MGMT401 Project Management: Organizational Behavior And Leadership

Reflective Report

An unusual assignment, which was given to us by the Organizational Behavior and Leadership styles subject respected instructor Dr. Sulafa Badi. This assignment is to make a (12) minutes video to reflect some theories we discussed in this subject, and to demonstrate them on the real-life employee in the daily work in the company. In this report we will write how we worked together as a team to produce this video.

We constructed this report based on The Reflective Cycle Theory by Graham Gibbs, as from our point of view, it stimulates to think systematically about the phases of the report experience. Therefore, we used its stages (as shown in the side photo)(Gibbs, 1988) to structure this reflection Report. Moreover, the reflective cycle allows us to express and evaluate our analyses clearly about this experience as a whole.

Accordingly, our mission started with:

Action Plan Stage

Based on the Five-Stage Model of Group Development, this stage is Forming; where we formed a team of four different ages and different nationality males, based on our presence beside each other in the class at the time of forming the groups, our group members are:  Obaid Al Shaali (as the leader of the group), Mohammad Saqr, Ali Al Farsi and Marwan Al Mulla, the creative member in our group.

Being randomly chosen to be a team without a previous knowledge of each other, created a big challenge to summon all the efforts to perform efficiently in the same direction.

It’s been argued that  “ What is needed is not a well-balanced individuals , but individuals who balance well with each other “   (Belbin, 1994) This requires a firm plan with clear instruction to follow in order to achieve our target , which we agreed on it together , to film a creative video about the organization behavior and leadership styles theory , and document the process in a reflective report . According to the Belbin’s team roles model, the team role can be divided into three main categories that are Action oriented goal, People oriented goal and thought oriented goal. Therefore as per this method the team has been subdivided in accordance to the expertise and abilities of the team members. In this team division Obaid Al Shaali acted as the finisher, Mohammad Saqr took the responsibilities of a coordinator, Ali Al Farsi had the role of inventor and Marwan Al Mulla performed as a creative person among us.  Therefore, keeping this target on mind, we referred on Belbin theory of Team roles, to determine each personnel traits to give the suitable role for each member to guarantee achieving the results, each member of the groups score indicated the following (Test results are included at the end of this report):

Description Stage

At this stage we had to put our plan and efforts into action and the Storming stage has begun, a kick-off meeting is conducted to deploy the duties of each member, which was a complicated at the beginning.

After referring to the team roles above and the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator, the conflict started to fade, as we distributed the wok duties based on each member nature and personality traits.

For filming the video, we agreed to make it a responsibility of Team (1), Ali and Marwan, as this requires creativity, originality and coordination. Finally the test result suggested that Ali is an inventor and Marwan is a creative person among all the members.

While Obaid and Mohammad in team (2), are to support, edit the video output for the final version and reflect the process in the report, which is a job required coordination and finisher and they can give their best performance as finisher and coordinator as per the test results. After shooting the video we need to give a final touch to present it in a well manner. That is the reason why we have given the role of coordinator and finisher to Obaid and Mohammed.

Feeling Stage

At this stage the Norming started between the group members as everything started to fall out in place and each team took responsibility to finish his part of the assignment with supervision from the team leader (Pinder 2014). In this stage of development, the group members can start to build a group according to the previously given role. In this stage of development, all the members of the teams work together as a team and try to achieve their pre-defined goals as per the previous discussion.

The first step was to summon our personal opinions about the theories discussed in the lectures to produce a scenario and characters to build the video plot on.

We agreed that the video should deliver the idea simply and efficiently through a real-life situation that everyone passed in through his or her life. The main character (Faiz) is a fresh graduate student, who has been recruiting recently in a job, and what are the difficulties that he faced through his work and how these difficulties negatively affected his performance, also we discussed in this video, how applying the suitable theory e talked about in the lecture will improve his performance and the overall work environment (Crawford and LePine 2013).

Recruiting the director and the camera man was the second step, which might be considered as a weak point in this process due to lack of experience in this field. However, we overcome this by taking more time to film all and judge the result, after the filming took place in the BUID undergraduate section.

Evaluation Stage

We can call this stage the Performing as we had built the overall video in this stage with the help of all the team members.  This step is very much crucial as there was a chance of confliction among the team and as well as among the members of the team.  Mohammad Saqr has successfully handled the situations related to the motivations of the team members. As per Maslow’s motivation theory the steps of human motivations  based on the pyramid like structure that is known as Maslow’s triangle. Justifying the base of the pyramid all the members of our team have physiological needs that is need of food, rest, water (Robertson 2016). After that to make the video we had to handle various electrical equipments that needs of safety that is arrangement of security and safety.  The third step of motivational pyramid is love needs and feeling of belongingness that is need of friendship and intimate relationship. Obaid and Mohammed contributed in many ways to hold the friendship relationship within the team that also held the moral share and emotional integrity.  As the penultimate step of esteem Ali and Marwan tried to achieve accomplishment and wanted to be respected by others. 

