MAR026-1 Collaborative Challenge for Week 1

[Student’s Name]

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Table of Contents

PART A- SWOT Analysis. 2

Outline of SWOT Analysis. 2

Strengths. 3

Leadership. 3

Culture. 3

Communication. 3

Weaknesses. 4

Workflow mismanagement 4

Procrastination. 4

Diversity. 4

Opportunities. 5

Creating an action plan. 5

Encourage collaboration. 6

Supporting and harnessing strengths. 6

Threats. 6

Lack of trust among team members. 6

Autoritarain laedsrhip style. 7

Team members’ cultural differences. 7

References. 8

PART A- SWOT Analysis

SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This is a very viable tool that helps organisations and businesses identify the strengths and weaknesses of their strategic processes and the opportunities for growth and external threats (Benzaghta et al., 2021).  In the context of this report, it is critical to identify and assess the collaborative challenges among team members who worked on the project through the use of the SWOT analysis tool.

Figure 1. The Components of a SWOT Analysis

Source: (BiteSize Learning, 2024)

Outline of SWOT Analysis

Table 1. Outline of SWOT Analysis

Source: (Own Illustration)

Strengths

Leadership

First, it is important to identify the strengths of the team members. A total of five team members and one of those team members assumed the role of leadership. A leader is responsible for guiding the team toward task/project completion. The leadership in a team is responsible for managing tasks, creating a collaborative work scenario, and keeping a check on the team members’ progress (Abson, Schofield, and Kennell, 2024). These qualities indicate that a leader should be highly skilled in communicating with his team members. One of the critical success factors in a team’s desire to work in synchronisation is reflected in the high communicative competency of the team’s leader. The key aspect of any leadership venture is that a leader should be driven by the vision and mission of the project. In the context of our team, leadership was best suited to the needs of the individual team members. It was the strength of our team.

Culture

According to Radu (2023), effective leaders always foster a culture of learning and teamwork. They could create a positive work scenario and maintain the morale of the team. However, cultural differences affect the team so there emerges a need to work across cultural challenges and the leader was effective in dealing with the issues. A leader makes the cultural differences among team members not a weakness but a strength. A leader stresses the importance of dealing with cross-cultural differences be they linguistic, economic, or related to political affiliations (Houdek, 2023).

However, this is one of the key aspects of the team members that they effectively and timely worked towards goal completion. There were differences and mistrust because of the cultural backgrounds of the team members but the leader assumed his responsibility to ease the cultural diversity. Zhang et al (2023) critiqued that culture is a strength because of the innovative ideas that come from team members, and the ideas were related to how they could work in harmony on the project by increasing their adaptability to the situational dilemma. Culture also helped identify the issues and provided clarity on how they could be resolved collectively.

Communication

Though there were cultural differences between the team members, they communicated their issues to each other and the leader for timely resolution so that it would not hinder the work progress. Better communication helped in conflict resolution as it helped in better dealing with the team members’ perspectives and the room for negotiation. The team members were vigilant and attentive if the news or any important information was being shared and were active listeners. One of the important aspects of having good communication is that it not only supports the leader as the issues are continually being identified and dealt with but it helps a leader in getting the messages across a team and building trust. It impacts positively on the productivity of the team members and ensures timely progress because of regular updates.

Weaknesses

Workflow mismanagement

There were some weaknesses in the team and one among them was mismanaging workflow. The main point was to allocate the tasks and work towards reaching the goal. However, I find that things and tasks in the team could have progressed at a fast pace and timely if the team had managed its workflow on an individual basis. Though the leader had defined goals and allocated responsibilities still the workflow suffered. I think this is partly due to the lack of timely collaboration. The use of online tools for managing workflow was helpful and that’s why the project was submitted in the required timeframe as mapping, the Gantt chart (used not as a tool but as support), and a workflow diagram (Belcic, and Stryker, 2021).

Procrastination

                Procrastination is a habit of delaying tasks that must be completed on time. This led to various bottlenecks in the workflow in our team as well. The team as a whole was not delaying tasks but due to some members submitting their work late was the cause of frustration among team members. Due to this, frustration and anxiety penetrated the processes and hampered productivity. Because of procrastinating, the team was lagging across the teams who were working on different projects.  This had a negative influence on not only the morale of the team but it created a kind of rift between the team members as they had to cope with the workload.

Diversity

Communication was the strength between different team members but their diverse opinions regarding how to execute things and ideas in a team could be termed as weakness. According to Yousef (2024), team members belonged to diverse cultural backgrounds and had different kinds of affiliations with the overall project and university life, they wanted to deal with the issues on an individual basis, and that hindered the overall satisfaction rate of the project. The key aspect of the diversity issue was that leaders could deal with the issues of diversity and inclusiveness. Still, some of the tasks were delayed, and because of that the teamwork and collective effort was compromised.

