After completing the interviews, you will conduct your analysis of the interviews. The best papers will seek
Question:
After completing the interviews, you will conduct your analysis of the interviews. The best papers will seek to identify themes that are consistent across the interviews and, based on your own lived experience and challenges in Teamwork and Communication, identify the insights or personal implications you draw from the interviews. You may also find thematic divergence and provide your hypothesis for why the interviewees' responses differ. Furthermore, the best papers will integrate your secondary research and relevant key concepts from the course materials we will cover. Finally, each paper should have a conclusion that reinforces your main points and ties your learnings together.
What are some consistent themes and challenges in teamwork and communication?
Identify the insights or personal implications from the interviews. You may also find thematic divergence and provide your hypothesis for why the interviewees' responses differ.
Interview 1 Notes:
- How important have teamwork and communication been to your success?
All right, so teamwork and communication, I mean, communicating effectively with the team in general is super crucial to our success as a startup. So, to give you a bit of background, I was head of marketing at Event Finance, it's a crypto crowdfunding platform. And at the time of being head of marketing, we were around 30 people and 6 of which were under the marketing department. So, I had to make sure that there were no silos between different departments, would that be the product and the marketing team. Because in the very beginning there was a massive lack of communication, which just led to a mispositioning of our brand. And mispositioning basically just sends the wrong idea to external partners, to the community, to different users. And this, from a marketing standpoint, is something that we have to keep control of. So, making sure that we all communicate effectively, not just as individuals, so within each team member, but between department as well. So, I had regular team meetings, I believe three times a week. So, it was interdepartmental and then as well internal, but within just my team, my marketing team. And basically, on top of effective communication, I would say as well, making sure that we set clear expectations and goals for each member.
So, making sure that we check on everyone's progress, everyone is not lacking, behind or confused about any specific topics about their responsibilities. So basically making sure that there are no roadblocks, no roadblocks, no bottlenecks, to make everything a lot more efficient and make sure we work as effectively and efficiently as possible.
- What are other skills that are important when working in a team (e.g., problem-solving, decision-making, conflict resolution)
I'd say problem solving is one of the big ones. So it's the ability to identify basically all the different problems within the team and for external factors. So being able to execute on marketing campaigns, being able to work with limited resources, tight deadlines, and one of the biggest things, especially in marketing and community management would be conflict resolution and flexibility. So being able to work under pressure and be creative enough to understand the pain points of the different community members, of the different users. And if there's a conflict that arises, being able to solve it as soon as possible. Because especially in our industry, in crypto industry, keeping trust is very important. So making sure that there is no fudge or no fear, uncertainty, no doubt, within our product and what we're doing is very important. So emotional intelligence is one of them. And the depths of flexibility.
- What do you wish you knew earlier in your career about teamwork and communication?
All right, so I'd say that there are two main ones, which is active listening, and I'd say empathy mostly because active listening because I was very new to management in general. So in the startup, we have to take the role of different people very fast. So as a manager, I wasn't necessarily actively listening to my team, but mostly just trying to guide them in doing different tasks as fast as possible and as well as possible. But that just didn't work out because most of them were overworked and burning out isn't something that we want in the team. So making sure that you actively listen, that you involve everyone within everything, make sure that they understand what's your vision and mission so that they have a goal to reach for. So that's super important and as well, adapts my management style to the people that are under me, because one style might work with someone, but another style might be better for them to actually work more efficiently, which is the ultimate goal. And that leads to the second one, which was empathy. So making sure that I'm understanding with them and I understand how they feel and adapt from there.
- How important is trust in your work?
It's everything. I'd say it's everything. Because trust is something that it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of time to get it right. So you have to consistently demonstrate honesty, reliability, you got to demonstrate integrity as well from your work. And as head of marketing, let's say, people look up to you. So you need to set the standards where you need to make sure that everyone is transparent, everyone feels comfortable talking to you. But as well as myself, I feel comfortable giving the right feedback. So trust is extremely important between team members, between departments, but as well as from the company to the users.
- How do you build trust and how do you recover it if it gets lost?
So I build the trust by setting the right environment for my team, as I mentioned. So making sure that their transparency is a key element, making sure that everyone feels comfortable talking to me, regardless of how bad whatever they want to mention is, it goes to communicating effectively, it goes to being independent, but as well dependent on your teammates and making sure you can rely on them. And that's on a consistent level. So not just once or twice, but over a certain period of time. Every time it's going to be the same reliability.
Regarding the second part, the second part of losing trust that you mentioned, that's actually a very good one because we went over this wasn't necessarily internally, but it was more towards from a company to a user base. And one of the main tasks that we mainly focused on was, first of all acknowledging that there was a problem. So acknowledgement was the very first one taking responsibility of our actions and admitting when we actually made a mistake. And from there, it's making sure that they understand we empathize and we have a clear step by step action plan to take into account and making sure that we're like, okay, we did have a problem. We did lose your trust, but this will be our plan in the future and moving forward to build that trust again and making sure that we actually execute on it. So by this execution and showing this consistency over time, you slowly build back the trust. So of course it's common knowledge that trust is very hard to build and easy to lose and that was the same case where we had to work extra hard to build back the trust that we already had before.
- What is one habit you would recommend that a new Masters in International Marketing graduate develop about teamwork and communication?
