Team Reflection

Building a team was a challenging experience because we had to develop a variety of abilities to successfully achieve common goals and complete tasks in a harmonious and supportive atmosphere. This semester we built our team through experiences that required developing skills to become better communicators and problem solvers to make connections and feel connected. In our professional lives, we help build connections between people and experiences, and this is the reason why we decided to call our team “Team Bridge.” We enjoy bridging people and ideas, and as we look back and reflect on our progress, we want to examine how the team developed, how team members made contributions, how the team worked, and how team members managed individual and

From our initial meetings to the present, our team focused upon the assignments to be completed and deadlines. Though elements of Tuckman and Jensen’s (1977) Five-Stage Model apply to our group, overall, Gersick’s model (1988, 1989), which “studied project groups that had to complete creative products with a deadline” better reflects our group dynamic (cited by Halverson, 2008, p. 99).

Our group “formed” during the initial in-class meetings. In order to jointly forge our team name, “The Bridge,” we shared individual experiences to answer relationship-based and task-based questions: “What do we need to know about each other? What is our overriding purpose? Our second in-class meeting conversation also addressed those questions, and members reported their MBTI personality types with a focus on tasks – the formation of our group, our experience working with teams, and our work

David and Linda, who encouraged us to divide facilitation and note-taking responsibilities for each meeting, provided approval and support for shared leadership. Other conditions included clearly defined objectives for each of our deliverables, awareness of each other’s actions, and using our skills appropriately for each task. Finally, we were able to share information effectively, we had adequate interpersonal skills, and we were committed to accepting each other’s differences. We also had core values and processes. Each member of Team Bridge was non-coercive, open to learning, relationship-oriented, and built trust through working together. This allowed us to create norms, identify skills and apply them appropriately, and establish a decision-making process. Through our regular meetings, reflection and evaluation, shared leadership was manifested in Team Bridge.

Team