Ltw group work analysis

The multicultural LTW team of 5 students was formed by a course tutor with the view to deliver a group presentation on MSc program and students’ competitiveness (See Appendix 2). The team was a mixture of people from 4 cultural and ethnical background - the countries with both high and low IDV score (Canada, China, Russia, Thailand). As a matter of fact, team members might have different communication styles (high- and low-contest) and relational behaviors (Hall, 1989; Hofstede, 2005; Thompson, 2000). In addition, all team members were of the same gender (female), the same educations background (everyone has a completed Bachelor’s degree), but with slight difference in age and work experience. The team had 2 months to work on the project and managed to finish the work within 4 meetings including the presentation rehearsal. The meetings were both in formal and informal settings: the first and the last meetings were at lunch or coffee settings while 2 meetings in between were held in PG hub with a big screen available.

The group negotiated the final goal and the strategy right at the welcome meeting in class and reached the agreement on doing the presentation of the whole campaign without paying too much attention for developing separate elements such as ads, business cards etc. Before the first out-of-class meeting the team members agreed on developing a draft vision of the whole project and the parts that everyone would be happy to contribute to. Interestingly, according to understanding of the first task, the team members might be divided into 2 groups: those who created the whole story with their potential input in it (2 senior representatives of more individualistic societies with work experience) and those who suggested campaign elements that they might be able to do (3 junior representatives of collectivistic societies without work experience). Such separation might have led to unequal contribution of junior team members to the synopsis creation because they easily agreed on the suggested by experienced colleges plan. This suggestion might be supported with the developed work plans introduced by 2 senior girls and approved by junior girls during the first meeting.

With the view to avoid any face threat and impoliteness the senior girls seem to be very accurate in competing for leadership and instead of competing they supported each other with leadership initiatives. Despite being representatives of high-context societies P1 (me, the researcher) and P2 (from Canada) seem to use very indirect way of communication to share the leading roles in managements issues and in content development issues. For example, at the very beginning of the first meeting I supported P2 with her note-taking and management initiatives:

P1: and I realized that it is so nice that we have a person who likes to take note because I hate it

P2: I do not mind

P1: I can do it but I do not like it

P2: for me it is quite all right and just start…

P1: yeah, taking notes.

Another interesting example of indirect politeness was noticed during non-verbal communication when P2 and me had an e-mail discussion of introduced by me letter samples:

P2: (…) I wanted to send this over to you before we show it to the group to see if you are happy with some of the changes that I made to your email. (…). I really liked all of the details that you included and I really only tried to go in and streamline a few things.

Please make any changes that you would like and then we can show it to the group after :) Thank you so much (…) and I think that we can make this a lot of fun!

P1: thank You very much for Your nice letter.

 I have just checked the paper. and I find it fantastic! (…)

 I do not think that we should cut it more... however, other girls may have some ideas about how we may improve it)))) (…)

 

So, some interesting findings may be done from these examples. First, I (P1) admitted the leading managerial role of P2 while P2 confirmed her respect to my skills based on previous work experience. Moreover, the e-mail language analyses, in particular, pronouns, shows a division between ‘we’, experienced team working together, and ‘other’ inexperienced, who will get a so called joint product agreed by senior team members . In addition, it is worth pointing out how the idea of experienced block of ‘we’ was developed through e-mails. If P2 used a lot of ‘I’ and ‘You’ before making ‘we’ as a synonym of experienced part of a team, I used only ‘we’ in my e-mail unconsciously confirming the 2 blocks of a team comparing us with ‘other’. However, the pronoun ‘we’ may have a double meaning in the concluding remarks of both P1 and P2. On the one hand, it may be discussed as keeping on working as a block, on the other, ‘we’ may be regarded as a synonym of a whole team stressing that even though two people are more experienced they are still a part of a team without a right to dominate.

At the micro and meso levels the way of doing leadership and teamwork may be further discussed through lexicogrammatical analyses, in particular, while the team made jokes and delivered/assigned tasks (decision-making process). The observations are based at the recorded second meeting when the team had to prove the general plan of the project and assign roles. Since P2 appeared to be the most talkative group member while other team members mostly commented on her suggestions when appropriate, the micro analyses is mostly reflects the leader’s speech.

So, during the meeting P2 took the initiative and typed the slides. P2 felt free making jokes, mostly on herself turning possible disadvantages of her work to jokes. For examples, finding out that slides she typed were not pretty enough she pointed out in a funny way that ‘we can make it prettier after… brainstorm’ or ‘again we can make it prettier later’. Furthermore, the pronoun ‘we’ may indicate the willingness to show that the work was done by the team without any domination of particular members.

Another humorous case was noticed when the computer system did not work properly and the girl made joke out of her IT weakness:

P2: I will leave it it is making me angry arr why u r doing this to me seriously thanks (shared laughter) sometimes I am talking to my computer it’s the matter that I am… I respect u as a piece of equipment

Another examples of doing leadership were observed during decision-making process when the girl delivered tasks and tried to involve others saying ‘who wants to write on …’, ‘who is doing …’ or using polite commands such as ‘do u want to …’ or ‘I ll give it to …’. But she did not only spread tasks but also took the initiative to do something herself saying ‘I can do it’ or ‘I do not mind to do it’. Also she clarified tasks:

P2: who wants to write on the goal?

P3: you mean paraphrase it or

P2: I mean like we need to make that slide pretty ha (shared laughter) you just need to reward it.

As well as she kept an eye that the work was distributed equally:

P2: oh think heh it is one of you three because you have only 2 slides each

All funny comments were followed by shared non-offensive laughter and resulted in forming overall positive atmosphere at the meeting as well as overall friendly relations in a team. So, everyone seems to have felt involvement and importance in the task splitting activity without any discrimination or misunderstanding of roles or goals to be completed. Moreover, looking at the words and grammar forms usage, all tasks were separated in a very polite and non-conflict manner giving the opportunity to each and everyone to choose and negotiate a topic fitting her interests and abilities. Although some group members might have felt that the leadership was shared while the teamwork was done equally with full involvement of all team members, the microanalises shows that one person was an obvious latent leader with a democratic leadership style. P2 is thought to ‘adopt a relaxed, good-humored feminine approach to management’ (Holmes, 2006, p. 53) letting the team members come up with ideas and waiting for a consensus. Also she is observed to be the one who coordinated turn-taking and the whole discussion and decision-making process.

All in all, despite being informed that the project would be unmarked, the group demonstrated high motivation to put as much effort in it as possible to become the most competitive team. And this motivation may be discussed as a result of positive evolution of the team with well-done leadership through humor and politeness (Holmes, 2012; Schnurr, 2009). This statement may be fully supported with the micro-level observations. In addition, no strong overlaps or code-switching were noticed among 2 months of interaction between participants. Furthermore, the clear goal, smart involvement of everyone in the decision-making process as well as delegation of tasks according to people’s skills and interests led to the quick realization of project of a competitive quality. Finally, the project may be described as more process- and people-oriented than result-oriented with a result being a hidden motivation (Archer & Cameron, 2012; Thompson, 2000; Tozer, 1997).