3 May

This week we've gone through all of the final details including tasks which should be completed by the next week of implementation. Having as assistants Eugin, and me, Arina went through photos and filtered them leaving out bad ones. The final list of pictures was given to Kitty, who is now responsible for printing them out. We've decided upon the sizes of our photos and their frames, so the size of the frame is A4, and of photos - A5 so that there is enough space to play around with. Decoration tools will be brought by everyone, and the double side tape by Kitty as she knows Hungarian, and can easily find the tape in Budapest. The implementation of the project lies on the shoulders of every member of the team, so hopefully they will all show up for the meeting. I offered my flat as a meeting point for us; its because I prefer gathering at a more comfortable and cosy place than IBS. Everyone knows that we gather at 12:00 in the afternoon at my place. I made sure everyone gets an exact address, and phone number of me so that they could call me if there is any problem. It was quite easy to set a date and time; as from my own experience, this question might become a real disaster sometimes, when everybody tries to find some time in their "tough" schedules; sometimes it even feels like those "busy" people want to show condescension as if saying, "well, you know, I have so many important things to do, and have no time for that, but..I could try to make it..but I'm not sure.. ok, let's do it." But I was lucky with this team, we had no problem with such a tiny questions as date, time and place. Right now, we hope Kitty will complete her tasks of printing photos and getting blank A4 papers. The rest is done by Arina who buys additional accessories and tools for frame decoration. We agreed that she buys whatever she thinks is necessary, and then we will all share the costs. Apparently every member of the team trusts Arina's decisions. That's astonishing because I believe that no team can work efficiently without trust. This is really inspiring for me.

Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument

I've taken the test twice already: one during a class, and the second at home. The outcome shows different results for some reason. I might have been in a rush when completing the test in class, because after thinking over the answers I've got the desired result at home. The order of styles did not change fundamentally, but it turned out that my first conflict style is rather Compromising than Avoiding. These two exchanged their order: Avoiding got 10 for the first time, and then 7, whereas Compromising had 7, and then 10. It is quite surprising though that the gap between the two remained the same - 3. This means that the second preference falls on the Avoiding style, and that I can easily change for this style. Score 7 is not that high which means that I still believe that conflicts can be resolved and we shouldn't be scared of them. Although, I still feel that I'm not a disputatious person, and I try to avoid conflict situations if it is possible. But I agree with the second result of the test that avoidance is not of my first priority. I always prefer compromising: finding a compromise for an issue that might suit for everyone.

However, it seems to me that still this test cannot truly define our styles, or at least mine. It's because I feel that I can apply any style discussed by Thomas-Kilmann (Compromising, Avoiding, Accommodating, Competing, and Collaborating) depending on a situation. For example, if I have a perfect team, I'd do my best to collaborate and support creative and effective solutions to perform the best as a team. But according to the results, I've got only 4 for the Collaborating style when I could rather put it under 10 as well. Accommodating style represents me as well, I put people's feelings high enough to consider, and I'm able to sacrifice my own position for solving a conflict. I wouldn't put it too high though and I'm ok with getting 5 for this. Competing and Collaborating both got a score 4. As was noted before, I disagree with the score for the collaborating style that I've received (the first result showed even as low as 3). But it seems to me mark 4 suits my positioning of the Competing style. Of course, it is acceptable sometimes to persuade and force but it depends on a subject of discourse. If it is something very important for the final outcome, then I'd try to analyse the situation, examine all the possible solutions, and offer the best one. If someone disagrees or questions the idea (this, in fact, is not rare), I'd try to persuade him by giving effective reasons and arguments. If this doesn't help, then I'd choose compromising as a solution. So I think, there is no strong border among all these conflict styles for me. I can easily jump from one to another without even noticing. So I'd rather put each of them on comparatively same level of preference.

