TO GET THINGS DONE 

OR

 TO WORRY ABOUT THE TEAM’S FEELING

HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO

This is Hizrian, the author of potofhiz.blogspot.com

Welcome to my second post yeay!

For my second post, I will put up my personal POT, short for Perspective On Things, about what I put in title spot, "To Get Things Done or To Worry About The Team’s Feeling."

And let's get to it

“To be, or not to be, that is the question.”

Quoted from the opening phrase of Act III, Scene I, “nunnery scene” of William Shakespeare’s play 

“Hamlet”

That phrase spoken by Prince Hamlet in the theatrical play of Hamlet was so simple, yet it was one of the most memorable part of the play itself. Even a lot of people that never watched Hamlet know that line.

While the meaning of that phrase is still debatable even after more than 400 years had passed since the first time Hamlet had been played. Some agree it was spoken because Prince Hamlet was hesitating to avenge his father’s murder by his uncle, Claudius.

That phrase is very similar to this post’s topic, To Get Things done (To Be) or To Worry About The Team’s Feeling (Not to Be).

He was told about the murder by a ghost that resembled the late King of Denmark and also his own father, King Hamlet. The Ghost demanded to Hamlet to avenge him, in which Hamlet agreed to, leading to the vanishing of the ghost.

King Hamlet's Ghost

Even though he agreed to kill Claudius, privately he was uncertain of the ghost reliability. And sometime passed and he already set a plot to determine the ghost story by staging a play featuring his father’s murder style of death.

And as he was walking alone in a hall while holding a skull, he mused the “To Be or Not To Be” phrase while contemplating on to kill his Uncle (To get things done) or not because of the uncertainty of his heart and feelings (To worry about the team’s feeling).

Wow, we haven’t gone anywhere with the questions yet.

Hehehe sorry for that.

Now let’s get back.

When we are in a team with the purpose of doing something, going somewhere, reaching some goals, or creating miracles, we might hit a point where there are basically only two choices are left.

Only two path of action are available for us to choose.

To continue just like at the start when we created the team and go on to accomplish what we set as the goal at the cost of leaving a bad aftertaste for the other members of team, sometime even able to prevent another teamwork from happening in the future, or even becoming enemies with each other.

Risking all of that so that we are able to serve the purpose of becoming a team in the first place, or ultimately, to get things done.

Or

 We could just stop what we are doing, halting our progress to achieve our goals, because there are a big risk of ruining the feeling of the team. We could stop temporarily while thinking of another solution, a win-win solution. 

Or if we can’t come up with a solution, we could just stop entirely our progress to reach the goal, making all the efforts and hard works that was already done by the team into something less meaningful or downright worthless. All because the team and its members feelings are more important than some other thing that we are doing.

Because, nothing is more important than humans and humanity right?

Sarcasm aside, these two choices will definitely hit a team that is actually trying to accomplish something, especially a long working team with history. 

Sacrifice the team members to achieve the goals, 

or

Sacrifice the goals to save the team members and the team itself.

Figuring out what to do in these situation, however, is one of the greatest challenge that a team might face together. To achieve the best possible result from these two choices, one needed to considers a lot of things, such as which one is more important, how long has the team been together, what kind of relation exist between each individual members of the team, etc

.

When we consider all of those conditions around the problems, some solutions would naturally form in our own mind. Even though those might not be the best and maybe would make the situation worse, at least we got something just in case we are running out of time to pick a choice.

Hey, it’s better than nothing at all.

These solutions that formed in our mind should be discussed along with the other team members’ solutions and opinions, doing what is called brainstorming. While at it, we must also don’t forget to consider all the possible result of one solution, and all other solutions also.

I’m not going to explain brainstorming in detail, it’s too long hehehe. 

You can check it yourself here.

Anyway, back to the topic.

In a team, the decisions are usually made by the leader or through majority vote done by all the member of the team. If using majority vote, the decisions that came out should be followed by all of its members. Because it can be interpreted as the team decision itself.

If some members disagree to the decisions, we can ask why they did. If their reason is good or maybe managed to point out a big flaw in the decisions, then we should go back to brainstorming part and do it all over again.

If the reason is minor, illogical, or anything like that, defending on whether or not we focused more on the team’s feeling, we may choose to ignore it or take it and delay the final decisions.

If there are no reasons or those members won’t tell the reason, then just ignore them. That only means they don’t want to contribute to the team.

Now, I will give some pointers on how to choose the decisions based on the situations.

The decision should be made after weighing the risks and profits, advantages and disadvantages, or in simple words, “Is it worth it?”

When this question pop up in a team, a highly professional team would definitely choose to get things done over worrying about the other feelings.

If this question pop up in a family, most decision would definitely goes to worrying about the family members’ feelings first.

If the negative effects on the team members are not meaningful, or small enough that it won’t really be mattered in the future, then choosing to get things done is a good choice.

If the negative effects are big on the team’s feeling and it is definitely more important than the goals, then choose the decision that is based on keeping the team.

If the negative effects are big on the team feeling, but the goals are also very important, then it all comes down to which one is more important even by a small margin.

You cannot make a rash decision on this. Only after considering all the circumstances and possible result would you be able to come up with a decision.

ONLY YOU WOULD BE ABLE TO DECIDE WHAT YOU WANT TO DO.

Decide carefully, even a small thing like the flap of a butterfly wing can change the world.

THEN WHAT ABOUT YOUR DECISION???

That is all from me, Hizrian.

Thank you for being here and see you at another posts.

Hizrian Out.