Group Process

The theoretical framework was somewhat dictatorship on today; I learned that the tone that the facilitator sets for the majority of the session is how the session runs. This is actually how I figured the sessions would be run, but to be aware that always expect the unexpected at any time. You must also be ready to adjust to whatever it is happening at that particular moment. This particular session appears to be more somber with quite a bit of silence and skepticism. Why this climate I asked myself? I really don’t know. I would suggest to the facilitator to have some kind of activity that she uses as an icebreaker. This would help get the communication going between the members. A specific skill that I have that would hinder me as an effective group leader is my ability to shut down once I got ticked off. This skill is useful in other settings to cool down situations.

The group the facilitator will be observing is an anger management group that is held Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at Assurance of Hope Institute, Inc. The group consist of twelve men between the ages of twenty-five to forty-five. The group contains ten African American men and two Caucasian men. The group has been meeting three times a week for four months. The group is an open group that is available to all young adult men particularly those suffering from mental health illness. The clients whom attend the group have been either court mandated because of a violent encounter. The group discusses triggers that make one anger, ways to manage your anger, decrease overall intensity and frequency of angry feelings, increase ability to recognize and appropriately express feelings as they occur, identify situations, thoughts, feelings, that trigger anger, angry verbal and/ or behavioral actions and the targets of those actions. The facilitators of the group have explored family background and history to

During class thirteen we began by talking about facilitators. As a facilitator you want to start off with an icebreaker and go from there. If the group is large, you can invite a colleague in order to co facilitate. Another tool that facilitator’s use is flip charts to allow the parties to see the direction that the facilitation is going. When preparing for a facilitation a facilitator should use note cards or have the parties write on posted notes. Aside from preparation, knowing how to manage the facilitation is important. Knowing who the people that are going to be at the table is helpful to conducting a successful facilitation. Even though the people with the most influence will be at the table with the facilitator; people may still be

Our group facilitation was on the subject of time management with regards to completing most important tasks first and devoting time to those specific tasks. Our goals for the group were to create an inclusive, encouraging, and positive environment between group members. My partner and I researched ideas for information that we could use to share as well as use our experience’s with the topic amongst the group. The duration of our group facilitation was ten minutes. As we reflect on the events coming to and during the facilitation we will discourse the inclusion between group members, linking members to discussion and group as well as the process of our facilitation.

Trust may be a major issue during the group process. Since the members are female middle school students, the likelihood of them previously being betrayed by a trusted friend is great. It may be difficult for members to trust each other when disclosing personal information. Another issue that may arise is shame. The girls may not fully self-disclose because they are ashamed about the negative self-concept they have of themselves. It also may be difficult to say these negative thoughts about themselves out loud to other people. Hopefully, the fact that they all have some perception of themselves will aid in enabling them to self-disclose with confidence.

This was my first experience co-facilitating any kind of group work (real life or simulation) and I felt somewhat nervous, particularly since our group had three members and I was expected to take on a larger role during my presentation. However, throughout the meeting I began to feel more comfortable and I believe I demonstrated a variety of integral facilitation skills and social work values, as they applied to our interprofessional task group. These skills as well as other observations with be discussed and analyzed below.

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.

In this age, for the vast majority of us, collaboration is a piece of our regular daily existence. Regardless of whether it is at home, in the group, or at work, we are frequently anticipated that would be a useful piece of a performing group. Having a solid group benefits any association and prompts a larger number of victories than disappointment. Each group experiences the five phases of group improvement. Initially, some foundation on group improvement.

Listening is really the key to group facilitating. Listening should not mean simply waiting for a turn to talk or trying to think about what to

From a young age, the importance of communication is drilled into our minds. We are forced into situations that require us to collaborate and discuss. While the group work we've endured from a young age is intended to teach these skills through experience, the majority of the time, these skills are not fully utilized or learned. With group work, it is incredibly easy to divvy up the work or have one or two members do most of the heavy lifting. This occurs because there has been minimal to no instructional guidance on how to behave effectively in groups. Furthermore, this lacking of knowledge is what fuels the common feeling of dread directed towards group work. How does this apply to the service learning project where my group supported and helped Lindsay with her production of the musical, Alice? As initially stated, communication is key.

In our Group Wiki by Dixie, Moriah, and Nicole we will talk about problem-solving, leadership behavior, roles and positions within a group, diversity in a group, and group conflict management. When doing our research outside our book we will cite our source at the end of our Group Wiki. We will search for resources through the internet and Baker College Library. With this all in mind, the first thing we will talk about is problem-solving. We will go on to talk about leadership behavior, roles, and positions within our group and group conflict management. We will identify the source that will help us talk about all these issues.

I have experience working in groups from my work as a Summer Camp behaviouralist where I helped day camp leaders arranged activities for children, supervised the children’s progress in participating and completing the group activity, as well as guiding the leaders through any techniques to further enrich the child’s experience.

The group’s process during the project was very successful. Our team’s communication relied on the group chat made through Facebook. We did encounter some setbacks, but nothing we weren’t able to deal with as a team. When creating our team contract, the whole team decided we would take on this project with a democratic approach. This means all decisions would be put up to a vote and the majority vote won. In our first steps of the project, we had to decide what organization we wanted to work with. As a team we agreed that our priority was to work with children, then as a backup we had the possibilities of working with the elderly or with animals. The voting ended up for the children and then the elderly as our backup

My concept of what a group consist of is a story that needs to be told and heard from many people with similar issues or problems. The group is a tool to help each member to gain some insight on how they can change or make a difference in their lives for the future. I feel that a group is a place where new relationships can develop and to find self again.

Raines prescribes self-evaluation as the initial step in identifying appropriate facilitation strategies to manage group conflicts. In the Facilitation Skills Self-Assessment, I have 14 competent and good skills and 9 skills requiring improvement. For Level 1, I have good skills in time management, active group participation and clear and accurate note taking but need to learn the theoretical foundations of facilitation. For Level 2, I am competent in goal setting, feedback, exit surveys and friendly questioning and good skills at consensus, closure and progress monitoring. I need to work on concepts around decision-making approaches and tools for designing group discussion. For level 3, I have good skills in managing participants’ conflict, dealing with resistance, handling personal attacks and feedback survey exercises while I do not know how to design and develop surveys and questionnaires. For level 4, I am good at supporting team formation, storming and performance while I have little skills on customer intimacy and process intervention in complex organizational development issues. Overall, I have over fifteen years of managing teams at the operational levels using participatory and sustainable approaches. However, I never learned the theoretical bases of the methodologies I used. I hope to learn up to level 4 although the class goal is to get to level 3 since we may not have enough time to get to level 4.