Role and Responsibilities as a Project Leader
Working in collaboration have become an essential aspect company around the world are wanting their employees to work in groups, because of its multifarious benefits the most important of all of them is working in groups helps increasing tolerance, and understanding, and so it is recommended that people should work in groups, it also facilitates learning. Working in groups helps to learn things faster, and also increases the retention capacity than the others who do not work in groups. There might be various reasons workers are required to work in small groups. Apart from that, to increase the efficiency of the employees, it is necessary to make sure that everyone in the workplace has the opportunity to express their feelings, whether they were linked to the project or any other challenges that the team was facing. The key goal was to assure the team members’ mental health to do high-quality work. The thoughts gathered from all of the members were grouped. Then, after reviewing the suggestions with the team members, a few were chosen; this inspired the team members and helped them work more efficiently. Choices within the team were never made only based on one person’s viewpoint; hence, the team’s culture was to discuss everyone before making any decisions, reducing the likelihood of conflict.
There are several possible reasons workers are asked to work in small groups. Team performance, is importance, that that could only take place of people are working groups, it helps in refining the personality, and make people more successful as noted by Belbin. Implementation of team work is important as it will foster positivity in the workplace enhancing the skills, and areas that needs further improvement. It will also help in achieving desired goal easily. We as a team have worked hard and whatever we have achieved was not possible if we had not collaborated. Despite the fact that the design process was separated into separate components, we constantly spoke with one another when we faced into issues with our work. As a result, we were able to achieve a tremendous result, enhancing our knowledge and capabilities while also vesting the whole group.
The group I will be talking about is the cross-functional team I used to be a part of. It was created temporarily to tackle a specific situation. We were given a time limit; once the problem has been resolved, the members will return to their respective teams. Employees from numerous areas, including sales, IT, accounting, and many more, comprised the team. Because the members were experts in their fields, they were brought together to address problems. Some of the faces were recognizable, while others were unfamiliar. I was chosen as a team leader because the company’s management felt I would be able to transmit information effectively. This structure adopted by the group is a team-oriented setting.
Thus, this paper intends to temporarily discuss the experience I gained while working on a project. In this report, I will discuss my role, the kind of working environment I prefer, the formation of the team, team motivation, culture, leadership, how I made to control conflict, followed by an action plan and conclusion.
Preferred Working Environment
My role in the project team is that of a project leader; I have been allowed to develop team schedules, help in the onboarding process, and train team members. I am also responsible for communicating goals and expectations to the other team members; apart from this, motivating team members, offering emotional support, valuing others’ decisions, motivating them, providing feedback, resolving conflicts, ensuring a positive workplace environment, creativity, and nurturing collaboration are the responsibilities that I have, ensuring effective performance of the team. According to the Big Five Personality Trait theory (Li et al., 2015), I feel that I can openly accept others’ ideas, have a goal-directed behaviour, control my emotions, and agree with what people say if it is justified. The ideal working environment for me is a place where collaborative work culture (Ojstersek, Javernik, and Buchmeister, 2021) is followed. I believe it helps enhance skills and workplace relationships; I support such a kind of working environment as I believe working in a team increases the efficacy level of all.
The group I will discuss is the cross-functional team (de Vries et al., 2022) I was initially a part of. It was developed temporarily to solve a particular problem. We were given a particular period; the members will return to their respective teams once the issue is resolved. The team member was employees from various departments, such as the sales department, the IT department, the accounting department, and many more. The members specialized in their particular field, and hence, they were brought together to resolve issues. Few faces were familiar, and some of them were not. I was selected as the team leader as the company’s management thought I would be able to communicate information. This structure that the group followed is a team-oriented setting (Nelson, Proell, and Randel, 2016); as already mentioned, I like to prefer a collaborative work environment, as I believe contribution that comes from everybody’s side is more useful. The right kind of people was put in the right place. The group’s strength was that it was diverse, people were experts in their fields, and most of the employees had leadership traits to know what they were supposed to do. The weakness was because everybody is experienced and knows what to do, they were trying to overshadow each other, and differences in perspective led to conflict. The group also included a project manager.
The focus of this part of the paper is on how the work was organized. Here the issue started; different people had different perspectives on how the work needed to be organized. My role started as a negotiator, considering everybody’s viewpoint, assigning their roles, and estimating over time. At the initial level, the work organization issues were solved, where everybody knew what they needed to do. It could be understood from the chart provided in the appendix (Fig 1).
