The Importance of Leadership for Teamwork

In the summer of 2007, my mother had this bright idea to plan for the family to have our first family reunion. My mother thought it would be a great idea since my sister and I worked together as Event Planners and thought this should be easy for us. That’s so not the case with our family. Of course, my mother was persistent and she insisted we have to do this for the family and it would be great to have all the family together.

So it was official, we are planning to have our first family reunion for the next summer of 2008.

Planning the event was the key component and the most critical part. The first steps my mother suggested that it should be a three day event on July 4th through 7th, and the main location would be our hometown at the family’s house. My sister and I explain to our mother that when you have a large event and with that many people it is best to send out a questionnaire to family members to get their input. Sending out questionnaires would help work out when, where, and their opinions that way everyone can come to an agreement. Another part of the planning is putting together a committee. It is impossible to manage a reunion between my mother, sister, and myself.

However, we did decide to appoint ourselves by electing my sister as chairmen, my mother as the president, and myself as the treasurer. We decided to appoint ourselves because it was my mother's idea and my sister and I were Event Planners. We still had to fill the rest of the committee such as lodging liaison, food director, correspondence officer, entertainment director, reservation officer, mementos procurement, and welcome committee. We all agreed that our command center was the family house to discuss reunion with the committee.

My sister and I called for a committee meeting to make some concrete decisions and to appoint everyone to their position. In the meeting we had established everyone in position. The decision was made when questionnaires were all in and all family members agreed with my mother's first initial idea of a three day event, in July , and the main location of the family reunion would be our hometown. During the time of the meeting we decided to discuss the budget, venue, and what each of the three days of the event was going to be about. The meeting seemed to go well and we hoped everyone would take their responsibility seriously and work together well as a team.

The next agenda is getting the word out and little did we know my mother had been working on a list of all family members. My sister and I couldn’t be happy. That one less task we had to take care. We should have expected that my mother was on top of things like that since she is the monarch of the family. My mother knows everyone's birthday in the family, has everyone’s address, phone numbers, and how everyone is related to each other. So that helped a lot on our end. Only other part of getting to the younger generation is through social media. My sister took care of that on her end since she is part of generational “X” and most of them communicate in that way.

At this point, everyone on the committee has a position to take care of their area and if they are struggling we all have to work together as a team. We had discussed this during the meeting that we need everyone to have a “plan b” if the first initial plan does not follow through. Also, discussing the budget everyone was given a specific budget and to stick to the budget. The committee discussed donations as well. The donations would help with any extra activities or gift baggies and emergencies come up.The donations would come with the fee for each person paying their member and if they want to donate anything extra.

The time was getting near and we were only about three months away from the reunion and things started to turn into a different direction. It was time for another committee meeting and a couple of members did not show . We were facing several issues and my sister and I said from day 1 of the first meeting if anyone had any issues is to call us right away. Of course, that did not happen. This time during the meeting it seemed as though everyone had some type of issue. We had to explain to everyone we need to work as a team and my sister and I were trying to motivate everyone this was going to be a great event. We just need for everyone to be on the same page. In the end, we had many bumps along the way but we managed to have a good reunion.

Conclusion

As Event Planners we needed for everyone to work effectively into teams to tie up all loose ends. As you all know, working in teams helps everyone on the committee to accomplish, focus, and interact with each other to accomplish what needs to be done. Teamwork serves a purpose for people to learn, not only to work together and accomplish tasks. Also, teamwork objective is to achieve and keep each other motivated to perform well. The ultimate goal is to communicate well with each other and in order for us to be informed of things.

Learning through this experience has taught us that leadership has played a major role for planning, making decisions, handling conflict, and resolution. Another aspect of leadership has helped us well manage the team into working together, communicating, improving performances, and being responsible for their part. The leadership role my sister and I have shown us to manage a team in a way to plan, provide direction, for teams to progress, and motivate the team into high gear. Before, the committee was headed into the wrong direction in a way of conflict coming into play when we found out the committee was not working with each other as a team, and not communicating which led them into making poor decisions.

Most importantly, we learned a lot from this reunion is for teams to participate and communicate so everything would flow into the right direction. Ultimately, we had conflicts and concerns but managing well a team will allow a team to open up with each other, be committed, build trust, understanding, and avoid conflict all together.

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