Bethel University: Group Dynamics Analysis

I chose to visit an Alcoholics Anonymous group for my Understanding Group Dynamics project. I went on March 20th 2016, to an open discussion group titled Pass it On Group for Beginners that are Living Sober. It was held at the First Congregational Church at 14 Brookside Road in Darien, CT 06854 at 6:15 p.m.. I chose to go to this group as I felt it was a group that I could most strongly connect to, as I am a recovering alcoholic. I have been cold turkey for two years now. I choose to live a sober life as the hangovers, pain that myself and loved ones endured and the constant need to escape from reality was taking over my existence. Going to this group reminded me that I am not alone in this journey of recovery and in the journey of figuring out how to live life sober with my friends, family and strangers drinking around me. The group was friendly and one that when you first enter, they make sure that you are there for the right reasons as confidentiality is important. Then right after, they welcome you with open arms and if you choose to just sit and listen that is fine, but I am a vocal person and I spoke and applauded. I am glad that we got to do this assignment, for I think without I would have never gone to an AA group meeting. I would have kept on my journey by myself and just praying when times got hard, now I have people I can reach out to.

The group dynamic can be influenced by the facilitator through their actions and response to the group. In my professional life there were times when I was tasked to lead break out groups in an effort to discuss areas that were working and areas where we as a team could do things better. In these small break out group experiences I recognize strengths and challenges in my ability as a leader.

Critical thinking and problem solving are reliable skills for every manager and supervisor across all levels for any business or company. The ability to predict, identify and quickly resolve problems arising out of daily operational issues has become important to keep pace with the changing business requirements. Critical thinking is that mode of thinking about any subject, content or problem in which the thinker improves the quality of thinking by skillfully analyzing, assessing and reconstructing it.

It is essential that there is effective communication to build an effective team. Effective teams need to work well together and that team cohesiveness depends on building strong relationships among team members. Communication is crucial and is driven by the team leader who will work with the team to establish ground rules and work to bring the team together so that it can accomplish its goals. All teams will go through expected stages of development, from forming to storming to norming and eventually performing according to Tuckman. Navigating through these stages effectively will help teams build relationships which in turn improves communication. Effective team communication can lead to both personal and professional development. Some examples of good communication are the holding of regular catch up meetings, active listening (by management and team members), regular feedback, clear vision and goals. In contrast to the above poor communication skills can have an adverse effect on team working. If team members are not communicating amongst themselves then

Increasing communication – team have to meet as often as possible to discuss issues of concern. Team has to clearly define methods and channels of communication to ensure that the right information is available at the right time, in the right form through the right channel for effective use and feed backs give timely.

There are lots of people around the U.S who who do not understand the hard struggle of people from other countries. Lots of people make stereotypes about Asian people, Latinos, and people from Arabic countries. People would normally assume that if you are asian, you speak Chinese or Japanese, or that you paint nails, or own a “Chinese food” restaurant.

It is important to remember that good communication skills require the use of critical thinking, which allows us to take control of our opinions and mind-set in order to make better judgments without jumping to conclusions, which can ultimately lead to conflicts. Therefore, the use of critical thinking skills and good communication skills provides us with the intellectual standards needed to ask questions about the certain situations that might otherwise be overlooked.

Kreitner and Kinicki (2013, pp. 307, 323) also wrote that effective teamwork depends on clear purpose, informality, members’ participation, listening, civilized disagreement, consensus decisions, open communication, clear roles and responsibilities, shared leadership, effective external relations, style diversity, and self-assessment, while high-performance teams are created through participative and shared leadership, alignment on purpose, effective communication, future-orientation, task-focus, creative talents, and rapid response. In addition, some industry articles suggested the following criteria for effective teams: diversity, clear goal, effective communication, trust, ownership, job competencies, leadership competencies, morale, and operations metrics (“Characteristics,” n.d.; “Evaluation criteria,” n.d.).

Communication is a big part of running an organization, without it, it can fail. Communication skills, such as conflict management, team-building, and effective communication skills, could

During this past week in class, I was able to learn more about Group Process and Dynamics. In this reflection, I will talk about the "Building a House" activity and what I learned about diversity issues from this exercise. I will also give details on my observations linking them to behaviors listed in our class Observation Grid paper. On Monday, we partook in the group activity "Building a House". Our instructions were to as a group build a house made out of Legos. Before the activity we were each given a piece of paper with individual assignments written on them. We were told that we could not share details about our assignments with the other group members. We were split into two groups of three, Nataliya and Ms. Nadia we selected to be observers during this exercise and were place on opposite sides of the room. In my group it was Jorge, Farrah and myself and in the other group it was Zana, Devon and Beatrice.

The teams were in a situation where they needed critical thinking. With their diverse background and biases there were in challenging situations and they needed skills to get out of it. The critical thinking traits

Working within a group or team is unavoidable for most people. We are involved in sports teams, assignment groups, work teams, social groups and a variety of other groups and teams. Each of these groups share one thing in common, that is each requires us to communicate in some way in order to reach a shared goal or target. Therefore, it is imperative to know and understand how to work and communicate effectively with others to maximise outcomes and productivity.

Each individual is categorized into a group from the day they were conceived. According to Kozier et al (2010) a group is “two are more people who have shared need and goals, who taken each other in account in their and who, thus, are held together and set apart from others by virtue of their interaction” (p. 400). The communicate that takes place between members of the group is group dynamic (Kozier et al, 2010). Motivation for participation and similarity of other group members and the goals of the group will affect the group dynamic (Kozier et al, 2010). The type of group that was created was a task group and Kozier et al (2010) stated that “the focus for such group is completion of a specific task, and the format is defined at the

Positive group dynamics can make a mundane job enjoyable; by contrast, negative group dynamics can make a dream job miserable. Unfortunately I am stuck in the latter situation. I work as a 1:1 special education aide in a classroom with children with severe disabilities. It is a job with a population that I enjoy very much; in fact, it is a job that I thought I would be happy with for a while. At the start of this current school year I was in a different class with children of a higher cognitive ability and while it was okay, I missed my severely involved kids. A few months into the school year I was offered a chance to return to the classroom I enjoyed the previous year and quickly agreed. The teacher was the same, but the other

This is my first semester at City Tech. When I signed up for the group dynamics class I expected to have some difficulties. Prior to this class I worked on various group projects and for the most part it was a wreck. The information given was unclear, members were not focused and/ or the professor was too busy to help. As a result, I ended up doing all the work and not feeling confident in my projects.