Reflections on the MBA journey- part 5

I think working in the teams has helped me address many issues. It was a good thing that I realised right at the start that the whole purpose of a team is to capitalise on the synergic effects rather than working individually and collating to present the final output. In one of my group projects, I had been the group leader and although we came out with good results, I feel I had not done the delegating well. Fortunately I had the wonderful chance to learn from one of my team-members who was made the de facto leader for the next project. Let me illustrate to the reader how I gained from this very capable team member, who I feel has great qualities for being an effective manager.

It was through him that I learnt the importance of keeping team-members well informed about progress of a project and if any course of action needed to be taken.
Managers often make the mistake of not communicating properly and assuming that certain things are understood implicitly. That is when problems begin to occur; as people working under them feel that little information is being passed on to them and they are being asked to deliver with half-baked knowledge. So it pays to enunciate and give directives to some people who may not be comfortable trying to do things on their own initiative. Although this may be seen as common knowledge, I hadn’t been adhering to this and that led to some misunderstanding amongst members with regard to what needed to be delivered by them.

Another aspect of managing that I learnt from my team-mate was appreciating team-members and motivating them to perform better. I noticed that in e-mails he wrote to us, he would refer to the urgency of a deadline and mention that just a bit more work from us and we would finish the project and then we could go for a night out! He would always motivate us by mentioning any good work that any of us had done.

I noticed that things like these fostered a spirit of caring and togetherness amongst our group members and I am proud to say that a new member from a dissolved team who was welcomed in our group felt the same.

An MBA can be quite intensive and taxing for most people and there are times when one goes through unpleasantness while disagreeing on issues or when one needs to confront someone’s non participation in group work. Many dread such occasions and try their most to avoid being confrontational. However the real working world is different and effective managers must deal with such situations well. Moreover it has been estimated that over 65 percent of performance issues are not affected by lack of skill or motivation but from conflict caused through strained relationship amongst workers (Viewpoint 2003). Managers by the virtue of being in a senior position should step in as a mediator if such conflict occurs between team members. I found that some of my batch-mates could deal with such situations better while some shunned dealing with conflict.
Another interesting aspect of working with groups was the issue of time management. At times meetings that were called were far from fruitful and there was a lot of preoccupation with what needed to be done but very little implementation took place. The MBA program was structured to teach us the importance of meetings and this was implemented through the Minutes that needed to be submitted for the group projects.

Elsayed-Elkhouly et al (1997) argue that meetings are a microcosm of management. They say that an effective meeting must have a clearly defined agenda stating the objectives and the results must be summarised in writing.
The reality of life however is different and many business meetings can be a complete waste. A classic slice of life scene from any business organisation is reflected in another of Dilbert’s cartoon: