My Personal Journey With My Group

Working in small groups is either welcomed with excitement by individuals or dreaded with apprehension. However, group work is a fact of life. Whether in a classroom setting or workforce collaborating within small groups are experiences many will interact at some point or regularly participate in. According to the 2010 third edition of the book A Pocket Guide to Public Speaking by Dan O’Hair, Hannah Rubenstein, and Rob Stewart, small groups can be defined as “a collection of between three and twenty people” (321). Small groups, though, are interesting in that while a small collection of people communication role is imperative to the success of the group, but also demonstrates individual’s behaviors when interacting. During small groups, they way in which the member communicates with each other illustrates how individuals perform by taking on specific roles as well as exposing their leadership style. During participation in group work, there is a set of expectations individuals hold for themselves as well as members of the group. Individuals will subconsciously take on a specific role as to how they will help the group achieve their goal, whether that be cohesively or disconnected. Subsequently, the recognition of these acquired roles provides an insight into the individual’s corresponding leadership style. Depending on roles and leaderships style group work can be a consistency of either individual challenging or complimenting one another.

Learning how to work effectively in a group situation is key to success in many professions as well as in social situations. Groups vary from each other based on the individuals that make up each group, all of us belong to various groups at one time or another. The roles that we fulfill vary from group to

Working in a group to achieve a high quality group project can be one of people’s most difficult school experiences. Working in a group is tough because there is often someone who does not pull their own weight. “There are five stages to group development, adjourning, forming, storming, performing, and norming” (John & Wiley pg 166). Christine’s group from the Case Study the Forgotten Group Member is in between the Storming and Norming Stages. The Storming Stage “is dealing with tensions and defining group tasks,” while the Norming Stage is dealing with high emotionality and tension among the group members” (John & Wiley pg. 166). Christine and her group could have had better

“When groups are planned so that each member's strengths have authentic importance to the ultimate success of the group's activity, this creates a situation where individual learning styles, skills, and talents are valued, and students shine in their fortes and learn from each other in the areas where they are not as expert.”(Willis)

In the article “Small Group Communication” Garth Pittman states that working in groups can actually be very helpful because it will get the job done faster, and develop skills that can be useful at work, school, and/or personal life. He clarifies that people will have different ideas and collaborate with one another to work well in the group. If they can get along well and manage to separate the work, then the project will get done on time without having any troubles. Pittman points out working in groups can get complicated. Few people in the group will not connect with the rest of the members. For those who aren’t used to being in groups can find themselves having a hard time getting use to it. The author believes that there is certain ways

I am also the lead for my department. Our goal for the team was “ by May 2016, our team will move from a 4 (moderate) to a 7 (high) in the area of accountability for results. We chose this area and this shift from moderate to high because it will have an impact on the quality of talk as well as regularity, purpose and evidence. More specifically, we will set out to measure the efficacy of our team members’ meeting attendance, their preparation of student work and commitment to leaving each meeting with clear next steps (action plan).” Starting off my team was at a 7. We already has agendas and norms in place but we were lacking accountability where teachers would show up late to the meetings or not bring in student work that was agreed upon for the previous meeting. My goal through the inquiry process with my team was to develop a protocol and use that to look at student work. My biggest struggle was that beginning I was doing a lot of the talking and others were just giving small inputs. However, this changed by the end of the inquiry process, I did less facilitating and more sit back approach. After analyzing and going through a few weeks of meeting, my group did made a growth from 7 to 8 on the rubric we used. Other members of the group were able to take notes, run the meeting if I am not there (with agenda provided, of course) and also bring work when agreed upon. I did not give our group a 9 nor 10

Coming into this class I was a bit wary about how this class would run and what we would learn, especially once I found it was to be team led. In the past twelve weeks I have gained more insight on myself and how I react to situations in group settings, especially being in a class that is described as management and not psychology. Within this essay, I will look do describe my experiences and thoughts with my team as well as how we progressed. I will also look to describe how my class has progressed from the early stages and has transformed into a well-oiled high performing team. One of the tools I will use to show and describe the development of both my team and the class will be Wheelan’s four stages of development.

Tuckman proposes that groups develop via five stages; forming, storming, norming, performing and finally adjourning (Archee, Gurney, & Mohan, 2013a). The first stage, known as forming, involves clarifying the task and purpose of the group, and identifying boundaries of both the task and interpersonal behaviour (Archee et al., 2013a). For the presentation task we were randomly allocated into groups. This worried me greatly as I have struggled in the past with group members who do not contribute equally or see the task as important as other group members. To avoid this problem, the group collectively determined and agreed upon a number of ground rules. For example, we decided that all group members were expected to contribute equally to the presentation, all group members were expected to attend and contribute at all group meetings, and all group members would adhere to agreed upon deadlines. Having failed to do this in previous group assignments, this clarification stage

This chapter reviewed many different aspects of group work such as different processes and skills required to run several different groups. The groups discussed were open-ended group, groups hosted in residential settings, single-session groups, and large activity groups.

Teamwork can be complex and challenging given task and interpersonal issues, level of group motivation and expected performance standards. The concrete experience spoken about in this reflection piece is in reference to the effectiveness of myself as a group member and the group, working to write a report outlining the organisation and structure of Volkswagen. Dennison (2009) applies Kolb’s learning cycle (1981, 1984) which suggests that learning moves through a continuous cycle, between having an experience, and then reflecting on that action. This cycle has been developed from Lewin’s (1951) model for experiential learning. Reflection termed by Boud, Keogh and Walker (1985) ‘is a forum of response to the learner to experience’(p. 18). On reflection, the early set group dynamics was a defining factor in the experience, and how the team conducted themselves throughout the task. Meyerson, Wick and Kramer (1996) note that ‘such rapidly converging groups require methods for developing “swift trust”’ (p. 8), which can explain why initial group dynamics are so important. I took on multiple team roles, including group leader, which could be translated into the team not performing collectively on a high level, however, I could view this as a personal ineffectiveness of my leadership style.

Groupwork can be defined as a method of social work that is utilised in order to help individuals to enhance their social functioning through purposeful group experiences and to help cope with their personal group or community problems (Konopka, 1972). The role of groupwork places emphasis on sharing thoughts, ideas, problems and activities, allowing social action groups for instance, to “empower members to engage in collective action and planned change efforts to modify particular aspects of their social or physical environment” (Toseland & Rivas, 2014, p. 38; Pyles, 2009; Staples, 2004). Therefore, reflecting on the processes of groupwork is an essential mechanism for all professionals in order to develop better communication skills, conflict resolution and enhance future performance. This essay will reflect upon the task group processes that were conducted this semester, while evaluating my own role within the group and what was learnt working within a small group.

“Group work is a form of voluntary association of members benefiting from cooperative learning that enhances the total output of the activity than when done individually”.

The group assessment in this unit put together four motivated members that wanted to create quality work. Interestingly, it also included for the first time, in my many team assessments, an additional strong-minded member that wished to lead the group. Sousa & van Dierendonck (2015, p. 15) propose, that sharing leadership duties requires humility from the group leaders to allow others to take responsibility for the task whilst remaining willing to step in and lead when needed. DuBrin (2016, p.27) further states that good team members have the courage to challenge the direction the task is taking and therefore showing leadership within the group. This was an important learning activity for myself as I moved from initial apprehension of joint leadership, to increasingly appreciating the strengths of other team members and the value this added.

I used to believe that I did not perform very well in groups. I am an observer who likes to learn alone. I thought I learned best when I worked on my own. Even though I always knew group work had many positive values, I was more comfortable with the lecture-based approach and resisted group work merely because it involved change, not because it had a collaborative learning approach. However, during the learning community project, I came to realize that I learn more effectively when I work in groups. Working in a group was like an adventure for me; there were both exciting and challenging times while preparing for the learning community project.

In conclusion, this class has changed my perspective about working in a group. Since my prior experience with groups was so unsettling, I believed that all groups were going to be the same. However, this class has made it possible to believe that there are groups that respect and take into consideration other members’