Author: Damaris Li
At work I had my best experience in collaborative teams . Our company developed software and our offices were scatters around in Germany. The Headquarter was in Berlin (Germany’s capital) and we had 4 more office in Dresden, Kassel and near Frankfurt. I worked in Kassel. We were located in the middle of Germany. I was responsible for a lot of projects and the reasons why it went so well — despite the different locations — was, first: time management, second: communication, and third: professionalism.
Time management is very important in project planning and group work. Without a goal, deadlines, process steps and keep track, a project cannot be done.
Communication is important in every relationship between people. Without communication you cannot work on a joint goal. Communication must be very clear and precise. Team member must understand the language* spoken (*language itself, expert language of the field, company/ cultural language). Listening is another important factor in communication. As a project leader I had to listen to feedback, concerns, ideas and solutions. Sometimes two colleagues had the same solution and expressed it in a different way. They would get in fight about their ideas. As a team leader it was my job to clarify the conflict and repeat the meaning in a way, both would understand. A third aspect of communication is often neglect but so powerful: body language. As a group leader I also watched my team members how they express themselves through their body language. At some of projects I had a high intelligent programmer on my team. He was Autist and would not look into your eyes, or say something in big groups. His social skills were very poor developed. But as soon he began to wiggle in his chair, I knew he would like to say something. When he played excessive with his pen, he needed a break. If we discussed a solution in our team and one of the members would not look in my eyes, I knew he was not happy with it. But he was very shy and would not say anything in a bigger group. I had to find ways to figure out his concerns. Often I would express that I am not satisfied with the solution and ask, if someone else had a different idea. That gave him the security to come up with his thoughts, because he did not felt alone with his opinion. Another colleague cleared slightly her throat before she came up with constructive critic. I play often with my hair when I am bored. Every person uses non-verbal signs and they are very helpful to examine if people are involved in the communication or not.
But both points are without any means if team members do not act professional. Professionalism in a work force include responsibility, accountability, honesty, integrity, competency and self-regulation. Our company had around 50 employees. Because we were a smaller workforce, we could act more flexible and we knew, that we had and could rely on each other. If one or two co-workers would be lazy, not reliable or dishonest, it would be known in a very short time. I faced couple conflicts in every project I worked with my colleagues, but they never acted unprofessional. I knew they took their tasks seriously and when things did not worked out, they would inform me as soon as possible. They were autonom in a lot of decision and did not misused their freedom.
The worst experience in collaborative teams I had so far was in my sophomore year at College. Even with outlining a time schedule, breaking down the project in small steps, explaining precisely what to do, the experience was very frustrating! People would not show up to meetings, did not their tasks or did them very poorly, and weren’t interested in good grades.
One of the reasons was unprofessionalism. They were still school kids. They did not work for money, they worked for grades. The only sanction they received for poor performance, was a bad grade. Their priorities were different. They were more concerned about their next date, next trip to the beach, party and so on. They would not clear communicate. If I asked for their input, most of the time they would shrug their shoulder, and just look at me blandly. I had to be very patient to make an appointment that fit in our all schedule. Sometimes they “forgot’ they had class on the time of our meeting and would not show up, and did not informed the group. In Germany we have a very sarcastic saying what the acronym TEAM stands for: “Toll, Ein Anderer Machts!’ (English: Terrific, someone else is doing it!). Some people really think that way and hope to get an easy grade. Free riders like them turned me off to seek for group projects in College/ University.
At work most of my project meetings happened online. Because we were located in different towns we could not meet in person very often. The communication happened mainly through telephone, email, and through an internal software similar to skype. It took some time to document the meetings and update the project plan. Sometimes daily tasks interrupted the documentation and it happened that I forgot about an information. I would always send an email after the last virtual meeting to all team members and they usually checked and corrected the document. We had an internal server, where we shared different folders. It was way more convenient than google drive, since the tools to work on a document in google drive are minimized. Disadvantages of working online is the dependency on Internet, phone line, and technology in general. Power outage can disrupt meetings, and sometimes documents would vanish in the deep space of the internet/ server and never be found. VERY frustrating!