critical incident

Summary of critical incident

During the Residential weekend, for one of the tasks I became the leader. Managing the group was a bit difficult since there were people from different countries. As a result, the communication gap was moderately high. Being a leader was a difficult task since I was more comfortable bringing the entire group together and working on the minor tasks than monitoring the activities that other people were working on. I was successful in distributing the tasks to every individual but everyone lacked the connection in bringing the task together as a whole because of the communication gap. The Chinese found it easy to communicate in mandarin which kind of led to the miscommunication between the group even though they had excellent ideas regarding the solution to the given task. Being a leader I was successful in transmitting their ideas to everyone in the group and vice versa which helped us complete the task successfully. After receiving the feedback from group member X I came to know that I respect everyone's opinion as a strong teamworker as well as a good listener and I make sure that I bring their thoughts into action if they are valid enough for the given task.

How does your thinking and behaviour in this critical incident reflect the findings of your chosen self-analysis toolkit?

The Belbin Team Role toolkit demonstrated that I am "a people's person who respects everyone's opinions and a good listener". Through the feedback, I strongly realized that I am great at making relations with people as a result of which I am a strong driving force for any task possible. Thus, people feel comfortable working in such an environment when they are around me. However, the toolkit revealed one of my weakness as someone who "lacks the ability to work flexibly in situations involving a lot of pressure". Even through the feedback I came to know that I might not be a great leader but in relaxed situations I can manage a team very well and get successful results out of the team. Both these strengths and weaknesses are indicated in my critical incident, clearly when I made sure that everyone's thoughts and ideas are brought into the picture so that everyone is treated equally as part of the team and thus bring the feeling of not being left out of the group. I also became familiar with my weakness of cracking under pressure which was revealed when the group had very less time in hand in order to complete the task before deadline. The Belbin toolkit proved a pattern to my behaviour and thus granted me to make sense of this critical incident via broader reasoning and reflection.

Identify how you will use this learning in the future.

By engaging in analytical learning I have achieved a better understanding of myself, and through feedback and reflection, now I have a clear idea as to what kind of system I can fit in, in which there will be a lot of scope for further development. The toolkit has also helped in bringing to light the areas of myself which were formerly out of sight. It has also advanced my self-awareness and has helped me realize what I must do in order to overcome my weakness. There will be times in the future at an organization where I will be encountering people from different countries and thus I can help the team which I will be a part of by eliminating the communication gap between the different team mates with the help of my strengths. In the future, I will be facing situations where I will have to act strongly under pressure. Thus, working on my weaknesses with the help of the toolkit, will benefit me from working under pressure and completing the work before deadline. It will be essential for me to work under such circumstances in order to conquer my weakness of not working flexibly under pressurizing situations and the results of the toolkit will help me bury my weakness. In order to get the most out of it I will have to maintain an environment which everyone is comfortable working in. As a result, excellent results will be achieved by the team. In an effort to overcome my weakness and enhance my strengths, it is crucial that I start working on them from the present which will be useful in the future.