Assignment Coursework – The Reflective Essay

Introduction

This essay is divided into two sections that present my individual experiences, challenges and learning. The first section reflects on my teamwork challenge, preparation and delivery in the group presentation. It will also discuss the concept of teamwork and related components. The second section highlights my skills demonstration, planning and preparation in building personal brand to fulfil my career aspiration. Thus, this section will analyse the notion of career selection, preferences and career development.

Part 1 – The Group Presentation

The team building activity from the Marshmallow Challenge reveals learning lessons which focuses teamwork, nature of collaboration and cooperation from different members. Through this experience I have learnt that diverse skills of team members’ matters to outperform other teams and management of diverse skills play a key role in improving the overall team performance. The most enjoyable about working in a term was during the development of the innovative ideas, patterns of the structure. This challenge has provided an opportunity for out of the box thinking. However, the actual development of tallest structure was the most challenging part of teamwork. This was due to lack of truest among the team members which also impacted the commitment of energy in advancing toward the challenge.  Commitment towards the task and trust are essential elements for effective collaboration and teamwork (Katzenbach and Smith, 2015).

The concept of teamwork also includes the team balance and performance of team that can be defined in terms of team member’s self-assessment of their roles (Belbin, 2012).  Therefore, using the Belbin framework of team roles for behaviour demonstrated by workers in professional setting, I have identified to be taking the thinking and problem solving oriented role as a monitor evaluator for the team. The role of monitor evaluator is recognised to analyse the idea, plan and schemes and conduct feasibility analysis and value in accomplishing objectives of the team (Batenburg et al., 2013). As the team member, I analysed the proposal, suggestion and schemes proposed by other team members to design tallest tower and presented my quick analysis about the practicality of each design and estimated time taken to achieve the team objective. I also pointed out the weakness in design that was not being considered to proceed.  Thus, I have checked each design and gave both positive and negative judgement for the team. I have helped the team members in helping to identify the hidden assumptions in development of the structure regarding the weight of the marshmallow to be supported by the sticks that lead to the experimenting and making adjustments to the final design to come up with an effective design.  However, the limitation of monitor evaluator role is the lack of drive and ability to motivate other team members (Senaratne and Gunawardane, 2015). This weakness can be related to me as I was unable to inspire the one of the inflexible team member to continue with other team member design.

If given a chance again I would like to assume team role of an implementer who has an action oriented role out of the nine roles proposed in Belbin framework. The role of implementer is related to practical application of the concept and plan decided jointly by the team.  As an implementer I would have transformed the design phase into reality and carry out the decided plan with high efficiency and speed.  As implementer role has been useful and effectual in terms of reliability, relevance and application capacity. I have learned that to be an effective implementer I need to develop skills to take action oriented role. Eubanks et al. (2016) mention organising skills, competency in handling key tasks and tackling issues as they develop are characteristic of good implementers. Thus, I need to develop a good self –control to tackle problem in a systematic, timely and efficient manner. Apart from this, to be a good implementer I need to develop knowledge of handling issues, work under pressure, handle stress and work on developing time management skills. These skills can be developed along with working with an implementer style personality and to take up action oriented roles.  I have to overcome the fear of rejection and conflicting among the team members to move in collaboration to achieve progressive growth. According to Bradley et al. (2013), team conflicts facilitate group performance in situation of openness and emotional stability. Thus, task conflicts arising in teams with members’ personality that are open and display emotional stability can be leverage as an opportunity for group performance gains.

Effective teamwork is necessary for any project or business especially in tasks that require strategic thinking thus, in this challenge I would have worked in a different manner.  I would have pooled the capability and knowledge into developing a single design instead of working on selection and evaluation of different design to save time in initial planning.  I would have delegated the task of giving direction to the most inspiring member of the team to reduce any team conflicts and develop a supportive environment to focus on actual for implementation of the selected design. I would have also delegated one member to provide with necessary material to develop addition triangle to support the main structure to manage task process on time.  The team could have collaborated to work in the preparation of PowerPoint presentation by giving individual points/slides. Thus, delegation of task and keep the working environment positive would be my style of managing the teamwork. The delegation of subtasks would have helped to gain trust of members of the team. The act of delegation gives responsibility to other member give a sense of feeling valuable and also lift the quality level of the performance of designated task (The Balance, 2018). According to Roth and Markova (2012), the delegation is crucial element in teamwork that can affect the development of trust among teammates.

Thus, the marshmallow challenge gave a shared learning experience to work as a team member, and a chance to collaborate in a way to develop the right design and procedure to deliver the team objectives. From this experience, I have learned about myself and realised my strength as a team player. I have learned the dynamic of teamwork and nature of collaboration which require acceptance, adaptability, adjustments, commitment, reliance, understanding and persistence. I have also realised that openness and emotional stability helps in dealing with other opinion and judgements which I require to develop to contribute my role as an effective team player in future group tasks or future business projects.

Part 2 – My Personal Brand & Career and Career Development

To think and choose about the first job is exciting and edgy. For my first job search, I wish to pursue a career in field of marketing. At this early stage, this would require me to develop communication and interpersonal skills, market research skills, analytical and decision making skills to gain employability. I would like the first job to provide training ground for development of specific skills as in senior-level employees. It should also give me opportunity to lead a small project or team of interns’ to demonstrate my leadership skills.

