How I will lead groups to become great teams
 

1. Introduction

The topic of this essay is how I will lead groups to become great teams, and in fact, it is a learning process of the leadership & organization dynamics. In this essay, three case studies will be critically presented from Peer Learning Group and Large Learning Group. And the essay will be conducted in three approaches: the developmental approach, the Gestalt approach, and the Tavistock approach. 
 

2. The Tavistock approach—case study of a peer learning group

There are two famous sayings in the Tavistock approach: the first one is, to venture causes anxiety; but not to venture is to lose oneself; and the second one is, to venture in the highest sense, is precisely to become conscious of oneself. What’s more, the Synergy Model also emphasizes that the whole is greater than the sum of the part. And awareness and resistance are also two of the key concepts in Tavistock (Edwin, 2012).

2.1 Case study—a job in the consultancy team

Once, a team which works for a big organization for dealing with their consultancy offered me a job vacancy as a facilitator. As soon as I arrived in the team, they were keeping explaining to me how effective and efficiency their team was. However, after the explanation, I found that every one went back to their seat and did their job separately. They had different kind of job for each one, and they tried to finish their job all by themselves, without any interaction or communication with each other. In other words, they did not perform teamwork at all. Worse still, it seemed that the workers there were split to several different groups, and they were opposing to each other. Since it is a team which provided consultancy services, and our customers came from different countries around the world, I thought that it was a necessity to perform teamwork within our team then. 

Therefore, I went to Mr. Johnson, the manager who was in charge of our team. I just asked him a few questions as regard to why we did not have regular meetings, why all the team members in our team did not cooperate with each other rather than work on their individual. However, to my disappointment, my manager showed unhappiness and anger to me. He mentioned to me that our team had been working in that way for a long time and that was the way of our team. But from my point of view, all the members in our team were peers. We have the same goals towards work; we have the same job orientation; and even sometimes, we work for the same customer, or customers from the same country or from the same industry. To start with this point, team work is essential to all the peers in our team.

In the following days, I was trying to seize every opportunity to communicate with the peers and managing to get some ideas from them. The first one I came to know was Serena, a young and energetic girl. But as she told me, she was only energetic when she was not working and she was not in the office either. After further contact with her, I knew from her that she also felt that her work then was not efficient at all. Rather, she felt it boring and sometimes was just a waste of time. Another peer I got to know was Flora, a girl who had been working in the team for around two years and a half. Judging from her experience, I think she was already used to the way how our team worked. And it was the case because she did not show any desire for any changes at all. #p#分頁標題#e#

But anyway, I suggested to my manager that we should have a meeting within the team, and he agreed. At the start of the meeting, every body was reluctant to express their ideas about teamwork. Some even showed directly that they did not want any changes. However, I tried my best to explain to them that we belonged to the same team, and we shared the same goal to work for our customers. We should try to reduce the load of our work and try to be more efficient than now on condition that the benefits of the customers’ were maximized. On the one hand, we had to divide our team to several small teams, with each team responsible for customers from one area only, for example customers from Korea. On the other hand, each member in the small team should cooperate with each other. For instance, there may be some one responsible for collecting information about the background of the customers. And there may be some one responsible for searching for the information that the customers desired. Anyway, through hours of communication and explanation, the team agreed on my suggestion and is now performing excellent teamwork and achieves high efficiency.2.2 Awareness

One of the key concepts in Tavistock is awareness. It prefers to make some efforts to let people be aware that there should be changes (Ansel & Sarah, 2005). Besides, Tavistock approach also emphasizes on the self-awareness of the individuals (John & Rita, 2012). In my case, when I was aware that our team did not perform teamwork at all, I knew that I needed changes immediately. Awareness is about people and individual feeling and wishes, about the world, about the likely chances, and about the relationships among all these things (Dave, 2010). Therefore, in order to change our way of doing, that is perform teamwork, I firstly made every body in our team aware that we needed teamwork, with an analysis of both the nature of our job and the nature of our customers. That is, before we change our behavior, we changed our awareness. 

2.3 Resistance

Another key point in Tavistock is the Tavistock theory to resistance (Joseph, 2013). As was indicated in the case, Flora was a little resistant to my suggestion and did not want any changes actually. And this case tells us that in Tavistock theory, it is not necessary to remove the resistance, rather, it would be a better way if we can put the dispute aside and manage to persuade the girl with disputes into accepting my suggestion. 

2.4 Synergy

The word Synergy best illustrates the concept of teamwork. The key idea of synergy is that the whole is greater than the sum of the individual (Charlene & Robert, 2009). In fact, productivity can be increased through synergy (Paul & Jeannette, 2011). 
 

3. The developmental approach—case study of LLG

3.1 Case study—the tourism agency

Not long ago, I joined a tourism agency to work as a representative. After some time of observation, I found that most of the workers there did not work actively; rather, their work was lifeless and inefficient. Whatever the manager said, all the workers agreed with him. However, when it was still the case when concerning a strategic decision making about where to lead our work towards, I decided that I have to change the situation. Before I go to my manager to discuss about my disagreement, I first turned to two of my colleagues and asked them for support. #p#分頁標題#e#

Events have been becoming more and more important in tourism development and marketing strategies. The phrase Event Tourism may be used to describe this. To be more specific, Event Tourism can be defined as a series of events that are concerned with the developing, planning, marketing and holding. Event tourism has four major aims: to present a beneficial image for the attractions; to make the traditional tourism season much longer than before; to attract visitors of almost similar amount to different places; and to market the tourism resort to both domestic markets and overseas markets. 

