The Concept of Working as a Team online

This has been an interesting seven weeks, and I have learned a lot during the course. The concept of working as a team online is new to me but it has helped me during my first on-line graduate class. Working with Thomas, Keisha, and Tanielle has helped me develop new leadership skills and also help me learn how to deal with conflicts such as time management.

I feel that our team did so well because we identified our roles and did a lot of group brainstorming. We didn't allow group brainstorming to dwarf our creativity because the group roles were identified before the brainstorming began. Our group consisted of positive roles such as the knowledge contributor, process supporter, challenger, listener and a take-charge leader. I believe that because everyone knew their role in the group, we were not faced with the four major problems that prevent the effectiveness of group brainstorming such as loafing, conformity, production blocking, and downward norm setting. One positive thing I believe came from group brainstorming in our group was diversity in ideas.

There was communication, coordination, and a balance of contributions from each member, which led to benefits such as speed, support, efficiency, innovation and creativity. We were able to read the forty-chapter book "The Goal" in two weeks by splitting up the chapters between the group members and then bringing chapter summaries to the group during our conference meetings. Instead of having everyone waste time by individually reading the book, dividing the book allowed us to finish the book quickly and move forward to start other assignments. The decision to split the chapters also helped us develop personal responsibility. Even though the main focus was the team's goal, each person in our group knew that we were accountable and responsible for our own part and role. 



In group five there were also a lot of support and encouragement throughout the group. There were often times were we had problems understanding an assignment or issue and my teammates were always one email away to help with that issue. There was mutual encouragement throughout the group and the four of us were able to produce great work because we all had different skills, knowledge and personal attributes. By utilizing all of these different aspects in a team, more ideas were generated. I think we worked well as a group because from the start we created a goal and identified the roles of the team.

As a team I didn't feel we had any major obstacles. We did have a minor problem with timing and limits of creativity but those problems were quickly solved. At times we found ourselves so focused on working for the overall good of the team and fitting in to the team concept that we put our own ideas to the back.

* Thomas Tillmon -20 points- played the role as the leader. He set up Go to meetings that allowed us to communicate