methodical and likes to follow a certain procedure for any task he does. Whilst workingupon the Risk Assessment, I observed that he was usually slow in making decision

preferring to think things over. At few occasions, some team members appeared to be a

bit frustrated with the pace of RA meeting. However, as the RA was one of the most

important parts of the project, D. Jones preferred to get every minute detail right thanpacing up the meeting for the sake of just doing it. As an individual he seems to lack the

spirit to inspire & motivate others, lacking warmth & feeling for others. I find hisdemeanour best suited for analysing and evaluating problems and ideas.

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