When I talked with my manager, I presented my ideas above to him. It turned out that not only the two colleagues agreed with my ideas, but also there were some other colleagues also in favor of my ideas. Therefore, it went without doubt that my manager agreed that we changed the way with my ideas. 

3.2 The theories of Argyris and Schon

In fact, through the development of the above case study, a lot of reflections and critical learning could be drawn. And most importantly, the theories of Argyris and Schon have been central to my achievements (Bairbre, 2004). What’s more, they also worked together to have developed the theory of individual and organizational learning in which human reasoning matters a lot.3.3 Leading and managing organizational change

Besides, the ideas of Argyris and Schon can also be used in leading and managing effective organizational change. As we know, team goal setting makes goal setting accessible at multiple levels (Edwin & Gary, 2013). In a team, the goal of individual workers will not count for a lot, while the team goal on the whole is highly valued. For example in my case, actually, to launch the event tourism is to the benefit of the whole team. If it were for my own benefit, it would not have been that easier that others would agree with my plan. 

3.4 Self-protection

Self-protection is also one of the key issues in the theory of Argyris. In essence, self-protection is based on the assumption that all people have the wishes that they can feel good, or at least they can try to avoid the bad feelings (Mark & Constantine, 2011). From this point of view, it is not difficult to understand why I would like to make the suggestion for some changes. On the one hand, it could make me more comfortable working in that team. On the other hand, I was also trying to minimize the bad feelings of my colleagues during the negotiation process, which I thought was also a good way to achieve my goals. 
 

4. The Gestalt approach—Large Learning Group

4.1 Case study—

My oral English is not very good. However, I am good at searching for and gathering information. Sanna is our leader, and he is good at speech. Methew is good at cheering up all the team and ha can make everybody actively involved in the activity. Steph is good at analyzing. She could combine all the information gathered form the books with the theories. In our teamwork, each member has clear responsibilities and we cooperate well with each other. #p#分頁標題#e#

Our leader Sanna told us clearly that our common goal was to achieve good results for our group presentation. She showed us the direction and it did attract our attention. However, despite Sanna’s efforts to show reference to my opinions and thoughts, I don’t think my potential was fully realized. Worse still, it seemed that another team member called Sally was trying to prevent me from realizing my potential. It was common for me to observe that she always did not agree with my ideas. Sometimes I would have the feeling that she might even look down upon me, which could be told from body language, such as crossing her arms and the contemptuous smile. It was the fact that I would be afraid of talking with her in some cases, compared with the feelings of talking to Steph. 

Besides, we once conducted a week discussion, in which Sanna and Steph had not arrived at an agreement of whether the topic of the discussion should be an introduction especially for female leader, or an introduction of the differences between male and female leaders. With regard to the topic, our team had conducted a heated discussion, and every body was motivated to participate in it and  share their ideas. I think this is an effective conflict between Sanna and Steph and among our team. 

We finished all the preparation work for the presentation before the last meeting for us. Every body felt delighted. Mathew told us that he was going to attend a wedding ceremony of his friends during the holiday. And for the last time, Sanna assigned us the tasks we have to deal with. It was relaxing that we kept good relationships among our team. 

At the beginning of our group discussion, I had the feeling that the leading style of Sanna is kind of dominating. However, after several meetings, I found that it was not the case. Each time we conducted a group discussion, she would listen attentively to our ideas and opinions, while it was I who always kept silent. However, as long as I took the chance to speak out, he would positively comment on it. By this way, my self-confidence was greatly increased, and I decided to participate in the group discussion more actively in the future.  

4.2 Responsibility

Responsibility has been one of the most important factors in the Gestalt approach. What’s more, it also plays a significant role in team work (Gregory, 2004). In my case, our team leader Sanna was always helping us to make it very clear our roles and responsibilities. Therefore, a team leader is always representing his/her group at meeting within their team. He/she is also expected to satisfy the already set goals of production or some. Moreover, other minor issues such as at tendency may also be observed of a team leader. 4.3 Authentic Management

Authentic management is a Gestalt orientation to organizations. In fact, the authentic management, or authentic leadership, is composed of four major components: self-awareness, unbiased processing, authentic behavior/acting, and authentic relational orientation (Bassie & Carol, 2009). In my case, Sanna is our leader. From the first time we held a meeting, she knew that she was our leader and that it was her responsibility to make the plans and told us what were our tasks and responsibilities. This was the self-awareness demonstrated by her. I have mentioned at the beginning of the case that I was not good at oral English at all. However, Sanna never discriminated me against it, which demonstrated that she was not biased. The performance of her responsibilities showed her authentic behavior and authentic relationship orientation. #p#分頁標題#e#
 

5. Recommendations and conclusions

Through this essay of three cases relating to the leadership & organizational dynamics, we are able to get some ideas about the essay topic. The analysis is conducted in three approaches: the developmental approach, the Tavistock approach, and the Gestalt approach. After a detailed analysis with these three approaches, we have already had the idea that there are a lot of factors that are of significant importance to the leadership & organizational dynamics. These factors mainly include: awareness, resistance, ideas of Arguris and Schon, synergy, self-protection, responsibility, and authentic management. 

However, due to some restrictions with regard to time, efforts, energy, and knowledge, there are also some other factors that are not analyzed in this essay, such as expanding choice, change, presence, defense, authority ,role and task. Hope these factors can also be discussed in the future, and hope sincerely that this essay can be for some reference in this field. 

 

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