Unsuccessful Team

Another team of students experienced severe team problems, which caused it to become dysfunctional and had to be split. At the first peer assessment session, marks were transferred between team members, as it was perceived that some team members were not contributing. Even though agreement was made at this meeting that marks should be transferred, and suggestions were made about how to improve the situation, resentment amongst team members escalated. This was clearly evident from the comments being made through the confidential on-line journal entries each week. The tutor had several meetings with the project manager and individuals to help try to resolve issues, but to no avail.

At one of the team meetings a serious disagreement occurred, in which one of the team members verbally berated another, from which point there was no reconciliation. After this altercation, team members felt they could no longer work together, so even though they would experience a heavier workload, they unanimously agreed to split and form two separate teams. An analysis of the responses given by the successful team indicated that this team had a strong awareness of the attributes needed for successful teamwork. Comparing responses from this team against the key attributes needed for successful teams shown in Table 1, it was evident that this team was not congruent with these criteria.

Review the descriptors in Table 1 that describe the successful team, then review the commentary about the unsuccessful team and create your own Table in which you change the descriptors to ones applicable to the unsuccessful team. Then, include paragraph descriptions of the six attributes as was done for the successful team above.

Last, address these final questions about the unsuccessful team:

How would you recommend the unsuccessful team resolve its conflicts?
What steps could you take to improve the team’s performance?
The essay assignment calls for a paper that is 4-5 pages, not counting the cover and reference page.