Just one habit that I have to choose among Everything. I would say it would be active listening just because the process of basically paying full attention to the speaker, understanding the message. So not just showing that you understand but actually comprehending understanding of the actual message they're trying to push forward and that's a habit that not only in the work but as well in general life. That will help massively. That'd be for business development, that be for products and for marketing specifically. It's going to be a lot better to improve the overall effectiveness of the team and making sure that creative ideas flow around marketing strategies are built together and executed efficiently. So I would say that is most of it. So developing Active Listening and making sure that everyone works efficiently, there's no bottleneck between each other and hopefully that will achieve greater success.
Interview 2 Notes:
- How important have teamwork and communication been to your success?
Okay, as I mean, in the marketing department, to be honest, the teamwork and communication are one of the basic things to have. It's really important. And first of all, teamwork, we should all be in for example, one group reunited in one group and with good communication to have speedy process if you want, like if I can say it like that. As well as to have the work done successfully, efficiently and also you need to know something. And I think you know that with the team work, everyone gives their opinion, the work is done more professionally and more efficiently. So we are six people who work in marketing and we all give our opinion for everything. We all have like one specific job to do, but at the end we all regroup ourselves to have a meeting, to share our thoughts and our ideas. So it's really important.
- What are other skills that are important when working in a team (e.g., problem-solving, decision-making, conflict resolution).
Okay, for me, one, conflict resolution. Because as you know, everyone is not the same, everyone has their personality. And for example, just today I was talking about my bad day. I was meeting my team, we weren't on the same page, so I needed to settle with them, to sit with them, to speak with them and to see how we can resolve these things at the end. Yes, we work together, but it wasn't that efficient. After a bad day like this, sometimes you cannot have everything you want. Second, one of the skills that I really like as well, to put into context is context. Sorry, it's the decision making. Decision making. Of course you need to have everything put on. I'm not the manager. If you want an assistant manager.
3. What do you wish you knew earlier in your career about teamwork and communication?
Okay, so as I said earlier, one of the most important thing at work is to be in the same page. But everyone has their own personality and it's a basic thing, I know that, but I didn't know how important that is. And for example, today I had like literally this problem is we weren't at the same page. They needed something, I needed something else and at the end we just sit together to fix this thing. And exactly because of this, because of what happened today, I knew that the communication is one of the most important thing in the team. So that's what I wish to know before going to my work, for example, and we'll see next.
4. How important is trust in your work?
Personally, I know that everyone not the same, but personally, for me, trust, I give trust to everyone at the beginning, from the beginning. As soon as something happens, my trust is gone, straight away with it. And for example, I had one day, one of my team length, yeah, one of my teamwork. I was like trusting him. And basically, when you sign the contract, you have confidentiality, et cetera. So I heard something after not leaked a big thing, it was just a small thing, but I couldn't accept it. Because if you leak one thing, one small thing, you can leak a big thing with it. So I cannot be part of this, I cannot accept this. So at the end, we had to sit with HR, et cetera. But the trust is one of the most important thing in everything in your life, at work, everything.
5. How do you build trust and how do you recover it if it gets lost?
If it gets lost, I'm going to start with the end. If it gets lost, for me, there is no way back, because I give my trust at the beginning. So if something happens during that time, that's it. But how to build it? I'm a friendly person, so we just talk as a friendly, as friends, we just communicate. I love working in a friendly environment. So that trust, I think for me, it's building this way, but everyone is building it differently.
Everyone is different. But with you, it's impossible to get that trust back in a team that works together.
It cant, to be honest, no, impossible, because I don't know, I cannot trust him anymore. So if something happened as last time, how can I trust you after? That's my thing. You leaked something or you did something, whatever is it, how can I trust you after? Even if we recover from that loss, how can I trust you? Like 100%? That's my thing. Every time.
How do you go around if you end up working with that person to get in a team, how do you end up trusting him? How do you end up working together?
I just keep an eye, to be honest, I just keep an eye. I had to work with him anyway after for a bit of time, because he did something else. As I said, I worked with him. We worked just professionally. Everything by email, like important things by email. Everything is written. If something happened, at least it's going to happen to him. It's not going to affect you.
But especially in a team, if something happens without a proof of an email or WhatsApp, or whatever it is, you can get in trouble as well. Especially at work. It's not a joke. They take this literally, seriously. So it's really important to have that barrier.
6. What is one habit you would recommend that a new Masters in International Marketing graduate develop about teamwork and communication?
Yeah, personal point of view. As I said, basically for me, if you can work on something, communication and teamwork, we do it as an in a friendly thing, habit, friends. Of course there is a professional thing. When it's work, work. When it's a joke, joke. When it's time to laugh, we laugh. But in a friendly environment, when it's a friendly environment, everyone's laughing. You get that trust, you get that respect. At the same time, you just need to have that barrier. So you cannot laugh with him and get you you just need to keep the respect.
Exactly, create boundaries. But at the same time, in a friendly environment, for me, it works and it works really well. We laugh, we put music at work every time we do like, I don't know, this weekend we want to desert with every one and this creates like strong relationships, like either work or friends.
Fraud Examination
ISBN: 978-1305079144
5th edition
Authors: W. Steve Albrecht, Chad O. Albrecht, Conan C. Albrecht, Mark F. Zimbelman