- Patterns of communication and coordination
As a member of a group, I learned to enhance my communicative competencies of understanding and applying verbal and nonverbal cues. Such competencies bring about well-coordinated action during group activity processes. Having done so, a conducive or wholesome group atmosphere is established every now and then. As a group member, I have assigned activity that I need to fulfill for the smooth operations of our team. The delegation of specific task made me more responsible in the achievement of our group’s objectives. When there is a bottleneck in communication and coordination, each member brings with him/her resolutions to such an issue or problem. Because of teamwork, encouragement, support, and the like, we are successful with our endeavors.
- Patterns of influence
As a member of a group, I have certain patterns of influence, too, to other members of our group. As the cliché goes, “Everything is related to everything else.” Even as a individual member, I have created for myself my own sphere of influence, which in turn, may merge with our overall group’s pattern of influence. What I mean by that is, even in a group, there are subgroups (that is, depending on the group size). In order to balance these patterns of influence for each and every one of us in group, our leader ensures that we share the same vision and target. Because our leader has the potentials, abilities, and competencies to lead us, we have seen how successful we are with our concerted efforts.
- Roles/relationships
As a group member, I have my own roles and relationship to fulfill. I have to remind myself that for our group to achieve its aim, we should do efficaciously what is expected of us. We should never deviate from our roles, except on the expediency of the moment and for the sake of everyone in our team. Having said so, it is important that we have good interpersonal bond so that we can assist others who need us most.
- Patterns of dominance (e.g. who leads, who defers)
As a member, I am a good follower to our leader. Because I am under my leader, I respect his ideas to the point of complying with his wishes. I know that I can become a leader, too, so I also would like my followers to respect me. To do that, I should be a good role model to them. I should not be hostile towards them because they simply would like to meet our objectives. Our leader dominates over us and all we need to do as members is to be in the same mind frequency as him so that we perform our duties harmoniously.
- Balance of task focus vs. social focus
There should always be a balance between people’s tasks and social orientedness. If we only concentrate on task at hand, we can be productive. On the other hand, if we focus on building good relationship, we become robust, healthy, and supportive to each and everyone of us. The negative repercussions come into play when we lose the balance between fulfillment of task to the detriment of our dealings with colleagues or superiors. Competition is good, but it also depends whether a group with maintain a healthy working climate with others. It is still best to have a balance view of task and people.
- Level of group effectiveness
Being a member is much easy that being the leader. A leader, as is often thought of and viewed, has more responsibility towards his/her members. He should lead its group to achieve their targets. Hence, the level of a group’s effectiveness starts with the leader. For my part, I have known my leader very well. He has an outstanding ability to translate our goals into tangible output. More importantly, he has developed in us the confidence that we can do things right at the first time and at the right place when we work collaboratively with everyone else in our group. Hence, I would like to think of interpersonal interdependency as key to our group’s success in performing its tasks.
- How conflict is handled
I have experienced how our group was good at handling conflicts. Prior to our activity proper, our leader asks us of our own expectations. He then related his with ours (shared expectancies). When a conflict arise, we go back to our expectations of ourselves, other group members, and leader. If there are still disagreements, we forge a consensus concerning the best possible resolutions to the issue at hand. Because we have learned the power of cordiality, we have never resolved a problem that we encountered along the way. I simply love my group.
References
Rothwell, J. D. (2012). In Mixed Company: Communication in Small Groups: Communicating in Small Groups and Teams (Eight ed.). California: Thomson Wadsworth.
Malaya-Sniezek, S. (2007, May 11). How Groups Work: A Study of Group Dynamics and its Possible Negative Implications. Retrieved from Serendip: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/481
Torosyan, R. (2008). Self-Reflections on Group Dynamics. Journal Of Creativity In Mental Health, 3(1), 78-92. Retrieved from 10.1080/15401380802019504
