How are these Learned Lessons from publication helpful and why?

Working in a team can create many challenges. Each team member has a different perceptive, idea, thought process, and communication style. For a team to be effective, the team must all be actively working together towards the objective of the goal. Within a team, each member plays a different role. There are two sets of role relationships: task-oriented role and maintenance role. The task-oriented team members ensure that tasks are completed. Task-orientated members are characterized as initiators, information seekers, information providers, elaborators, summarizers, and consensus makers. A maintenance role team member ensures that members maintain good relationships. Maintenance role members are characterized as harmonizers, compromisers, gatekeepers, and encouragers. Through this case study, I have learned that I have played the role of both a task-oriented member and maintenance role member. In my academic studies, when working in a team, I tend to be more task orientated. I'm very aware of deadlines and making sure the team stays on track for group assignments. In my professional career, I tend to be more of a maintenance role member, tasks are important to me, but I have learned that playing the maintenance role member in teams helps to motivate the team. Encouragement and motivation help the team to successfully met goals and deadlines.

Team norms are very important to establish early in the team formation. Norms establish rules and expected behaviors for the team and how team members are expected to act and conduct themselves. Not creating norms can create opportunity for miscommunication and ineffectiveness within the team. Norms help to increase the chances of success toward the objective of the team and increase predictability of actions and behaviors of other team members. Norms also help to allow members to encourage expression of the team's values and distinctive identity to help solidify and maintain the team. In the workplace, norms help with predicting other employee's behaviors. For example, if a task is assigned to an employee, it is expected that the employee will complete the task within the given timeframe. If an employee normally has issues completing the task, then the team would expect to give that team member more time or more assistance in completing the task. I have learned that in the workplace it is very important to communicate norms with the team. This communication makes working effectively easier and the team has a clear understanding of what is expected.

Conflict within a team is not always bad. Some conflict can improve team effectiveness. Conflict can challenge other team members to see ideas from a different perspective. Conflict can also stimulate discussion, promote assessment of problems and options, and can lead to better team decisions. Conflict can help create more communication among teams especially if team members are conforming together. Conflict can form a new perspective and encourage other team members to discuss ideas. In a previous team assignment, conflict had occurred among the team. Each team member had a specific task and assignment, weekly the team would discuss how the team would proceed with the assignment moving forward. Each week the team's performance was evaluated by the professor and the class was in competition with other groups for the best grade. This created stress within the group to be the best each week. There was conflict with two team members did not see the same point of view on the assignment. This led the team to discuss what the next steps were and become more effective. Although each team member had an assigned task, this conflict led to the team all working together towards the objective. The team held each other accountable for the work that was being submitted and every team member was able to express their ideas and thoughts. The team was very successful and completed the assignment in first place.