Before college, I never knew what it was like to work in a large group setting where the project or team’s goal was to actually improve on one’s individual skills in order to work better in the group setting. In high school all of the group projects I participated in were with two to three other people and the goal was to get the task done quickly and well enough to get the expected grade. Never was I challenged to look into who I am as a person and pick out what qualities I have that can contribute to the group’s common goal of completing the project.

 

 The team project required a group of five to six business 101 students to construct a startup business in the Bryan-College Station area that would be successful and contribute to the area in a positive way. Our team of six students created all the components of a business plan for an indoor trampoline entertainment park while having to figure out what each individual’s talent themes were and incorporating these strengths throughout the project through frameworks that were taught in class.

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This team project taught me how to work with others who have different working patterns and personalities, turn frameworks that were taught in class into real life situation guides for conflicts and other differences that emerged, and helped me understand what each aspect of businesses do. While working in a group is not the easiest task, the frameworks discussed in class helped immensely when dealing with conflict. From the start two people, myself being one, immersed themselves into the project and started throwing ideas out on what our business should be. This brought us to our first conflict, not being able to agree on one certain idea really put us back a day or two then where we were supposed to be. In order to solve this conflict we used Tuckman’s stages of Development in order to really see where we were as a group. Of course being fairly new to one another we were still in the forming stage and maybe entering the storming stage. Knowing how low we were in the stages of development truly opened everyone’s eyes and got us to agree on a completely new idea.

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Working with my group has definitely made me more curious about other frameworks I could use to become a better leader and how I can go about starting and owning my own business. Even though I am pleased on how our project turned out, I believe I could have been a better leader when it came to getting everyone together and working hard on the project. I definitely will look into different leadership styles and content that pertains to getting your group together and motivate them to do their best when the entire team is present. Due to certain people not doing their part or not showing up to meetings, this made me step us as a leader and get their portion of the project done for the group, which really showed my talent theme of being an achiever.

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 Our team may have stayed in the storming stage for the entire project duration, but in the end we all had moments where we worked together and produced an amazing company and business plan.