Have a clear understanding group process and ways of managing it
What I understood from my entire experience as a project leader is that to effectively perform in a group, it is essential to understand each of the members and handle them accordingly; like I did while organizing the task, everybody in the team is experienced, and hence, the role will be taken by whom created an initial conflict, but dividing the role according to everybody’s expertise and preparing a timetable, helped a lot to manage conflict. I gave everybody the chance to contribute equally in the group meetings while carrying out the work; I ensured that there was no discrimination, which would further ignite conflict because understanding and experience a person is, conflict is unavoidable (Leon-Perez et al., 2015). Apart from that, taking feedback and giving feedback in return also helped keep things in place, though there were situations when the conflict could not be avoided.
Cross-functional Team Formation and Strengths
Right from the initial days, I ensured that a strict team culture would be followed, as I believe in collaborative work culture (Ali et al., 2015) and followed the same culture in the team. As I feel that communication becomes easy when collaborative workplace culture is followed when the members of the team develop a sense of deep affiliation with the other members of the team, as mentioned in the McClelland Theory of Motivation (Osemeke, and Adegboyega, 2017), their actions become more positive and benefits the entire organization and the people working in it. Members of the collaborative team are expected to be a high-performing team; I believe in collaborative team culture, the members feel safe to voice their opinions and share ideas, which helps in better delivery of projects.
Apart from this, I ensured that everybody got the chance to speak about what they felt, whether it could be related to the project or any other issues faced by the team. The main motive was to ensure the mental well-being of the team members so that they could deliver quality work. Focusing on ideas collected from all the members were categorized. Then, a few were sorted from the selected ideas after discussing them with the team members; it motivated the members and helped increase efficiency. Decisions within the team were never taken single-handedly; everybody’s opinion mattered a lot; hence the culture of the team was to consult everybody before taking any decisions so that the chances of conflict reduce.
Here, the McClelland Achievement, Affiliation, and Power Motivation (Güss, Burger, and Dörner, 2017). Because a person who is driven by success is self-motivated, they can perform and function well both independently and as part of a team. This ability explains how they can clearly identify a goal and create a ray of hope to get there. To allow to make an achievement so that the individual to thrive, create a setting that allows them to be creative, an opportunity that expands beyond their present position or function, and demanding duties, all of which bring the promise of progress, success, and enhancement.
A person who is motivated by affiliation (Rybnicek, Bergner, and Gutschelhofer, 2019) will naturally regard themselves as a team member willing to assist, and support the project efforts or decisions. People who are drawn to a connection excel at careers that demand a lot of internal or external communication, teamwork, and presenting information to others. The attached individual may find it challenging to keep motivated if they don’t have somebody to cooperate with, chat with, or encourage them. Interaction is important whenever a task has been allocated to the employees, it will help in proper delivery of task and also lead to the achievement of the same goal easily
As stated previously, a person who is driven by power will automatically fit in the role of a leadership within the project team. Individuals with a proclivity for authority can be assigned a wide range of tasks to aid in the achievement of collective team agreements, the avoidance of inherent hazards, and the achievement of specific project objectives. Again, as a project leader, I wanted to develop a power-driven worker in a position that focuses on the capitalization on their inherent motivating inclinations while considering the need to manage conflict and ensuring that recommendations offered to meet project requirements while providing personal exposure. To minimize rework, additional expenditures, and disputes, a continual balance between acceptable management degrees and compliance with project direction is essential when delegating activities to “power (Badubi, 2017)” motivated employees.
Work Organization and Conflict Management
The leadership approach followed by Hersey and Blanchard is followed in this aspect-
- Telling (S1): Under this type of leadership style, the leader, informs others what to do and how(Raza, and Sikandar, 2018).
- Selling (S2): To encourage group members to buy into the process, I, as a leader, advised them to share their ideas and message(Lynch, 2015).This approach of leadership focuses on sharing information.
- Participating (S3): I gave less direction in this technique and encouraged the group members to contribute more ideas and make judgments. It is similar to the approach where I followed the followership technique. In certain situations, I gave the power to the group members and tried to follow them. It firstly enhanced their motivation and helped build trust(Thompson, and Glasø, 2018).