To develop and effective choice and decision for my career and to identify the suitable work environments as per my personality, I have considered Holland Codes  put forward  by psychologist John L. Holland in year 1970s. These codes list set of personality types which can be matched to best fit with work and related environment.  Under John Holland theory of vocational personality, individual display/possess behaviours, characteristics and interests which can be categorized under as RIASEC (realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional). Each different personality chooses and takes pleasure in specific occupation/vocational area. On my self-analysis, I realised that my dominating personality belong to artistic, social and enterprising.  The individual with artistic personality type are imaginative, intuitive, emotional, and expressive thus, are drawn towards arts, languages, writing, etc. (Lounsbury et al., 2012). The social ones are friendly, idealistic, cooperative and drawn to counselling, helping other, social services, etc. whereas Enterprising personality type are  excitement lovers, ambition, assertive, active, and sociable thus, attracted by politics, leadership, management ,entrepreneurial activities, etc. (Wille and De Fruyt,, 2014).

Out of the three personality sets, I can tally my personality highly as enterprising.  As I see myself to be ambitious to aspire for power and status, with high energy level and determination to use my skills to support others. This personality also reflects partly as social. Therefore, prefer environment for leadership, competition and status. The choice of first job in marketing closely matches with my enterprising personality. On the other hand, Whitteberry (2016) considers both artistic and enterprising personality type individuals to work in marketing and sales.

The career development also means to identify the role that can provide job satisfaction and keeps the individual committed in work through motivation especially in first job. Thus, I took Edgar Schein’s Career Anchors to identify my preference of what motivates me to serve as guidance in making my right career choice. Form my self-analysis, I score high on Entrepreneurship career anchor. This career anchor is concerned with developing something new and differentiating it from others. This also can be related to achieving personal reputation/status.  This career anchor can be positively linked to the observation of the Holland personality test and the choice of job as marketer. On the other hand, Bhatt (2011) argue that for marketing function challenge career anchor is viewed as the primary orientation for this career choice. However, as I am energetic, ambitious, creative, need for status and have self-driven attitude which useful to match the personality and motivation preference and can be well related to match the perception of the marketing field.  The core benefits of using such tests are helpful in generating self-awareness about individual personality to assist in making the career choice, get aware of the motivating/influencing factors for career choice and to plan for career development. Such test can be used to make the employee aware of the satisfaction and motivation preference and can help the professionals to take correct decision regarding job and career advancements. On the other hand, Chapman (2015) reminds that Schein’s career anchors weakness can be its less-effectiveness for individual with multiple career anchors which dominates the motivation.  For instance, the individual considers security/ stability with other career anchors which limits the Schein’s theory (Coetzee and Schreuder, 2011).  In addition to this, as individual achieve career aspirations their career priorities and motivation factors changes thus, this would change the career anchor (Coetzee and Schreuder, 2012).

There is also a necessity to identify the workplace skills for the growth and development of career as marketing field require lot of employability and transferable skills which today’s employer seek in a potential candidate. Some key employability skills can be persuasiveness, customer orientation, networking skills, knowledge of new marketing techniques, research skills, business acumen and innovation skills. The transferable skills for marketing professionals can be customer service skills, engaging skills, effective reporting skills, networking skills, computer literacy, computational skills, etc.   My experience from my home observations and in my educational journey has helped me to develop skills such as oral and written communication, team skills, time management skills organising skills, analytical thinking, research skills, innovation and critical thinking skills which I can emphasise on my personal brand. I plan to learn other employability and transferable skills by increasing my participation in meetings, presentations and discussions, reading books and online articles in marketing technologies, solving marketing case studies and undertaking short training courses for marketing professional.

To express and communicate skills, personal branding is a useful method to develop an influencing setting for an individual (Khedher, 2014). Thus, I have chosen to undertake personal branding to communicate my skills and personality and make myself differentiate from others in this competitive job search in the dynamic market to draw employers.  This will be done by updating social media accounts such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter by relevant details about expertise area, sharing and posting marketing related content and by joining group relevant to marketing field. Thus, to promote my personal brand, I have chosen to utilise the social media sites which is cost effective and effective in reach (Khedher, 2014).

Conclusion

To sum it up, this essay reflected on my experience and challenges as a team player. It also highlighted on the teamwork elements for an effective team management and to gain collaboration from other members of the team to gain team performance which are required in both academic and business settings. The latter part highlighted the choice of my first job and discussed its correlation with personality (Holland test) and career anchor (Schein test). It also reflected on employability and transferable skills in career choice and personal branding to express my skills and personality as a step towards career development.

References

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Belbin, R.M., 2012. Team roles at work. UK: Routledge.

Bhatt, A.S., 2011. A career anchor perspective of employees in a large company. In 2011 International Conference on Advancements in Information Technology (IACSIT) (Vol. 20, pp. 265-270).

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Chapman, J.R., 2015. Fostering career management using career anchor theory. APA handbook of career intervention, 2, pp.507-520.

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Senaratne, S. and Gunawardane, S., 2015. Application of team role theory to construction design teams. Architectural Engineering and Design Management, 11(1), pp.1-20.

The Balance. 2018. Team Building and Delegation. [Online] Available at: https://www.thebalance.com/team-building-and-delegation-1916701 (Accessed 27 March 2018).

Whitteberry, K. 2016. The 6 Personality Types and How They Impact Your Career Choice. iOffice . [Online] Available at: https://www.iofficecorp.com/blog/six-personality-types-how-they-impact-your-career-choice (Accessed 27 March 2018).

Wille, B. and De Fruyt, F., 2014. Vocations as a source of identity: Reciprocal relations between Big Five personality traits and RIASEC characteristics over 15 years. Journal of Applied Psychology, 99(2), p.262.