Opportunities

Creating an action plan

The action plan might be considered by the leader of the group as an opportunity because differences arose due to various issues related to diversity and personal differences but once the leader will initiate implementation on the action plan after identifying the issues and problems, the team could make efforts for the improvement of task completion.

Table 2. Expected Action Plan

Source: (Own Illustration)

Encourage collaboration

The key opportunity in any teamwork is an exercise of collaboration among team members. Once the group is formed and the project assigned, the role of the team leader is to set clear guidelines for the project completion and a leader must stress the need for collaboration because it can minimise errors, ensure timely delivery of the project, and strengthen inclusive environment within the team (Benishek and Lazzara, 2019).  Another key advantage of a collaborative stance is supporting the team members individually if they lag in their task and must be an opportunity for a team to grow and thrive.

Supporting and harnessing strengths

This is one of the critical opportunities for a team that is geared towards aligning roles with team members’ strengths.  The role of the team leader in this regard is to support team members in harnessing their strengths and tailoring them to the specific needs of the project (Kawarsky, 2024). Also, it is highly influential in project completion and gives task-oriented specifications to the team members. The important criteria in this aspect are clear communication, effective and skilled leadership style, and team member coordination.

Threats

Lack of trust among team members

Team members’ lack of trust is a threat to the overall team structure but on the initial basis when the team members get to know each other and allow other teams to be distinct from them based on their different approaches, projects, and personal differences, it is valid that the trust may seep in. However,  later if distrust is present among group members it can hamper the productivity of the team as a whole because members may not be open about their issues and grievances with each other. This also points in the direction of minimal collaboration.

Autoritarain laedsrhip style

This is a compatible leadership style because it can drive immediate results but while working in a team that promotes collaboration and works towards identifying the key challenges of collaboration, the authoritarian leadership style does not fully suffice to the needs of the team members. They may want to engage more in the critical and reflective discourse regarding project completion but if a leader of the team is authoritative, it may hinder guidelines and rules clearly defined for the projects (Shonk, 2024).

Team members’ cultural differences

The cultural differences between the team members were a threat in the sense that if the members focused more on differences and less on aligning tasks with their strengths and fulfilling their responsibilities on time. The cultural differences may be linguistic and in this way, the appropriate task is to skillfully navigate through linguistic barriers with the support of the team leader and manage the differences in a way that it must not hamper task productivity.

References

‌Abson, E., Schofield, P. and Kennell, J. (2024). Making shared leadership work: The importance of trust in project-based organisations. International Journal of Project Management, 42(2), p.102575.

Belcic, I. and Stryker, C. (2024). Workflow diagram. [online] Ibm.com. Available at: https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/workflow-diagram

Benishek, L.E. and Lazzara, E.H., (2019). Teams in a new era: Some considerations and implications. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, p.1006.

‌Benzaghta, M.A., Elwalda, A., Mousa, M.M., Erkan, I. and Rahman, M. (2021). SWOT analysis applications: An integrative literature review. Journal of Global Business Insights, 6(1), pp.54-72.

BiteSize Learning.  (2024). BiteSize Learning. [online] BiteSize Learning. Available at: https://www.bitesizelearning.co.uk/resources/swot-analysis-explained-examples-templates

Houdek, P. (2023). The deep roots of cross-cultural differences in organizational behavior: Do human resource management education have to respect them? The International Journal of Management Education, 21(3), p.100876.

‌Kawarsky, S. (2024). The Soft Skills Group. [online] The Soft Skills Group. Available at: https://www.tssg.ca/managing-diverse-team-strategies-for-new-managers/

Radu, C. (2023). Fostering a positive workplace culture: Impacts on performance and agility. In Human Resource Management Update. IntechOpen.

Shonk, K. (2024). How an Authoritarian Leadership Style Blocks Effective Negotiation. [online] PON – Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. Available at: https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/leadership-skills-daily/how-an-authoritarian-leadership-style-blocks-effective-negotiation/

Yousef, K. (2024). Exploring the impact of cultural diversity in global projects: A comparative analysis of virtual and face-to-face teamwork. International Journal of Cross-Cultural Management, p.14705958241253754.

Zhang, W., Zeng, X., Liang, H., Xue, Y. and Cao, X. (2023). Understanding how organizational culture affects innovation performance: A management context perspective. Sustainability, 15(8), p.6644.