The first step of the pyramid is the primary need of any people. When the first step is achieved the then the person can think to achieve the requirements of the second step that is the safety needs of the people (Herzberg 2017). Moreover, if the people can have access the requirements of the second stage, then they only can think to achieve the needs of the third tier of pyramid that is the need of personal relationship. After achieving these needs, the next need is the self- esteem that is getting respect from others. Then the ultimate need of a person is the need of self-actualization (Robertson 2016). However, this is very difficult to achieve this step.  In our organization, the members of our team, have already achieved the first two steps of Maslow’s pyramid. In case of the third step, it is not directly associated with our organization. The next step of self-esteem and it is related to our organization (Petri and Govern 2012). During making this video, the team members would try to give their best performance as there is a chance of gaining respect from others if they would deliver an outstanding performance. The main character Faiz would try to give his best as he was newly recruited and a good performance would glorify his presence in his new workplace He also could get respect and appreciation from others. In case of cameraman, the key motivation is to shoot the video in a well manner as all are new in this field (Dweck 2013). An outstanding videography would cause a huge appreciation by other team members. This will meet the need of self-esteem stage of Maslow’s theory. However if we consider the motivation in perspective of teams, the motivational theory of Maslow come into play as all the team try to perform better from each other.

Although, they have different role to perform in this video shooting. All the team try to earn respect to gain the self-esteem stage as this video will represent our organization.  Although all the team members have worked together, there was a urge to perform better from each other within the team and this happened because all the teams would finish their part of work individually. The team leader would get motivation to manage the team very well and he might get appreciation from others after supervising the team very well. This would allow him to meet the criteria of penultimate stage of Maslow’s theory of motivation (Hu and Liden 2015). After the shooting the video it can be said that we have managed al the all work in a very well manner as we all were new to this particular field.  Although we had some difficulties, when we were shooting with camera in the BUID undergraduate section. As we were not professional we had difficulty during controlling the camera. After the shooting, we had managed the editing work very well although we were not professional. It was a very good post shooting session. We did it with a lot of enjoyment. The content and plot of our video was very much interesting. However all the members of this assignment were very much new in this field, they had done a wonderful job. The team leader had managed all the team very well and all the team members contributed their best performance as well. However, the shooting technique may be improved and this was the main flaw of this video. In order to get the best performance from the members or workers of an organization, it is very important to maintain the organizational justice. The term organizational justice refers to the psychological behavior by which authority make fair judgments to all of the employee of that organization. Whenever the members of the organization will start to belief that, they are equally treated and there is no discrimination. This will ultimately help in gaining better job performance, less amount of stress among the members and also better working attitude (Pinder  2014). In our organization, we strongly follow the rule of no discrimination and all the employee are equally treated. During the making of this video we followed the organizational justice. We emphasized on the interaction among the team members and as well as among the teams we formed for this video making assignment. We thoroughly discussed all the phase of this step with all the team members and the team formed with the decisions of all the members. Although initially there was a conflict during the team division and it was solved as the team was formed as per the test result and strength of the team members (Kjellin et al. 2014). After dividing the team there was no discrimination and we followed the organizational justice policy to take out the best outcome from the team and its members.

AnalysisStage 

Adjourning is the last stage of group development and it is associated with ending of the group cultures. In this stage, there is an end for the teams that are formed previously in order to achieve a particular goal. In this stage, the involvement of members’ emotions is very much important. After analyzing the teamwork process it has been found that some member felt little uneasiness because of the group discussion based decision making process throughout the process. Whereas, Obaid and Mohammed feel relief as the work has finally done. The main reason behind this is the personal interaction among each other and along with this, the overall satisfaction of the assignment may also give satisfaction or dissatisfaction to the team mebers (Foss and Lindenberg 2012). After the completion of our work we were quite satisfied and we became very emotional as we could not work as a team anymore. However Faiz looked very much relieved as the shooting was done. He was very much tensed about his work as he was facing the camera for the first time and after completion he was the happiest man. Next, we found that our camera man was very much upset. Although he struggled initially with the camera, after that he became very passionate with his new work. After completion of our shooting he became very upset.  Moreover, it was also true that, all of the members of our organization became very upset and emotional. We completed the whole process as a team and it caused formation of a good interpersonal relationship within ourselves and that was why we are so upset.

Conclusion

In this report, we have discussed about our team work and related theory for the team work and organizational behavior.  Maslow’s theory of motivation, organizational justice are discussed in the context of our team work. Along with this, the team bonding process, different stages of our team formation is also highlighted. Lastly it can be concluded that, it was a great journey for all of us and we had a lot enjoyment during the work. We also wanted to work together in future as we had a strong bonding between us.

References

BELBIN, M. 1994. Team Roles.   

Crawford, E.R. and LePine, J.A., 2013. A configural theory of team processes: Accounting for the structure of taskwork and teamwork. Academy of Management Review, 38(1), pp.32-48.

Dweck, C.S., 2013. Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personality, and development. Psychology press.

Foss, N.J. and Lindenberg, S., 2012. Teams, team motivation, and the theory of the firm. Managerial and Decision Economics, 33(5-6), pp.369-383.

GIBBS, G. 1988. Learning by Doing: A Guide to Teaching and Learning Methods.

Herzberg, F., 2017. Motivation to work. Routledge.

Hrynchak, P. and Batty, H., 2012. The educational theory basis of team-based learning. Medical teacher, 34(10), pp.796-801.

Hu, J. and Liden, R.C., 2015. Making a difference in the teamwork: Linking team prosocial motivation to team processes and effectiveness. Academy of Management Journal, 58(4), pp.1102-1127.

Kjellin, A., Hedman, L., Escher, C. and Felländer-Tsai, L., 2014. Hybrid simulation: bringing motivation to the art of teamwork training in the operating room. Scandinavian Journal of surgery, 103(4), pp.232-236.

Petri, H.L. and Govern, J.M., 2012. Motivation: Theory, research, and application. Cengage Learning.

Pinder, C.C., 2014. Work motivation in organizational behavior. Psychology Press.

Robertson, F., 2016. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In Gower Handbook of Internal Communication (pp. 143-148). Routledge.