timmygowalkies
9th July 2005, 12:21 PM
Hi everyone,
Thanks a lot for all the help you gave me in the teamwork and dofe thread. It was a great help. I said I would put the finished thing online, unfortunately my website has died on me so I'll post it on the forums instead.
Here you go, enjoy!
TEAM WORK
On any expedition or outdoor activity team work and working as a group is absolutely vital if you are to succeed and complete the task. It will always take a while to develop a team so that it works well, and all the members know what they are doing and work with each other instead of along side each other.
Duke of Edinburgh award scheme participants work all the time as a team when doing their expedition, both in the classroom and out in the field. Team work is one of the main parts of the award and makes the whole experience a lot more fun for everyone. A solid hard working team doing their Duke of Edinburgh award will almost definitely succeed.
There are several stages to building up a team, some of these stages aren’t pretty and a lot of conflicts can go on. Bruce Tuckman made a model to show how teams are formed and it seems to apply to all of the teams and groups I have been in.
The first stage is ‘forming’ this involves the group of people meeting each other and starting to get to know each other. They work more as individuals, working independently doing all their own work and not helping other members.
All teams then enter the ‘storming’stage. It is here that groups will either make or break their team. By this time the members all know each other fairly well, but are still competing to get their voices heard by other members. It is usually in this stage that a team leader is either elected by the rest of the team or someone just starts to naturally take charge. Often this can kill a group as the leader may not be as well motivated as other members of the team. During this stage there may be several changes to the team as people fall out or decide they don’t want to participate any more.
Some teams may never leave the storming stage and will stay more as a group instead of a team, working together but still quite disconnected and individual.
After the ‘storming’ stage comes ‘norming’. It is at this point that the team is working at its peak; all of the members get along well and work together as a team. There is usually a leader, but they may well have decided to keep on swapping roles, often this doesn’t work and the team can go back to the ‘storming’ stage each time they change leader.
OUR EXPEDITION GROUP
In our Silver Expedition group we never moved out of the storming stage. We were all still competing against each other for several reasons. It may have been because we were trying to prove to ourselves we were better than someone else in the group, or because we didn’t want to walk as one group and we didn’t get along well together. A mixture of all these things split us up into two different groups. One of boys, and one of girls.
We (the boys) were definitely the stronger walkers, but this didn’t set the group apart as we hung back accommodating for the fact the girls couldn’t walk as fast. As the first day continued we knew that there was going to be problems with Kate as she has serious asthma problems. This meant the whole group had to keep a careful watch on her as if she was starting to find the walk too much of a strain we could encounter serious problems that could result in a team member going to hospital or needing medical attention. There was also an issue within the group on the first day that was going to develop into a serious problem over the next two days. This was the fact that part of the group wasn’t listening to the other part. On several occasions we needed to stop because of Kate’s asthma problems and she refused to stop. This meant the rest of the group had to force her not to continue walking. At other points in the walk, we (the boys) wanted to stop for a rest and the rest of the group claimed that because we were stronger walkers we didn’t need to rest. There was also constant argument over very trivial matters between the girls.
On the second day there were also problems, again mainly because of the lack of communication, between boys and some of the girls. Kate was again suffering from asthma coming down from Rushup edge so the boys slowed down so we stayed together as a group. Danni and Vickie however had different ideas, and continued walking ahead and at one point were about 150 metres ahead of the group, even after being asked politely by the rest of the group to stop.
On the third day, after a meeting with the assessor we had a better day even though there were still a few niggles that should have been eliminated on the first day. Most of the problems though were through to exhaustion and the heat. There was still the constant arguing between the girls which there was no way we could stop as if we asked if anything was wrong we were told that we were annoying them by asking how they were every 30 minutes or so, like you do when you are working as a group.
There were lots of good things that came out of the weekend though. I personally learnt a lot about team work and how not everyone works well together and that it is better to make sure you have a concrete team before you go out.
It was a fantastic walk with beautiful scenery and was a good laugh in places but it really was spoilt by the constant niggling problems and loop holes in the team work.
If you've got any comments please leave them. Critisize me if you want :p
I spoke to my award leader, and I have passed, so as you can imagine I'm rather pleased lol.
