Adjourning!

Hello everyone!  So soon another 8 weeks has rolled by and as usual, we have been very supportive of one another.  However, i need to mention the fact that I have been able to come this far  because you have always being there with your unflinching support, therefore, I am saying, from the bottom of my heart, a very BIG THANK YOU TO YOU ALL for always being there for me.  I will always cherish your supports, your probing questions and insightful comments, and as we move into our specializations I hope we will still keep in touch to share new ideas as we journey through.

Team Building and Collaboration, Part 1

The adjourning stage is signifying the ‘near-end’ of the project at hand and team members are readily moving off into other new roles or projects.

I would say that separation is not always an easy task, no matter the relationship.  For example, a quarrelsome couple was once separated by work; the husband had to move to another office location different from where the wife was and they both cried openly and lamenting on how they would miss each other.  Therefore, it is hardest to leave any of the groups, whether high-performing or low-performing.

It is good for a group to have very clear established norms where the members are able to work effectively together as a team (Abudi, 2010).  However, for a group to get to adjourning stage they were able to learn one thing or the other from one another, therefore, I feel the members would not find it easy to separate.

All of the groups I participated in were very hard for me to leave, and it is not about the projects only, but particularly about the individuals involved and the relationships formed.  I have experienced, severally, very moving and highly emotional closing rituals.  Moving from one segment to the other where one is not sure of meeting all the current class member is adjourning phase and for me, it has not been very easy, imagining how it will be like at the final segment is making me sad already.

Adjourning is an essential stage of teamwork because it gives room for success celebrations and capturing of best practices for future use.  It is an opportunity to say good-bye to each other (Abudi, 2010), exchange more contact details where necessary in order to facilitate networking.

References

Abudi, G. (2010). The five stages of team development: A case study. Retrieved from http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/the-five-stages-of-team-development-a-case-study.html

Nonviolent Communication and Conflict Management

The disagreement was with a co-worker from another department who did not understand the depth of an issue but decided to resolve it by dishing out blames with insults, not knowing that there was a new order from the departmental head.

The two strategies I have learned about that might help me manage or resolve the conflict more productively are to analyze the source of the conflict and also to focus on issues and not personalities as the other person has started attacking my personality by mimicking the way I speak and commenting that “this is not all about grammar…..”  I feel that these strategies might be effective in order to know if there are other underlining factor(s) that are not visible to everyone concerned and also to help in the timely resolute on the issue instead of taking time off the issue at hand to start defending behavior.

For this conflict, I feel that compromise might not be appropriate because it involves delivery on target and the departmental manager set the target.  This was communicated to me but probably not to this worker in that same department.  It has been a telephone conversation and each time I tried to call afterwards, the phone either rang ‘no reply’ or picked and replaced; I could try a face-to-face discussion.

Although the situation here is a case of misunderstanding as a result of communication break down between the other person and the group manager, I have been applying the principles of nonviolent communication to inform the person of the change in target from the departmental head.  The 3 R’s of repectful, reciprocal, and responsive might not be very effective in this contex.

 
Although I would have loved to, but it was not appropriate for me this week because many people were off duty; on training, vacation, and conferences, hence, very few of us remaining had a very busy week.