Henry's Bio:
My name is Henry Maliszewski and I am a 3rd year ITM major at UW-Milwaukee. I enjoy working with technology and helping people understand it. I believe that I have good visual ability, and I am good at dealing with abstract concepts and explaining them to others. For DMP4 I started out by reading our chosen articles and developing a model that incorporated what I felt were the most important concepts. I used Paint to make the model and then sent a rough draft to my teammates for suggestions. Using their feedback I made a revised final version that we are showing to you through this web site. Christopher helped organize our group and took charge of the large group essay. I took care of the website design. Connor helped with revision of the main essay and group model. Each of us wrote our own bios and essay for the individual pages as well as create additional visual elements. Our team did a good job of identifying each members strength and splitting up the work load to make the project easier on all of us.
My name is Henry Maliszewski and I am a 3rd year ITM major at UW-Milwaukee. I enjoy working with technology and helping people understand it. I believe that I have good visual ability, and I am good at dealing with abstract concepts and explaining them to others. For DMP4 I started out by reading our chosen articles and developing a model that incorporated what I felt were the most important concepts. I used Paint to make the model and then sent a rough draft to my teammates for suggestions. Using their feedback I made a revised final version that we are showing to you through this web site. Christopher helped organize our group and took charge of the large group essay. I took care of the website design. Connor helped with revision of the main essay and group model. Each of us wrote our own bios and essay for the individual pages as well as create additional visual elements. Our team did a good job of identifying each members strength and splitting up the work load to make the project easier on all of us.
Henry's Essay:
My Experience with Difficult Teamwork
While working on this project there was one concept in which stood out more than the others for me. In his article Building High-Performance Teams, Harvey Dubin considers the idea that a proper challenge is necessary to create a high-performance team. I had never seen this concept explained before, but I knew from experience that it was true. I was a member of the boy scouts when I was younger, and this gave me a lot of experience being a member of a team. However, there was one team in particular from that time which I still remember in detail today. It was the team from when our troop went on a week long hike through Philmont Scout Ranch.
All of us had spent time camping together before, but that was always done at a camp site with access to bathrooms and garbage dumpsters. We slept in tents before, but we didn't have to move them every day. We had flashlights and spare batteries for after dark, but we didn't have to worry about carrying them all day long. Philmont is a strict “leave no trace” week long hike through the wilderness. This meant that our group had to carry everything we brought into the trial back out with us. All our food, tents, clothes, lights, and even garbage had to be packed up each morning and unpacked each night of the week long hike. For a group of 8 kids ages 13-17 and two adults, it was definitely a “proper challenge”.
We started the week as a group of people who enjoyed going camping together. There was a wide age gap between the scouts so not all of them were friends, and the adults were our leaders, nothing more. The first night was business as usual for experienced campers, but by the afternoon of the second day it was obvious some of the less fit scouts were having trouble keeping pace. We took a quick break, moved some gear to a different scout who was feeling fine, and then were back on the trail in 5 min. Keeping pace was important because we had to have camp set up at the next designated site before it got dark. This type of help amongst teammates continued for a few more days. Eventually everyone had a much better idea of how much weight they could handle and we never needed to stop while on the trail.
Our challenge peaked one night when our group was so tired that we all had chosen to take a slower pace on the trail. This meant that we did not arrive at our camp site until after the sun was already going down. We had to quickly and efficiently get our our flashlights, unpack, set up tents, and then make dinner. It was a little chaotic at first but then we fell into a rhythm. In only 20 minutes we had unpacked all the gear, set up the tents, and had dinner being served. This same group of people would have taken at least an hour to do the same amount of work a week before. However, our shared experiences in dealing with the difficulty of our trip had galvanized our group into a team. We became much more capable as a group than we would have originally thought possible.
In the last few years I have been on teams for sports, school, and work related activities, but none of those teams have been very memorable after our work was complete. My team at Philmont, however, is something I will remember for a long time. I do not seen any of those team members anymore, but I will not forget how quickly we came together as a team during that hike. There were more camping trips after that with the same people, but none of them had the same kind of teamwork. It was not the members, but the challenge of “leave no trace” hiking that made us a high-performance team.
Dublin explains that there is no clear formula to creating a high-performance team, but that there are many things you can do to help. Making sure to have a proper challenge is one way to help create better teams. When the work is difficult, people are more willing to seek and accept help from their teammates. Difficulty also helps motivate people to achieve greater results than they would normally. It is something I will next time I put together a team.
My Experience with Difficult Teamwork
While working on this project there was one concept in which stood out more than the others for me. In his article Building High-Performance Teams, Harvey Dubin considers the idea that a proper challenge is necessary to create a high-performance team. I had never seen this concept explained before, but I knew from experience that it was true. I was a member of the boy scouts when I was younger, and this gave me a lot of experience being a member of a team. However, there was one team in particular from that time which I still remember in detail today. It was the team from when our troop went on a week long hike through Philmont Scout Ranch.
All of us had spent time camping together before, but that was always done at a camp site with access to bathrooms and garbage dumpsters. We slept in tents before, but we didn't have to move them every day. We had flashlights and spare batteries for after dark, but we didn't have to worry about carrying them all day long. Philmont is a strict “leave no trace” week long hike through the wilderness. This meant that our group had to carry everything we brought into the trial back out with us. All our food, tents, clothes, lights, and even garbage had to be packed up each morning and unpacked each night of the week long hike. For a group of 8 kids ages 13-17 and two adults, it was definitely a “proper challenge”.
We started the week as a group of people who enjoyed going camping together. There was a wide age gap between the scouts so not all of them were friends, and the adults were our leaders, nothing more. The first night was business as usual for experienced campers, but by the afternoon of the second day it was obvious some of the less fit scouts were having trouble keeping pace. We took a quick break, moved some gear to a different scout who was feeling fine, and then were back on the trail in 5 min. Keeping pace was important because we had to have camp set up at the next designated site before it got dark. This type of help amongst teammates continued for a few more days. Eventually everyone had a much better idea of how much weight they could handle and we never needed to stop while on the trail.
Our challenge peaked one night when our group was so tired that we all had chosen to take a slower pace on the trail. This meant that we did not arrive at our camp site until after the sun was already going down. We had to quickly and efficiently get our our flashlights, unpack, set up tents, and then make dinner. It was a little chaotic at first but then we fell into a rhythm. In only 20 minutes we had unpacked all the gear, set up the tents, and had dinner being served. This same group of people would have taken at least an hour to do the same amount of work a week before. However, our shared experiences in dealing with the difficulty of our trip had galvanized our group into a team. We became much more capable as a group than we would have originally thought possible.
In the last few years I have been on teams for sports, school, and work related activities, but none of those teams have been very memorable after our work was complete. My team at Philmont, however, is something I will remember for a long time. I do not seen any of those team members anymore, but I will not forget how quickly we came together as a team during that hike. There were more camping trips after that with the same people, but none of them had the same kind of teamwork. It was not the members, but the challenge of “leave no trace” hiking that made us a high-performance team.
Dublin explains that there is no clear formula to creating a high-performance team, but that there are many things you can do to help. Making sure to have a proper challenge is one way to help create better teams. When the work is difficult, people are more willing to seek and accept help from their teammates. Difficulty also helps motivate people to achieve greater results than they would normally. It is something I will next time I put together a team.