The Art of Disagreeing without Dividing.

Teamwork allowed me to learn lessons on disagreement, collaboration and consider other members’ perspectives. It looks very simple; put a group of people together, add their talents and make them work towards a common goal. However, group-based learning has taught me that collaboration isn't as straightforward as it sounds, merely splitting the tasks and then combining the results.

The lecture on Teams and Teamwork gave me valuable insights on this. The model of Tuckman's stages of team development, especially the storming stage, indicated to me that it is normal to have conflicting views and opinions to build an effective team. I used to equate successful teamwork with harmony and getting agreement relatively quickly. I was challenged in the lecture to think on whether sometimes by not disagreeing decisions can be weakened in terms of quality.

“Effective teamwork is about accepting differences of the team members and enabling those differences to shape the strategies favourably towards achieving the end goals.”

In particular, the groupthink discussion was thought-provoking, and I learnt that teams could fall into this pattern of agreeing not to disagree as certain team players are afraid to disagree with or voice concern about an idea. This helped me realise that the unstated shouldn’t be simply considered as agreed in group discussion.

Another key point was how the roles differ between task-facilitating and relationship-building roles. Whilst it is important to get the job done, it is also important to get people involved, to handle tensions and to ensure that various perspectives are addressed. Even if a team is full of capable people, these sorts of tasks can create complications if they are not addressed.

This enabled me to reflect on my perspectives on collaborative working. I plan to promote positive dialogue and ensure that everyone understands their objectives and consider other ideas before coming to an agreement while encouraging constructive feedback, for all my future projects. I also aim to get comfortable at disagreeing in a way that is conducive to the team finding the best approach. Importantly, I discovered that effective teamwork is about accepting differences of the team members and enabling those differences to shape the strategies favourably towards achieving the end goals.