“Sé tú mismo. Los demás puestos están ocupados.”
— Oscar Wilde.
Esta es la primera entrada de mi nuevo blog. Acabo de empezar a escribir este nuevo blog. ¡Mantente al día para leer más entradas! Suscríbete a continuación para recibir notificaciones cuando publique nuevo contenido.
What? Nowadays teams have to work really hard to accomplish their goals, and they are always under big pressure to achieve the best and higher results. This kind of environment can take the teams to insane situations for their members because conflicts come on from the lights if the group doesn’t have the right tools, like good leadership, an appropriated task, mutual respect, trust and good communication.
A common phrase says if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go with a team. In other words, this reflects the idea of the people working by themselves can reach a goal faster than working with others but work teams have advantages because each member can offer new ideas, talent and viewpoints that help to have new and different outcomes.
So what? We know that working on teams has many benefits; the next step is how to motivate team members to reach better results working together without generating problems among them. How Levi says Cooperation is encouraged by thinking that contributions from others are valuable and trusting each other is a crucial step, so it is important to motivate and work with each other instead of against each other, also collaboration provides the chance to learn from the others successes and failures, breaking down barriers between people who share a common goal.
In the other hand, it is important to understand that competition could be used in the right way to promote certain attitudes on team members. According with what it is said in ¨Benefits of Teams Competing and Collaborating¨ of Matt Bullock, competition has some benefits like motivation (because individuals tend to work harder and do their best in order to succeed), also innovation could be promoted, just because it encourages people to solve problems with new approaches. Another positive effect of competition is that remove the complacency and conformity because it takes the team members ou of their comfort zone and requires from them more accomplishment and creativity.
Now what? Competition is a daily part of our lives, without the motivation of being better every day we can’t face the everyday challenges. It is impossible to imagine a world without competition; this is the reason that makes the companies to produce high quality products so they can convince the customers, competition makes sport teams to train every day to have higher levels. Therefore, for me as a future agricultural engineer, who could be part of different kind of teams it is important to never forget that the main reason to work harder is getting better results, and this has its base on competition. Producing more tonelades of grain per acres, more kilograms of meat per cow, better quality of fruits, in order to be more competitive in the market is one of the goals to accomplish for agriculture. This is not only about to compete against others, but with ourselves too, because the satisfaction to reach higher results every day is the best engine to move the machine.
References:
-Levi, Daniel. Group Dynamics for Teams. Fifth edition.
– https://work.chron.com/benefits-team-competitions-2170.htmlhttps://focusu.com/blog/competition-within-teams-good-or-bad/
–https://spinify.com/blog/6-benefits-of-teams-competing-and-collaborating/
-https://www.inc.com/workpop/6-ways-to-create-a-competitive-work-culture-thats-team-first-and-not-me-first.html
–https://focusu.com/blog/competition-within-teams-good-or-bad/
What? According to Levi, a group performance depends on the characteristics of the people performing the tasks. The teams should have individuals with different capabilities that match the requirements to obtain a successful result. Some groups fail because their members do not have the needed characteristics to perform the tasks. This take us to consider interdisciplinary teams, constitute of professionals from different areas, whom cover alternative perspectives that lead to novel solutions of the problem. This request more than the simple combination of professional knowledge, new and different results need people with different visions combined in unexpected ways to achieve original conclusions, and different from ones professional training is focused on. Working in this kind of team is not always easy, some conflicts are generated because of the different ways of thinking, but according with the results of Yong et al, task conflict is positively related to creativity. This is part of the creative process, the team members should listen and debate about different ideas to solve the problem and accomplish the goal.
So what? Working with teams where there are people with different skills, there needs to be clear and shared goals, explaining to them which is the objective of the project. Another important point is; even though everyone has to share their opinion, the answer is found and the objective is clear, there are various roles, but this does not mean that one role is more important than another. Also, it is important to not forget about the three main points for team success mentioned in Levi’s book, which leads us to highlight the importance of establishing good relationships between the members and give them the opportunity to grow, not only as a professional, but also as a person.
Now what? People should pay attention with the teams they are working with, try to be more open minded with the people who have different knowledge and skills, and listen to their opinions and point of view because they could be a very valuable source of new ideas that can help the team try original approaches to achieve the task. In addition, when you are trying to solve a problem, and looking for the right people, it is important to answer some questions like: what is the problem? Who is the beneficiary with the solution? Who are the people that should use/work with the product?. The answer to this can help to find the right kind of people and knowledge we need to complete the goal.
References:
-Levi, Daniel. Group Dynamics for Teams. Fifth edition.
-Alan F. Blackwell, Lee Wilson, Alice Street, Charles Boulton, John Knell. Radical innovation: crossing knowledge boundaries with interdisciplinary teams (November 2009) retrieved from: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-760.pdf
-Kevyn Yong, Stephen J. Sauer, Elizabeth A. Mannix. Conflict and Creativity in Interdisciplinary Teams. (First Published May 19, 2014) Research Article. Retrieved from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1046496414530789
-How to Encourage Collaboration in Multidisciplinary Teams (June 1, 2019). Retrieved from: https://contactzilla.com/blog/encourage-collaboration-multidisciplinary-teams/
Esto es una entrada de muestra, originalmente publicada como parte de Blogging University. Regístrate en uno de nuestros diez programas y empieza tu blog con buen pie.
Hoy vas a publicar una entrada. No te preocupes por el aspecto de tu blog. Tampoco te preocupes si todavía no le has puesto un nombre o si todo esto te agobia un poco. Tan solo haz clic en el botón “Nueva entrada” y explícanos por qué estás aquí.
¿Por qué es necesario?
La entrada puede ser corta o larga, una introducción de tu vida o una declaración de los objetivos del blog, un manifiesto de cara al futuro o una breve descripción del tipo de cosas que pretendes publicar.
Te ofrecemos algunos consejos útiles para ayudarte a empezar:
No tienes por qué atarte a las decisiones que tomes ahora. Lo bueno de los blogs es que evolucionan constantemente a medida que aprendemos nuevas cosas, crecemos e interactuamos los unos con los otros. Pero está bien saber dónde y por qué empezaste, y plasmar tus objetivos puede darte más ideas para las entradas que quieres publicar.
¿No sabes por dónde empezar? Tan solo escribe lo primero que se te ocurra. Anne Lamott, autora de un libro sobre cómo escribir que nos encanta, afirma que debemos permitirnos escribir un “primer borrador de mierda”. Anne está en lo cierto: tan solo tienes que empezar a escribir, y ya te encargarás de editarlo más tarde.
Cuando todo esté listo para publicarse, asigna entre tres y cinco etiquetas a la entrada que describan el centro de atención de tu blog: escritura, fotografía, ficción, educación, comida, coches, películas, deportes… ¡Lo que sea! Estas etiquetas ayudarán a los usuarios interesados en tus temas a encontrarte en el Lector. Una de las etiquetas debe ser “zerotohero”, para que los nuevos blogueros también puedan encontrarte.
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