- Delegating (S4): This type of leadership style is characterised by low-engagement approach. Most of the decisions are made by group members, and they carry the brunt of the blame for what happens (Meier, 2016).
My job on the project team is that of a project leader; I have been given the authority to create team schedules, assist with onboarding, and train team members. I am also responsible for communicating goals and expectations to the other team members; in addition, I am responsible for motivating team members, offering emotional support, valuing others’ decisions, motivating them, providing feedback, resolving conflicts, ensuring a positive workplace environment, creativity, and nurturing collaboration. According to the Big Five Personality Trait approach (Özba?, 2016), I can freely accept other people’s opinions, have goal-directed behaviour, regulate my emotions, and agree with what people say if it is reasonable.
Managing a project is difficult as a lot of variables needs to be managed at once — from resource allocation to task management, everything must be meticulously monitored to guarantee that the project runs smoothly.
Here are the things that mattered a lot in our project these are the things that are important in our project • resource allocation, • task assignment, • budget allocation, • funding determination, and • people management.
When the variable to focus on is so many, the individuals who are involved might end up being in, chaos and strife. Conflict is unavoidable (Lafta, 2016). There were certain things that everyone in the team was unsure of, leading to disagreement. Here are certain things I followed in negotiating and managing the conflict-
- I gathered the entire team and gave them a clear image of their common aims.
- Assign duties to the team on a platform where they can keep track of them all to help them with personal issues.
- Provide the team with the tools to disentangle talks by holding extensively recorded sessions.
Furthermore, there are techniques for preventing confusion and stress in the first place, such as addressing the primary causes of misinformation.
- To create a schedule.
- To establish objectives weekly.
- Clearly defining duties and responsibilities.
- Holding meetings assuring positive outcome.
The main issue also started at the initial stage of organizing the work- This part of the paper will focus on how the work was organized. Here the issue started; different people had different perspectives on how the work needed to be organized. My role started as a negotiator, considering everybody’s viewpoint, assigning their roles, and estimating over time. At the initial level, the work organization issues were solved, where everybody knew what they needed to do.
Lastly, scheduling also led to conflict (Wood, 2016)- another type of dispute that has affected the route of project management. I do not mean scheduling events or meetings here, but rather the deadlines for specific activities. When I say that the jobs in a series would all suffer if the first one is delayed, I believe you will all agree. It causes a slight delay in the delivery of the team’s work and leads to a collectively stressful environment for the team. It could threaten the entire project timeframe, not to mention its overall result. The method that I followed to mitigate the issue is as follows-
- As soon as possible, tell clients and stakeholders about the timetable modification.
- Talk about what went wrong and set a new schedule for future work while keeping everything in mind.
- To simply update your work deadlines, use the Gantt chart features. In the appendix, there is a conflict cycle (fig 2)
Conclusion/Action Plan
Thus, it could be concluded by saying that, what matters most is what have been learnt learned from the group work experiences. Working in collaboration have become an essential aspect company around the world are wanting their employees to work in groups, because of its multifarious benefits the most important of all of them is working in groups helps increasing tolerance, and understanding, and so it is recommended that people should work in groups, it also facilitates learning. Working in groups helps to learn things faster, and also increases the retention capacity than the others who do not work in groups. There might be various reasons workers are required to work in small groups. There are several possible reasons workers are asked to work in small groups. Working in groups helps to learn things faster, and also increases the retention capacity than the others who do not work in groups. There might be various reasons workers are required to work in small groups. Apart from that, to increase the efficiency of the employees, it is necessary to make sure that everyone in the workplace has the opportunity to express their feelings, whether they were linked to the project or any other challenges that the team was facing. Team performance, is importance, that that could only take place of people are working groups, it helps in refining the personality, and make people more successful as noted by Belbin. Implementation of team work is important as it will foster positivity in the workplace enhancing the skills, and areas that needs further improvement. It will also help in achieving desired goal easily.
Understanding Group Process
The action plan that could be taken to improve the efficiency level of the entire team is as follows-
A person who is motivated by affiliation (Rybnicek, Bergner, and Gutschelhofer, 2019) will naturally regard themselves as a team member willing to assist, and support the project efforts or decisions. People who are drawn to a connection excel at careers that demand a lot of internal or external communication, teamwork, and presenting information to others. The attached individual may find it challenging to keep motivated if they don’t have somebody to cooperate with, chat with, or encourage them. Interaction is important whenever a task has been allocated to the employees, it will help in proper delivery of task and also lead to the achievement of the same goal easily
As stated previously, a person who is driven by power will automatically fit in the role of a leadership within the project team. Individuals with a proclivity for authority can be assigned a wide range of tasks to aid in the achievement of collective team agreements, the avoidance of inherent hazards, and the achievement of specific project objectives.
