...his obstacle of “grouphate” and through learning to trust each other .Now , upon finishing Small Group Communications, we have the satisfaction from solving challenging problems by working in groups. We have enhanced our knowledge from participating in groups. We started out on shifty grounds. Now, we are a successful group that loves working together and experiencing the rewards that come alongside.
In this Discussion Board post I will describe my interpretation and give examples of the various stages that an efficient team should experience as they are working together to achieve a goal. Second, I will briefly compare the qualities of a group versus a team. Third, I will go over the various roles that each of the members in a team may play, and I will explain which of these roles may be the easiest for me based on my character strengths and which ones may be the hardest for me based on my character weaknesses. Fourth, I will discuss why I think it is important to learn and fully understand how to work in a group. Lets begin with the various stages a group will find themselves in when becoming a team.
Team-work has always been part and parcel of the everyday human life. Places such as the work environment, academic environments have always encouraged teamwork. It has been essential in actualization and the attainment of common goals. The diversity of personalities allows variety of ideas, experiences and delegation of work. Furthermore, improving the effectiveness and efficiency of each team member. Due to my previous experiences, group work have always been a crisis yet to happen. This group was different, there was good communication, understanding and mutual respect. Yet, a few ups and downs noted due to diverse personalities and cultural background was clear. Like every teamwork, disagreements occur due to different ideologies but are further harmonised. The key to an effective team is to play up the strengths and balance out the weakness of each team
O’Neill & Cowman (2008) define a group as more than one person with diverse abilities joining forces to obtain the same goals. According to the authors, a group can work effectively by respecting one another, having open communication, understanding each other’s roles and providing time for regular meeting to achieve desired outcomes. Sargeant, Loney, & Murphy (2008) also shared the same view regarding the criteria of an effective group work.
It is important to distinguish the difference between teams and groups. The main difference is that teams work altogether toward a common goal whereas groups can work altogether but for their own objective. It is important to highlight that a group does not necessary need a leader to follow but a team does and this leader will set directions to achieve the goal. In teams people are more committed as they share their ideas, they know the purpose of what they are doing and what the others are doing, they understand better individual objectives and team objectives whereas in groups, generally people are just told what they have to do without further explanations. Because in a team people get to know each other, it builds trust and enhances communication but in groups, people do not really know each other, do not trust or communicate effectively with each other. In teams it is frequent to see constructive conflict as people talk more openly and more honestly but in group it is quite rare. Eventually, people in teams are more involv...
Group work is something I have always been a big fan of because you get to talk and engage with your group members, and by doing so we were able to all get on the same page. As soon as we compromised on a topic to use for our project, we then divided it into 4 equal and important
Successful teams become stronger when members learn to work together. They have clear, acceptable goals. The members trust and respect one another. They communicate often and openly. Members have talent for creating and implementing ideas. The leader “fits” the needs of the team. And the support and resources from the wider organization and community are provided.
Working in groups can be a very positive or very negative experience. How a group functions together determines how positive or negative that experience becomes. All go through four stages of development, forming, norming, storming, and performing.. Unfortunately for our group, many of the members experienced some of these stages together and other missed out on that opportunity of original growth. Kirst-Ashman and Hull describe these stages as a pattern of development. This allows the group members to see how they are working together but also allows observers to see what stage the group is stuck on. I had hoped for my group to develop past the first stage of development quickly, however as a whole we couldn’t seem to get over this limbo of being a forming or norming group. Our group was not the best functioning, but working together taught me the important pieces of being a group member as well as working within a group.
I thought the communication for the group I was in was pretty good. We worked together on the entire project and no one shot each others ideas or suggestions down, but we instead listened to what each other had to say and discussed our opinions as a group. Even when we would disagree on something I believe that we all treated each other respectfully and tried to either come up with a compromise or a majority rule of how most of the group felt on a particular issue.
However, my friend and I were playing roles to break the ice between the team. After our first meeting outside of the classroom, I found out that my group was friendlier as we started getting more comfortable with our team members. The first issue we encountered was how we should communicate to do the work. I was the person who created a group on WhatsApp and Skype in order to make the group communication more effective. The second issue we faced as a group was that we seemed to be stuck in the brainstorming stage. I could say that we spent more than two weeks in that stage just because there were lot of disagreements between team members on how we should be conducting our project. Each one had different idea and point of view. But after numerous meetings, we were finally able to come up with a detailed plan on how we were going to conduct our project, and we specifically defined each other specific
1.1 Identify Key Issues and Theories Relating to Group Working and How These Were Applied in their Group
Overall, I am able to safely exercise and rely on my unique knowledge and experiences when working among group members, in order to distinguish my strengths and use their skills to achieve the end goal. This is commonly put into practice when collaborating with my group members or even out in the field when collaborating with school faculty members, such as counselors or teachers, for guidance when implementing and facilitating student
The first chapter of “Working in Groups” focuses on group communication, the first aspect being the key elements of group communication (Engleberg and
Overall, I mostly enjoyed my group members and I believed that collectively we came up with a good presentation and a good written proposal. We all walked away from being a group being more knowledgeable and feeling accomplished because we completed our task and bonded through group cohesiveness.
Working together with other people for an assignment can be a challenging task in some cases but luckily, I worked well with my group members. The decisions we made were anonymous although we paced ourselves individually when it came to completing our separate parts of the essay. As a group I believe that we connected well on an interpersonal level as all four of us were able to make alterations to any problem together . Furthermore, we did not give each other a chance to get angry at one another as we knew that this would only cause conflict that would disrupt our flow as a group. There was an equal divide in the amount of work that we all did; our contributions were fair and no one was lacking behind. In addition, my group members were great at keeping each other informed if one of us were not able to attend a group meeting; emails were sent out informing us what we missed and ideas that were formulated. Everyone in my group worked according to deadlines and in synchronization with each other; we did not have to nag anyone to complete work or wait on a member to complete their task.