Alaskan Adventure

That was quite an entertaining assignment this week, which was called A Team Problem Solving Exercise. According to the results, our team is the most effective one from our class (with 32% of team effectiveness). What's interesting to mention here is that no one got a better score than the Team Score (which was 22), the lowest one was 28 (while the average is 32.4). That tells that the team working shows amazingly better results than an individual work, of course, I mean only our group of 5. Actually, it worth emphasising that not every member of the group contributed to this task as much as they could have. In fact, the core work was done by Eugin and me, and sometimes Arina was trying to question some of our decisions. But Michel didn't even understand the task. We all tried to help him, but the thing was he didn't really care much. So I told him just to put numbers randomly as he likes, so he put them without knowing what he was doing. That's a pity, we might have got even a better score then. Another problem was lack of clearness of the conditions which we were assumed to be in. We all understood that the ship sank down, but somehow we survived and now freezing on SE shore of inlet. But we couldn't point our fingers at the exact location of the place on the map we were given, it's hard even to recognise where is water and where is land. That was disappointing as well as lack of details in the description of the situation. In addition, fonts were not that easy to read first, but when we started recognising words, we were stuck with the problem of our vocabulary shortage. There were quite a few words we all did not know meanings of. But nevertheless, we succeeded as a team and that makes me proud of my group.

Team Operating Processes, Problem Solving and Decision Making

This class was assigned for finalising individual team roles, project plan with tasks and responsible persons, and some general rules to be followed by everyone in the team.

1. That's how the roles look like in our case:

• Team co-ordinator - Me
• Plant - Jenya
• Resource investigators - Kitty & Michel
• Complete Finisher - Arina

The reason for having two RIs is the value and importance of its characteristics for our project. Right now we have almost 15 ready photos which we collected from other students and our own archives, but we still need more than 45 photos for our display. The way we are going to get those needed pictures is through taking the photos by ourselves during 30-minutes breaks in IBS. And here, Kitty's and Michel's connections and relationships are on hand as they are both going to communicate and attract more international students for our shooting. (Resource Investigator - curious, interested, outgoing, likes exploration, information, meeting new people, etc.)

I was chosen as a team co-ordinator unanimously through simple voting. I just guess that's because I became the centre of the information flow among the members, they know I'm always in class and they might feel that I can be trusted and relied on.

We've chose Jenya as a Plant, because he is creative and inventive. He is good at holding the 'big picture', and at the same time, he is quite attentive to small details and questions, which others sometimes forget or just don't pay enough attention to. So he is a good counterpart of me, he interrupts me when it's needed and makes good suggestions.

And Arina is assigned as the Complete Finisher as I feel she is good at making a judgement. Plus, she is steady, reliable and organised, though sometimes needs to be guided. I think she can get things done once she has a clear task in mind.

2. The project plan includes:

• Ask IBS for donation of white A4 papers (70 sheets)- Kitty (R), Meerim (I)
• Take photos of students (around 100 shots)- Meerim (R), Kitty (A), Michel (A)
• Choose & Edit photos - Meerim (R), Arina (A), Jenya (C)
• Find a double-side tape - Kitty (R), Jenya (A), Meerim (I)
• Print photos (61 pieces) - Kitty (R), Meerim (I)
• Decoration of Frames (61 pieces) - Arina (R), Everyone else (A)
• Collect necessary tools (color pencils, markers, color papers, decorative ribbons, beads, stickers, etc.) - Meerim(R)(or does smn want to volunteer?) Everyone else (A)
• Implementation (hanging frames and photos up on walls) - Arina (R), Everyone else (A)

3. And general rules we set are:

• Keep contact & be available
• Follow messages on Facebook regularly
• Take responsibility for your actions and decisions
• Be always on time for a meeting
• Be willing to work individually and in a team
• Be patient and tolerant towards others in the team
• Keep being attentive and interested in the project until the end
• Follow deadlines
• And try to invest as much of your time and will for the common goals and aims as you can.

I feel we made a great job putting this all together. It's good that we had this discussion with my group in class, because we don't meet much outside of the class, and these questions are important to go through. I would have done it anyway though even if we didn't have the class for it, I know. But this way we managed to decide upon the roles and rules, etc. as a team, it wasn't me dictating and assigning everyone for tasks and roles. Decisions came up easily, I was just co-ordinating, raising the question and showing the path. We brainstormed a little bit about the list of tasks, then everyone was free to choose what he/she wants to do for the project. Some of the tasks were not picked immediately, so I had to ask everyone again if anybody would like to volunteer. Fortunately, it worked. People feel more enthusiastic now, when we have a clearer picture of what we are doing and how, and who is responsible for what. Great job!

