Creating a Team

Updated on : mamoru
Casting and member roles

The kind of “team” that I am referring to here, is not dependent on the duration – short term or long term – of a project, but on the premise of a group of people working together to carry out a certain research project over a set period of time. It’s usual to decide on the role of each member by ourselves when two or more people are involved in the collective. In terms of budget, it is also more efficient if we can avoid having multiple people doing work of the same role. Because of this, it is similar to casting characters for a movie when we select our members, or to think about it as picking people for a perfect formation for a baseball or football team. The director or leader is also a position that is required, and it is best if we can someone who is suitable for the role. Another important position is the supervisor, someone who the team can turn to to discuss things.

After we finalise the team members, it is important to hold team building sessions before we leave on the research trip. Of course, it takes time for all the members to be on the same page and recognise each other’s position in the team. There are lots of different situations that we can create to do this – for example, we can go visit a museum together, or even carry out an one-off interview before the trip, or hold book clubs on relevant materials that may be useful for the trip.

We have two directors for the Travel Research Laboratory (TR Lab). I am one of them, and I’m also the leader of the group. If we roughly compare this structure to a soccer team, my position just under the director, who actively disseminate information about our ideas and direction of this project. Of course, the role of each member changes according to the situation, but it is probably better if everyone is aware of the role of each person. Once we establish an attacking pattern, there could be different variations and the movement of each member is meaningful. Sometimes, we have this strange consciousness that everyone should be equal. For example, who is working the most? And who is sabotaging the team? In reality, things like that happen, but the most important concern is whether the team can function as a team, and there may be no difference in the player who runs around all the time and the player that only moves a little but gets the goal in the end. But even the player who only moves around a little have their attention on what is going on all the time. For this project, we also needed some time to clearly establish the roles of the two directors, and even though this has become less often sometimes we still need to confirm each other’s position by saying: “Let’s remind ourselves again…”

Side story 1

It was quite difficult to decide who to recruit as research associate in the first year when we held interviews, given the fact that it was our first time to do so as well. After thinking over and over, we decided to increase the number of project members and hired one more person that the project supervisor suggested. As a result, the extra member created a meticulously easy-going atmosphere for the group, which helped us a lot during the research trip.

Side story 2

At TR Lab, a lot of things are synchronised (please refer to our outputs), and it is clear that the quality of our work is increased when team building was good. One simple explanation for this is because the members can trust each other. But on the other hand, if we neglect this…

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