I. Discuss each of the four stages of group life to define your task group process: beginnings, middles, and ends.
For the fist couple weeks, our task group remained in the forming stage. During our first meeting, I could see that Lindsey, the assigned group leader, was not comfortable with leading. She asked for each member of the group to spend some time talking about what interest them but was not comfortable taking charge of the group. While everyone shared, Connie took over the first meeting with a topic she wanted to use because it was personally affecting her daughter. We decided to go with physical and verbal abuse with adolescents as our topic. While everyone agreed on this topic, I think it was chosen because Connie voiced her opinion
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The textbook states there are four major functional tasks that groups must accomplish to remain in equilibrium. The first task is integration, ensuring that members of the group fit together. It took a few meetings for members of the task group to get to know each other and learn how to work together as a task group. The next task is adaption, ensuring that groups change to cope with the demands of their environment. A member who was not a natural leader was assigned the role of leader. Members who were natural leaders were asked to take on a different role and let someone else lead them. It took some time for members of the group to adapt to these changes and play a role they were not comfortable playing. The third task is pattern maintenance, ensuring that groups define and sustain their basic purposes, identities, and procedures. The basic purpose of the task group was to work together to create a proposal on an agreed upon topic. To do this, the leader had to set an agenda each week, assign tasks to members weekly, and keep the group on topic during the meetings. The group maintained its identity by everyone staying in their assigned roles, working through conflict, and completing their assigned task each week. This allowed the group to remain cohesive and grow throughout the time spent together. The final task is goal attainment, ensuring that groups pursue and accomplish their tasks. To accomplish this task, the leader had to hold members accountable when an assigned task was not completed. This also meant the group had to collaborate and work together to complete the proposal. By accomplishing all four tasks of systems theory, the group was able to remain in a state of
Bruce Tuckman discovered that there are four stages of group development. The stages are; forming, storming, norming and performing. In the first stage of forming, the roles of the members are unclear. Everyone is getting to know each other, every person is a stranger and they all treat each other as such. At this stage the ground rules and objectives are not yet established. The
Before completing our first activity, and in Tuckman’s forming stage, we had a choice of three activities and we had to choose one to complete. During Tuckman’s forming stage group members often create their own organisational standard and establish its culture (Bonebright, 2010, p. 113). Choosing which activity to complete created the first small conflicting ideas, as some group members wanted to different activities. I believe that this was the foundation of where our group development formed. It was discovered quickly that through open communication, negotiation and compromise that a problem within this group can be overcome easily. In activity 1 (appendix 1) each question was about group work, how we tend to work in groups, and our likes and dislikes about working within a group. Upon completing activity 1 and reflecting on the answers each of us gave, we found that we were quite similar in our beliefs and about what each of us like and dislike whilst doing group work. Once this discovery was made the development of the group seemed to flourish as we became comfortable quickly developing into Tuckman’s norming stage. I believe due to the fact that this is a like-minded group, a storming stage do not occur. Though there was no storming stage within this particular group, I understand that in many future group situations,
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...
Groups were assigned by professor and consisted of diverse students with various backgrounds. Our first task was writing group contract which involved participation of all group members and required closer contact among students. Tuckman’s Group Development Stages model can be used to show how our group worked together, as our ‘4U’ team had gone through each stage. Example of the forming stage was the first meeting when all group members tried to be polite and asked questions, such as ‘what is major?’, ‘what is your GPA?’, we tried to be kind to each other and be cautious to avoid misunderstandings in the beginning of our work. However, everything changed when we received the task to write contract and our group entered second stage of the Tuckman’s model. We experimented and tried to analyze who is doing better at brainstorming, writing, proofreading, and managing tasks. Therefore, some secondary tension occurred as all group members argued about topic, goals and norms we should establish. Our group consisted of four members which made it difficult to pass to third stage of Tuckman’s model. There was a conflict about topic; we had two ideas involving water quality problem and meal-plan issue. Both topics were interesting and challenging, there was an equal distribution of voices among these topics and group members openly disagreed, competed for a status and tried to persuade that their ideas are more important. There was not norming stage as separate, as conflicts occurred all the time, statuses of group members were also constantly changing. Group norms were continually adjusted and changing from the forming to performing stage. For instance, one of the explicit norms was that everyone should be prepared to the meeting (establi...
