The Business Simulations and The Course Work

This statement would analyze on the live business simulations game and also concentrate on the team work and business with suitable opinions. We were handed over operations after 2 years into operations and we took over the management. This team consists of four team members and the team is owned by Mr. Tom. This simulations is scheduled for a period of 10 years. This company specialized in selling the electronic gadgets and this team had many challenges being from culturally different, different nationality we as a team had a commitment, interpersonal skills, interdependence, shared goals, and accountability.

Primary reflection: We had a task in our hand as we had to rebrand, start analyzing, strategize, take decisions and win accordingly. Awareness about the simulation, the main purpose of simulation is each person should be able to develop on their managerial skills and enhance their leadership skills, each member of the team was delegated to do some activity in simulations like communication, strategy, decision making and sales and each one of us used to take turns in each sections of simulations so we can develop our skills and we also focused on our team members core strengths of individuals to deliver good results.

Secondary reflection: We formed a group and to advance into different grade, we required forming, storming norming, performing strategies as per (Tuckman B.W 1965).

• Forming: In the initial stages of the game we formed a group where we all were not clear about our roles and process, we did not have a leader, so we formed a group and elected a leader depending on the leadership skills. I initiated myself as leader of the team and team gave me an opportunity to lead and take decisions and to have an appropriate team composition.
• Storming: We had meeting to understand how decisions are made and we had difference of opinion, we stormed to take some bold decisions though relationships looked little tense, we had a mutual respect for each other. The main reason for difference of opinion was we all from different culture, ethnicity and had different perceptions but we all had consensus to move ahead and achieve as team.
• Norming: As we progressed, we sorted out our difference in opinions, we understood the team well, we all had our goals set, we had commitment from each member and we worked for team progress.
• Performing: Our commitment started to reflect on our performance and we as team started to grow, set goal and we achieved results in second simulations we were leading the in simulations. We all had very little mistakes and we were more strategic in our approach and overall team performance kept on improving.

To be successful in a team we need to have commitment to team processes, leadership & accountability and all the decision need to be made with consensus decisions are made by consensus (Critchley & Casey, 1986)

Communication: we all are from diverse culture and we had communication as a barriers and formed communication channel through meetings, followed up on e-mails and messages. We required to know our core strengths like presentation skills, negotiations skills, team work, influencing skills and win -win conversations.

Our team mates were held accountable towards each other and that the success of the simulations was based upon each team mate’s contribution. Team members were always happy to help peers when they were suffering from difficulties. The team would proactively brainstorm problems, Team mates were offer assistance if needed.

While playing the game I noticed as leader of team we need to have interpersonal skill we have to encourage trust, commitment and confidence within the group (Harris & Harris, 1996). The team recognized that team members had different characters and experienced problems at different periods. They showed consideration for each other, respected and supported others in difficult times

Team members were all aware of the importance of each one’s role within the team and the process used by our group to plan and track the timing and quality of required tasks. I as a leader of the group was well respected by the team, and I always referred the team before making any major resolutions. Also, I had monitored activities as well as individual team members’ accountabilities.

We need to clarify to the members about their roles, relationships, assignments and responsibilities. This argument is supported by (Harris & Harris, 1996). For every simulations each member of the team was delegated with responsibilities.

We worked on different roles depending upon the core strength of the individual, as some were strong in accounting, sales, communications, strategies and decision making would share their ideas and take the team along on their concepts on team. Everyone had a responsibility, we had trust among ourselves to perform our assignments and achieve the desired results.

A facet of team formation I trust that on its own, it will be in short capacity to explain the difficulty of building a successful performing multi-cultural team. This argument is supported by Miller (2003). I preferred taking the team in democratic leadership than authoritative leadership. After few rounds of simulation, one of our team members was not that active participant. This gave me an opportunity to take the team towards authoritative leadership and was supported by other team mates. The other team mates approved a directive style of leadership, as described by Hersey and Blanchard’s, ‘Situational Leaderships’ theory (Torrington et al., 2014)

After this approach the team mates were on time, actively participating, everyone were prepared for meeting, taking their responsibilities in the roles and resulting the growth of the organization. We gradually progressed from being negative in our stock exchange and moved to the top of the simulations.

To be successful in team we need to have commitment to team processes, leadership & accountability and all the decision need to be made with consensus (Critchley & Casey, 1986) and Each individual in the team was accountable for the decision to be taken and we used post online decisions based on the consensus of each individual so that we have can take results head-on. we also had to analyze and perform post-project analyses to find out what worked and what didn’t (Johnson, Heimann, & O'Neill, 2000) we had to analyze our performance every week and look on positives outcomes and negative outcome to strengthen it.

Future learnings: To achieve success in coming years, to create a strong team I as a Leader need to focus understanding individual’s strength of the team mates, should know their weakness and need to support them to grow further in the organization’s. Few individuals are not as outspoken as others but are knowledgeable and should be given chance to express and allow them to take bold decisions and support them.

Stage 2 there was disruptions and it impacted the performance of our company, the leadership took decision to be authoritative and slowly we started exploring ourselves and we starting rebuilding as team and achieved success.

I have to improve my communications to improve my team’s performance. Our team performance in starting year the profit growth low, innovation was low and we were moderate in other sections like profit, turnover, and loyalty of staff, learning and growth. Later stage of the simulations we improved on all the facets of the simulations as every individual were working on it simultaneously and we achieved success in all the competencies. We as team were leading till period 7 and later complacent slowly crept in to team and we started performing low as a result we moved one level down in stock exchange

As a Leader I have to take strong decisions and take everyone in consensus, go for better communications, motivate the team and steer the team to success. Also have to find the loop holes in our team where are we lacking behind and how do we overcome the challenges in future.