A520.6.5RB_SeabournBeau

I've been observing and asking my peers about my team skill-set and asking for their feedback this week. In our facility, we often times will work independently, each person works their shift alone and then when its time, the next person will relieve them. There isn't an entirely large amount of interaction between us each day but there is interaction between us all on a weekly basis. As far as the first question, do I actively engage my team to accomplish our mission, I would say yes. In the rare cases where a pilot or student brings up a question about us or are work, I make it a priority to help resolve the situation for the teams sake. I personally believe that by doing that, I create a positive atmosphere and a learning environment.  Like I said, I received some perspective this week. Sometimes my feedback to other team members comes across a little pushy and a bit on the "know it all" side. I took this information to heart and I've begun to address that and better apply what I'm learning in grad school. Do I think I'm still helping accomplish the mission, absolutely. I think that if I weren't helping bring these situations to an end, that maybe they wouldn't be resolved, ever.

As to the second question, do you work to improve the team cohesion and collaboration? To be honest again, I haven't done the best collaborating with the other employees to situations that pertain to the entire team here. That could have some negative effect on the cohesion of the group and there could be some small trust issues. I don't think its an entirely "me" situation but I am willing to say that I have some areas in which need work. In this weeks discussions, I've come to better understand how other people view their team experiences and how they have been part of meetings or situations that they shouldn't have. I've learned from our class discussions that sometimes in order to get things accomplished, high efficient teams are needed to be more effective. I have now come to understand that some people have not experienced these high performance teams and that I assumed that most people had. I'm now going to take that and apply it to my everyday job. Maybe I had some assumptions about my team-member roles that were incorrect and my perspective was wrong. This week has taught me a lot about enhancing team members roles and trying to get the right team formed for the right job. The source I read this weeks states, " It is important that each team member feels comfortable speaking her mind about her responsibilities on a project to allow for the expression of creative ideas and to ensure that questions are raised before mistakes are made (Wolski, 2014). What that means to me is that we need to be able to communicate with one another and that we all have input. Each team member needs to have the ability to want to share ideas and thoughts. If we can all do that, we can help solve issues that we face and perhaps we can all find more common ground. Our weeks reading states "team members behavior is interdependent, and personal goals are subservient to the accomplishment of the team goal (Cameron and Whetten, 2011). In this facility, we may have to observe that and maybe I can bring some perpective to the situation through my leanings this week.

Whetten, D. A., & Cameron, K. S. (2011).  Developing management skills (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall.

Wolski, C. (2014, January 1). Characteristics of a High-Performance Team. Retrieved September 19, 2014, from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/characteristics-high-performance-team-1402.html