Thank You for Working

Previously, I blogged about difficulties of working in a team. While teamwork is still a mystery to me, I at least tried to think of what a good team is.

I sometimes watch the TV show Bones. There are a lot of TV shows about mysteries and murders and lots of their main characters work in a team. I've already watched at least one episode of the other detective shows: CSI, NCIS or Cold Case. However, Bones is the show I watch the most, because I like their team.

I actually envy the Bones team. They give me the image of the perfect team and I envy them because I dream of working with this kind of team, but that has never happened to me. Following the teamwork guidelines of the University of Melbourne Law School (link removed), I would like to present a comparison between my current team and the Bones team.

Characteristics of Effective Teams

• Membership and Common goal.
  • The Bones team composed of forensic scientists and cops solve murders.
  • My team composed of students in technical communication and translation create an instructional design document with a translation.
• Social organization.
  • Anthropologists, entomologists, pathologists, forensic artists and cops.
  • Technical writer students and translator students.
• Interdependence between members.
  • Share the results.
  • Share the grade.
• Productive involvement.
  • Tasks are shared depending on the expertise of the staff.
  • Everyone is doing the same thing but: a member mostly wrote the first part of the instructions, another wrote the second part, another wrote the additional content, and another designed the document.
• Effective communication and interaction.
  • Face-to-face.
  • Forum, Facebook, mails.
• Mutual interest.
  • Everyone depends on the others' work.
  • Everyone gives their opinion but no one attacks personally another.
• Collective consciousness.
  • Staff for each murder change but it's not annoying.
  • Members are from three different countries but use the Internet to communicate.
• Mutual trust.
  • Staff is composed of experts in different fields who have been dealing with their specialization for a long time, so everyone definitely trusts the others.
  • Everyone contributes and reviews the other members' work in suggesting improvements, and also encourages or congratulates when the work is well done.
• Cohesion.
  • Staff are paid for good work so nobody gets lazy and on the contrary, wants to do the best for the team.
  • The Irish team is more active than the US and French teams.

After this comparison, there are actually no big differences between the two teams and I'm surprised that my team positively respects the criteria. In general, my team is not so bad. However, I think some points didn't allow the team to be at their best.

First, we are all students. We are not professionals yet and not everyone has already worked, that's why not everyone behaves professionally. Moreover, as we're still learning, nobody's a real expert and some may not feel confident.

Then, we haven't met one another in real, and can only use the Internet to communicate with one another. The time zones are different, so a fast answer can't be expected. There's a waiting time, time in which you wait for the others' replies. It slows down the work.

Finally, we will probably never meet and work in the future. Therefore, nobody thinks it's worth knowing the other too much because you'll forget them and you'll be forgotten when the assignment's done.

Even though my team is not perfect, I am quite happy that we fit to the criteria. It proves all the members here have potential to work in a team in the future. Of course, some qualities need to be developed but that's a start!