Belbin Self-Perception Inventory

Though last time I evaluated myself giving 50% for Co-ordinator, 20% for Shaper and 30% for Implementer, after the test we had in today's class, I found that I'm much closer to the Implementer (84% out of 100%), the second highest score is given to the Complete Finisher (around 70%), though I think these two are quite similar in their functions and characteristics, so can be counted as one.

All the rest (Shaper, Team-worker, Resource investigator, Chairman or co-ordinator, Plant and Monitor Evaluator) got average rates (between 33 to 65%). It seems like I can adopt to any of these roles depending on the situation and environment.

Well, for me both estimations are correct in their own way. My guess was done according to our current situation in team, I feel myself as a Co-ordinator at the moment. The description given in an article (Team Role Analysis) seems relevant for me, for my role in the team. As I've said before, I'm not pushing around everyone, but instead trying to listen and understand others to get a picture of what tasks I can assign to each one. And I feel myself the only Motivator. Yes, I wrote before that I'd like to develop this skill in future, but it seems like I don't have an option and have to act now. So I'm taking the responsibility, motivating myself and trying to motivate others. What I did for motivating others?

First of all, I made sure we are all connected (through e-mails and facebook) to make our communication flow easier.

Then, facebook gives an opportunity to create groups (so that's what I did), again connected everyone, but now for the information (documents, files, tasks, dates) to be in one place available any time, any place.

This, I believe, will help other members of my group feel more "secure", being aware of issues going on, being able to comment on any question, etc.

Through this "security", I hope, I can achieve my goal, which is to get everyone Motivated ASAP otherwise I'll loose my patience in the end.

Reflective aid

1) How do I sabotage my team?

Out of the list we draw today in a seminar, I would choose the Dominance for I feel I'm falling into that. I guess the reason is simple, nobody really cares much about the project, but I just wouldn't like to fail the course simply because of that. So I'm really trying to push that project forward, is it counted as being dominant? I guess, I have to learn how to motivate others as well.

2) Belbin team member profile

There are several types of team personalities in the list we got, such as Implementer, co-ordinator, shaper, plant, resource investigator, monitor-evaluator and team-worker. However, I think, it's hard to choose only one of those. People are different, and we all accept that, then it's obvious that we cannot group people just like that. In my own opinion, there has to be a test that shows this and that results in percentage rate. For example, for me I'd say that co-ordinator suits me 50%, plant 20% and implementer 30%. But of course, this rate depends on the situation, on group, on task, on time, etc.

The three 'types' I would most want on my team are Resource investigator, Plant and Implementer. Reasons: Resource investigator - outgoing, sociable, we need him for drawing in more students to participate; Plant - creative, idea-man, needed for giving interesting ideas and solutions; Implementer - steady, reliable, gets things done, a well-disciplined, organised member of the group to count on.

Shapers are usually to impatient, that's why I prefer not dealing with them. Monitor-evaluator can be replaced by others in our team (by co-ordinator, for example) and team-worker is not needed here at all, 'cause so far we get along well, I think, it won't change radically.

Vision and Goals

It seems like other people from our Team decided to skip this class, 'cause I see only 3 of us left now. This will certainly give some affect to the team organisation and quality of the final project. From one side, the less people we have involved, the more tasks each one gets then. But from the other side, this means that it will be much easier to co-ordinate and co-operate with each other. A faster decision-making process, concentration of tasks in just 3 hands keeps things clearer and easier to control and to evaluate after all. Besides, I don't want to be heard as a feminist or so, but, since we are only girls now, discussion and analyse processes have lost their harshness and fervidity. That might also be a negative affect actually for discussions have to be hot, this helps finding out staff we didn't think about, look at the situation from different perspectives and have a whole bunch of suggestions and views. And from those opinions we could then choose the best one. Nevertheless, I think 3 girls will be able to solve that problem in the end anyway, 'cause we are smart ones. :) ... hopefully!