Who would have thought that a reality tv show can give insight on Group communication? Although the contestants were all competing for one million dollars, they quickly had to become a member of a group in order to compete. When watching Survivor, one can easily note the phases of group development. Bruce Tuckman (A researcher specializing in group communication) theorized that there are four stages of group development. The first stage of development is Forming. Of course, Forming is when a group first comes together. Groups may form for a variety of reasons, including the need to belong or to achieve a common goal. However, in the case of Survivor, the participants were automatically placed into separate groups. This stage can easily be seen in the season premiere. As soon as the aircraft landed in the Australian Outback, the survivors had to get into their groups (Kucha and Ogakor) and trek to camp. Although the survivors did not have a choice but to be a part of a group, they all were competing for one million dollars. Storming is the next …show more content…
Roles are the different parts that people play in groups. There are three different types of roles: Task, Maintenance and Disruptive roles. Tasks roles are associated with the productivity of the group. Maintenance roles maintain the cohesion of a group. Then, Disruptive Roles neither help the productivity or maintain the cohesion of the group. Two Disruptive Roles that can be seen in Survivor are the Clown and Isolate. Kimmie was clearly the Clown in the Kucha tribe. She was loud and obnoxious, which threw off her group. Similarly, Nick never really helped in his tribe. When the tribe was building their new shelter, he was off to the side and not doing to much to complete the task at hand. Still, Tina played a Maintenance Role as a Supporter. She encouraged her group members and remained neutral throughout the entire competition, which lead to her being the sole
Forming is the base to teaming building. At this stage, the roles and the responsibilities of every individual of the team are unclear. The most commanding role at this stage is of the leader. It depends on him as to how to give the tasks and how to set the goals.
Not to mention the fact that it always seems to magically start pouring rain the moment two people are left standing on a ten-foot pole above the Atlantic Ocean in the final challenge, introducing the controversial concept of whether or not reality TV is real at all, but merely a contrived series of events captured by a camera. While all of these negative arguments are valid, critics are underestimating the positives of the show. The reason why the series has managed to last through ten years, twenty seasons, two-hundred contestants, and dozens of locations varying from jungle isles to desert oases is that it offers a psychological case study in social and human behavior.... ... middle of paper ...
Another role is a follower, they agree to what everyone is saying and doing in the group. Emotion expresser is someone who expresses the feelings of an issue to the group. A group observer is summarizing the group's progress. The last role is tension reliever, they often relieve all stress in the group by giving breaks or humoring them. In the episode, the following roles that were presented are harmonizer, compromiser, group observer, and encourager.
The first stage of team building is called the forming stage. The team meets for the first time and learns about the opportunities and challenges, and then they agree on goals and begin to tackle tasks. Team members tend to behave quite independently. They may be motivated, but are usually relatively uninformed of the issues and objectives of the team (Wikipedia). The group has reached the Norming stage when they begin the second stage.
Social Workers must be knowledgeable on how to facilitate and lead group sessions with clients. They must be cognizant on their responsibilities as a facilitator, and diligently work to meet the needs of all group members collectively and individually. According to Toseland, Ronald, & Rivas, Robert (2009) group work practice focuses on Social Work practice with a broad range of treatment and task groups and the group’s environment (pg. 2.). It is significant for Social Workers to be equipped with the knowledge and skills to be able to properly assess and assist in group atmospheres. At my field placement which is at the Covenant House, a homeless shelter in Detroit that services youth from ages 18-24. I am responsible for co-facilitating along with the agency’s Social Worker, a
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)
The primary roles that were incorporated into group were defined by the leaders of group. Those leaders included the social workers and group psychologists, as well as students when appropriate. The leaders focused on task and maintenance roles, such as; coordinator, elaborator, evaluator, information seeker, initiator/contributor, opinion giver, procedural technician, encourager, gatekeeper, harmonizer, and standard setter. The individual roles was primarily the dominator. Due to the dominator portion of group, it changed the atmosphere and will be discussed later.
Topics explored with this group included; conversational skills, internet safety, bullying, conflict resolution, social media, and personal appearance. Accordingly, I was able to gain insight on how to plan activities tailored to the needs of the group as well as obtain tips on conducting groups effectively. Additionally, I was able to get a sense of the group dynamics, attain knowledge on the stages of a group through observing all the individuals belonging to the group, their uniqueness and how their personality impacted the group itself. Individuals were able to join the group at different stages hence; the forming stage was repeated each time a new member was recruited. This also provided me with the opportunity of gaining first-hand experience of the interaction on the basic dynamics on group stages of forming, norming, storming and
After completing the group task of preparing a presentation on, transferring individual facilitation skills into a group work setting I will critically reflect upon my own participation. I will evaluate my self-awareness while working in the group, as well as those around me. The way that I personally dealt with any issues that arose within the group and how that affected the group dynamics. I will also briefly discuss the roles in which each member of the group took and how role allocation affected, the group dynamics and the working relationships. Finally I will evaluate my work having discussed it with my fellow group members.
Team leader tend to participate more at this stage than in the early stages. Team members can be expected to assume greater responsibility for decision-making and their professional behaviour.
This is where the team comes together and get to know each other and feel each team member out and work on finding each member’s strengths and weaknesses. During forming, the team will begin working on establishing trust and getting over their fear of conflict. Lencioni recommends that the team members spend some time talking about their personal lives to help establish trust. He also suggests taking the Myer-Briggs personality profiles to help facilitate learning each member’s strengths and weaknesses (2002). According to Prytherch, et.al. (2012), when individuals are brought together into a team, it can take a long time for that group to bond cohesively and reach the stage where it is working well. Trust and confidence between team members also takes time. To hasten the process, the new team should first undergo a team-building activity. The goal of team building activities is to promote greater interaction and cohesiveness among employees (Schnall
According to Dyer & Dyer (2013) research, to improve the team performance it is important to consider the four “C”s. It is essential that team and its member understand the meaning of the four C’s in order to have a high performing team. The four “C”s are (1) The context of the team, (2) The composition of the team, (3) The competencies of the team, and (4) The change management skills for the team.
Groups can be made up of different individuals that are coming together to accomplish a specific
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.
Formation of groups or teams is not something that occurs overnight. Because it involves human beings that come from various backgrounds with different sets of values, forming a group and anticipating them to integrate and function dynamically cannot be expected to