Harry and the Learning Team Case Study

Harry and learning team #28

A brief assessment of the situation

The learning team was intended to be a closed task-oriented team and formed to work together through the heavy and fast-paced condensed finance course. The team has six members with different backgrounds (cross-cultural) and they agreed on meeting was regularly every Sunday at 7 pm. The team number is ideal and they have a common specific goal and the members perceived them selves as a group.

The team has diverse members background (cross-cultural), with different abilities and expertise, which suppose to be the right mix. The team start was not that optimal as, on their first meeting, they jumped fast into the accounting case which made them missed an important concept of team building, which is addressing the task and social dimensions, which if given enough time, it would waved them lot of the hassle. This led to the challenge of the general feeling of being lagged behind by one member, Harry, who was not moving in the same pace as the rest of the group members. That made them feel inefficient as the difficulty that Harry exhibited was a source of complaint by some of them and they started to claim that harry incompetency caused disturbance in their progress in the course as well as some social consequences to that which could be avoided if harry was in the same tune of the rest of the group.

The team members met without harry to discuss that issue and they agreed on that, harry will not be depend on from now on, he needs to have extra efforts to coupe with the team and they are going to supply him with the worksheets and notes to work it out himself and not to cause any delay in the team pace which cause more adverse effects on Harry in term of his contribution to the learning team and his progress in the course as well as the entire team performance.

The most essential challenge(s) faced by this team

When looking into the team from the beginning, we can notice that it had a wrong start which caused that disturbance in its performance. First of all, as soon as the team formed, they jumped into the core tasks and that led to a major deficit in the basics of group formation. They did not fulfill the major two dimensions of the group’s formations that needed to be addressed initially, the task and social dimensions. As soon as they met first time, they jumped fast to the first finance case without giving enough time to orient themselves well to the task that the team initially formed for. That led to miss coordination of the ideas, discussing the needed resources and the planning of their activity as well as the communication basis between the members. That missing of the task dimension affected the team productivity as seen in the scenario. The other missed dimension was the social aspect in which they did not give enough space to break the ice and have some social talk so the team members binds more and express their needs, weaknesses, and the areas they can contribute to their team. This social aspect will have the advantage of improving the team cohesiveness and will result in more success in their team to accomplish their goal. In that first meeting, it would be prudent to distribute the roles and who will lead and other member’s roles as well. They should specify the goal more clearly and how to reach that in a measurable, and with specified success criteria so the team members will feel accountable, committed and can monitor their progress. They missed the way how the team will operate in term of guidelines for going through the team meetings, what will happen if conflict occur, and how decisions to be taken which would improve the team trust, emphasizes the values and behavior of its members, and improve the communication as well as to discuss their method of operating the tasks.