There were individuals in the group who were there by orders but there were some there because they were eager to grow and learn. As the sessions went on those who were eager showed the enthusiasm in their participation and the leader fed off of their energy. Both facilitators were seasoned leaders but their approach to the session drastically different. Although drastically different styles were on display, both facilitators seem to have received positive feedback. Another natural consequence of group work in contrast from individual counseling is that feedback is very powerful informational tool when several of the group members are saying the same things with accuracy. (Jacobs, 2012) In all four sessions members provided feedback that encouraged the leader of the group. Session three was particularly interesting in that the entire group were all Caucasian adolescents between the ages of 15 to 17. They were nice respectful young men who did not fit the stereotypical teenager who had no respect for adults or authority. This group were court ordered due to being caught using marijuana. This particular group of males really provided feedback in the group so much so that the facilitator praised the members for responding positively in the group. Group one had the dominant female who was always had an opinion about the material and had a story for every point the facilitator
Tuckman, B., & Jensen, M. (2010). Stages of small-group development revisited. Group Facilitation, (10), 43-48. Retrieved March 27, 2011, from ABI/INFORM Global.
When first being introduced to a group, it can be quite stressful trying to figure out how you and your team members are going to function together. As with any group, there are a few milestones that need to be reached in order to ensure a functional and successful relationship. Specifically, groups need to go through Tuckman’s Group Development Stages. These stages consist of forming, storming, norming, performing, and in some scenarios, a final stage of adjourning may be reached. After participating in this assignment, we as a group were easily able to identify, and analyze, each stage of our development.
Ongoing team dynamics take place after designing and launching a team. According to Polzer (2003), this is done to periodically assess team members’ collaboration patterns and work processes while working towards achieving their goals. The important factors to consider during this stage are: diagnosing and structuring formal team processes pertains to the task analysis to guide the allocation of a task by studying the dispersal of information, skills, and expertise among team members; diagnosing emergent team processes is anticipating and monitoring the actual behavior and interaction that emerges among team members; and assessing underlying identity dynamics, which pertains to who an individual is
According to Toseland and Rivas (2005), group dynamics are “the forces that result from the interactions of group members” (p. 64). These forces refer to either the negative or positive influences towards meeting members’ socioemotional needs as well as goal attainment within a group (Toseland & Rivas, 2005), like within my class work group experience. Some of dynamics that continue to emerge and develop in my group is the effective interaction patterns and strong group cohesion, which has generated positive outcomes and group achievement thus far.
In order to evaluate my role within the group it is important to identify what makes a group. A group must firstly consist of more than three members, “Two members have personal relationships; with three or more there is a change in quality” of the personal relationship. (Bion 1961, p26) The group must have a common purpose or a goal in order to succeed.
Bruce Tuckman maintains that there are four stages of group development, forming, storming, norming, and performing. These stages are all essential and unavoidable in order for a group to mature, overcome challenges, find solutions, plan work, and produce effective results. (University of Washington, 2013)
how the goals are going to be achieved. In the fourth stage known as performing the team works
When working on a group project, there are certain skills that are required to make sure that the tasks are being carried out smoothly. With that in mind, it is critical to keep an open line of communication as well as an understanding of the other individuals in the group. The following scenario is of a group project I was a part of that had a breakdown in the two points expressed above.
Throughout the readings and discussions, the characteristics of the initial stage of groups were explored. Please list five of these characteristics and explain how you would manage these situations. (20 points)
A group can be define as ‘any number of people who (1) interact with one another; (2) are psychologically aware of one another and (3) perceive themselves to be a group’ (Mullins, L, 2007, p.299). Certain task can only be performed by combined effort of a group. Organisation can use groups to carry out projects, which will help to achieve its overall aim. However, for the group to be successful they must understand what is expected of them and have the right skill to complete the task. . (Mullins, L, 2006)