Organizations that prioritize development and training keep people longer, have better levels of engagement, produce outstanding goods and services, delight consumers, and earn larger profit margins than comparable organizations that perform the bare minimum (Rojot, J., 2016).
Transparent feedback is essential for maintaining a high-performing teams’ and it will also ensure proper learning cultures. The culture includes a psychologically secure atmosphere and courteous conflict. It would surely improve the efficacy of the team members (Singer, 2018).
Reference
Ali, N.M., Jangga, R., Ismail, M., Kamal, S.N.I.M. and Ali, M.N., 2015. Influence of leadership styles in creating quality work culture. Procedia Economics and Finance, 31, pp.161-169.
Badubi, R.M., 2017. Theories of motivation and their application in organizations: A risk analysis. International Journal of Innovation and Economic Development, 3(3), pp.44-51.
de Vries, T.A., van der Vegt, G.S., Scholten, K. and van Donk, D.P., 2022. Heeding supply chain disruption warnings: When and how do cross?functional teams ensure firm robustness?. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 58(1), pp.31-50.
Furlong, G.T., 2020. The conflict resolution toolbox: Models and maps for analyzing, diagnosing, and resolving conflict. John Wiley & Sons.
Güss, C.D., Burger, M.L. and Dörner, D., 2017. The role of motivation in complex problem solving. Frontiers in psychology, 8, p.851.
Lafta, A.H., 2016. Conceptualizing workplace conflict from diverse perspectives. Journal of Business and Management, 18(1), pp.49-53.
Leon-Perez, J.M., Medina, F.J., Arenas, A. and Munduate, L., 2015. The relationship between interpersonal conflict and workplace bullying. Journal of Managerial Psychology.
Li, Y., Guan, Y., Wang, F., Zhou, X., Guo, K., Jiang, P., Mo, Z., Li, Y. and Fang, Z., 2015. Big-five personality and BIS/BAS traits as predictors of career exploration: The mediation role of career adaptability. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 89, pp.39-45.
Lynch, B., 2015. Partnering for performance in situational leadership: a person-centred leadership approach. International Practice Development Journal, 5.
Meier, D., 2016. Situational leadership theory as a foundation for a blended learning framework. Journal of Education and Practice, 7(10), pp.25-30.
Nelson, M.W., Proell, C.A. and Randel, A.E., 2016. Team-oriented leadership and auditors’ willingness to raise audit issues. The Accounting Review, 91(6), pp.1781-1805.
Ojstersek, R., Javernik, A. and Buchmeister, B., 2021. The impact of the collaborative workplace on the production system capacity: Simulation modelling vs. real-world application approach. Advances in Production Engineering & Management, 16(4), pp.431-442.
Osemeke, M. and Adegboyega, S., 2017. Critical review and comparism between Maslow, Herzberg and McClelland’s theory of needs. Funai journal of accounting, business and finance, 1(1), pp.161-173.
Özba?, G.K., 2016. The role of personality in leadership: Five factor personality traits and ethical leadership. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 235, pp.235-242.
Raza, S.A. and Sikandar, A., 2018. Impact of leadership style of teacher on the performance of students: An application of Hersey and Blanchard situational model. Bulletin of Education and Research, 40(3), pp.73-94.
Rojot, J., 2016. Negotiation: from theory to practice. Springer.
Rybnicek, R., Bergner, S. and Gutschelhofer, A., 2019. How individual needs influence motivation effects: a neuroscientific study on McClelland’s need theory. Review of Managerial Science, 13(2), pp.443-482.
Singer, L.R., 2018. Settling disputes: Conflict resolution in business, families, and the legal system. Routledge.
Thompson, G. and Glasø, L., 2018. Situational leadership theory: a test from a leader-follower congruence approach. Leadership & Organization Development Journal.
Wallensteen, P., 2015. Understanding conflict resolution. Sage.
Wood, A.J., 2016. Flexible scheduling, degradation of job quality and barriers to collective voice. Human Relations, 69(10), pp.1989-2010.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
