Reflecting on Teamwork: My SAS Digital Challenge Experience

An important part of marketing is teamwork. With the creativity marketing demands, the majority of innovative creative ideas stem from multiple perspectives coming together. A recent experience that required me to work within a team was during the SAS Digital Challenge over the last couple of months. We were briefed on coming up with an innovation for customers to be able to easily interact with Scottish Power. We were split up into teams of 12 and were required to pitch our idea in 6 weeks. This became a very overwhelming experience as I had never worked in a team of that many people. However, there were many things I learned from the experience.

For our project, we focused on the education sector for consumers and how to fast-track career opportunities for students. We came up with an idea of using easily distributed, virtual reality headsets that could be given to students. They would be able to enter virtual classrooms, complete fun activities and interact with other schools on the platform. Through this, they would be able to earn qualifications that would allow them to ease into entering a job in the energy sector later in life. Our primary goals were free education and long-term employability for both students and Scottish Power.

Firstly, I learned the importance of leadership. Unfortunately, the leaders within our group were not able to dedicate themselves to this project. Therefore, other people within our group had to step up and take charge, including myself. I found myself constantly asking others about ideas for the project, to ensure everyone was happy with the direction of the project. Others in the field (Carli, 2003) suggest that women tend to take a more interpersonal approach within their managerial style, thus being more democratic or participatory. Reflecting on my experience, I understood why I ensured all team members were happy with a decision instead of going off on my own. I am happy with my direction as I feel a better product can be produced with multiple perspectives expressing their opinions than following one person’s idea. However, a leader should know when to make the final decision if discussions are lengthening too much. I could have improved this as we made many decisions in the final 2 weeks instead of pacing ourselves throughout the month. Overall, I was able to learn how to be a well-rounded leader through this process and understand where I can improve on.

As we were ironing out the fine details of our project, it became very hard trying to do the work of 12 people with only 6 contributing. It was extremely draining and became frustrating knowing others were not doing what was required of them. I couldn’t understand why our teamwork was not up to the standard of other teams. McEwan and Crawford (2022) expressed many reasons that result in the breakdown of teamwork. They listed off ineffective preparation, ineffective team monitoring, unhelpful leadership, and poor unity. Therefore, within our team, we did not prepare enough as a group. Instead, we focused too much on doing each of our work separately. This hindered our ability to understand the input of each other. I believe this was due to completing the whole activity online with no cameras on, thus we could not fully trust each other. However, those of us who were contributing understood this had become an issue. Therefore, we met up in person to ensure we could get to know each other and produce a good project. We ironed out the details of our project. Consequently, we could move our focus to the next part of our project.

An important skill that I further learned is effective communication, which is vital to good teamwork. During the latter stages of our project, we were trying to produce a presentation that would aid our pitch. However, within teams, many people are trying to come to an agreement and decide on a multitude of ideas. I found that, due to the energy sector not being my area of expertise, I was trying to listen to other people’s ideas, but I couldn’t understand what they were on about. However, I felt as though I couldn’t express my confusion without insulting their ability to express their ideas. Others (Emerald Group Publishing, 2016) have implied that communication is vital within teamwork as it aids in the development of trust between team members and can result in more open and honest feedback. This ended up being the issue within our presentation when our story for our project did not follow a linear progression. Hence, our presentation did not make sense right up until the end. Therefore, I had to move on from worrying I would be offending people to improve our project. I planned out the storyline of our project with another member so it would be easy to follow our presentation while expressing my confusion about ideas I did not understand. Furthermore, this helped us work as a team when others asked for further explanation as more members could now answer questions, they were not previously able to. Thus, those who hadn’t worked on the project could still understand our thought process in a linear fashion.

Finally, we were able to submit our presentation after overcoming many obstacles, which was a very rewarding feeling for me. I knew that our hard work had paid off after we had finished the work. Even though it can be harder to work in a team than by yourself as you have others to consider, it is far more rewarding and ends in a more developed product due to having multiple perspectives. Zhang et al. (2022) understood how working in a group can be very rewarding by researching how intercultural teamwork has positive impacts on student design, with it impacting career competitiveness as an advantage. I resonated with this idea because my group was able to have deeper discussions. Primarily because my group was culturally diverse, and offered multiple viewpoints. For example, I brought the example of education within England and how a student could work their way into the energy industry. However, others were able to help me see how students from other countries had to travel to find work within these sectors. I believe this helped to enrich our project as we could see what was vital for students.

By the end of the project, I had gone on to learn what skills I was in good possession of and what I had next to work on. Within my next project, I hope not to doubt my own skills and put myself forward for roles I believe I am capable of. In the future, I would want to put myself forward for leadership roles that I would not ordinarily go for. Even if I don’t get the role, I could know I tried different opportunities. Sidani, Konrad, and Karam (2015) suggest women often don’t take leadership roles for a variety of reasons, including favouring men in higher roles. However, I have not had the courage to go for these roles. Thus, I am unaware of whether my peers think I am capable or if they would favour others. By putting myself forward, I will be able to ask for feedback on why I possibly didn’t attain a leadership role. Then, I will be able to develop myself as a marketer to hopefully gain these roles later.

Overall, it was a challenging experience. Entering a group where I did not know everyone and only half of the people were contributing to the project made the experience harder than I originally thought it would be. However, I was able to contribute my own ideas and develop my own skills to become a better marketer, while understanding how I will combat these issues if I encounter them again later in my career. I know I have strong skills in communication and teamwork due to this while knowing I want to work on my courage to put myself forward for new situations. I think working in a team does have a greater payoff, despite the challenges as you can create a well-rounded product you may not be able to create by yourself.

References

Carli, L. (2003) “The female leadership advantage: An evaluation of the evidence,” The leadership quarterly., 14(6), pp. 807–834.

Emerald Group Publishing. “A better way to communicate: Identifying and tackling communication challenges within management teams” (2016) Strategic Direction, 32(3), pp. 25–27.

McEwan, D. and Crawford, K.L. (2022) “Why does teamwork execution breakdown? Experiences of university team sport athletes,” Sport, exercise, and performance psychology, 11(4), pp. 459–476.

Sidani, Y.M., Konrad, A. and Karam, C.M. (2015) “From female leadership advantage to female leadership deficit: A developing country perspective,” Career development international, 20(3), pp. 273–292.

Zhang, X.-Y. et al. (2022) “Measurements of intercultural teamwork competence and its impact on design students’ competitive advantages,” Sustainability (Basel, Switzerland), 14(1), p. 175.