Thanks again
Tim
Thanks a lot for all the help you gave me in the teamwork and dofe thread. It was a great help. I said I would put the finished thing online, unfortunately my website has died on me so I'll post it on the forums instead.
Here you go, enjoy!
TEAM WORK
On any expedition or outdoor activity team work and working as a group is absolutely vital if you are to succeed and complete the task. It will always take a while to develop a team so that it works well, and all the members know what they are doing and work with each other instead of along side each other.
Duke of Edinburgh award scheme participants work all the time as a team when doing their expedition, both in the classroom and out in the field. Team work is one of the main parts of the award and makes the whole experience a lot more fun for everyone. A solid hard working team doing their Duke of Edinburgh award will almost definitely succeed.
There are several stages to building up a team, some of these stages aren’t pretty and a lot of conflicts can go on. Bruce Tuckman made a model to show how teams are formed and it seems to apply to all of the teams and groups I have been in.
The first stage is ‘forming’ this involves the group of people meeting each other and starting to get to know each other. They work more as individuals, working independently doing all their own work and not helping other members.
All teams then enter the ‘storming’stage. It is here that groups will either make or break their team. By this time the members all know each other fairly well, but are still competing to get their voices heard by other members. It is usually in this stage that a team leader is either elected by the rest of the team or someone just starts to naturally take charge. Often this can kill a group as the leader may not be as well motivated as other members of the team. During this stage there may be several changes to the team as people fall out or decide they don’t want to participate any more.
Some teams may never leave the storming stage and will stay more as a group instead of a team, working together but still quite disconnected and individual.
After the ‘storming’ stage comes ‘norming’. It is at this point that the team is working at its peak; all of the members get along well and work together as a team. There is usually a leader, but they may well have decided to keep on swapping roles, often this doesn’t work and the team can go back to the ‘storming’ stage each time they change leader.
OUR EXPEDITION GROUP
In our Silver Expedition group we never moved out of the storming stage. We were all still competing against each other for several reasons. It may have been because we were trying to prove to ourselves we were better than someone else in the group, or because we didn’t want to walk as one group and we didn’t get along well together. A mixture of all these things split us up into two different groups. One of boys, and one of girls.
We (the boys) were definitely the stronger walkers, but this didn’t set the group apart as we hung back accommodating for the fact the girls couldn’t walk as fast. As the first day continued we knew that there was going to be problems with Kate as she has serious asthma problems. This meant the whole group had to keep a careful watch on her as if she was starting to find the walk too much of a strain we could encounter serious problems that could result in a team member going to hospital or needing medical attention. There was also an issue within the group on the first day that was going to develop into a serious problem over the next two days. This was the fact that part of the group wasn’t listening to the other part. On several occasions we needed to stop because of Kate’s asthma problems and she refused to stop. This meant the rest of the group had to force her not to continue walking. At other points in the walk, we (the boys) wanted to stop for a rest and the rest of the group claimed that because we were stronger walkers we didn’t need to rest. There was also constant argument over very trivial matters between the girls.
On the second day there were also problems, again mainly because of the lack of communication, between boys and some of the girls. Kate was again suffering from asthma coming down from Rushup edge so the boys slowed down so we stayed together as a group. Danni and Vickie however had different ideas, and continued walking ahead and at one point were about 150 metres ahead of the group, even after being asked politely by the rest of the group to stop.
On the third day, after a meeting with the assessor we had a better day even though there were still a few niggles that should have been eliminated on the first day. Most of the problems though were through to exhaustion and the heat. There was still the constant arguing between the girls which there was no way we could stop as if we asked if anything was wrong we were told that we were annoying them by asking how they were every 30 minutes or so, like you do when you are working as a group.
There were lots of good things that came out of the weekend though. I personally learnt a lot about team work and how not everyone works well together and that it is better to make sure you have a concrete team before you go out.
It was a fantastic walk with beautiful scenery and was a good laugh in places but it really was spoilt by the constant niggling problems and loop holes in the team work.
If you've got any comments please leave them. Critisize me if you want :p
I spoke to my award leader, and I have passed, so as you can imagine I'm rather pleased lol.
Thanks again
Tim