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
In creating a hypothetical task force for the protection of the President of the United States is an immensely difficult and complex task. In its complexity, it is unlikely to ensure all the measures that can be devised to eliminate the entirety of the multitude of the diverse dangers that may arise. The protective measures also can become complicated by the reluctance of Presidents to take the security precautions that may interfere with the performance of their duties, or desire to have frequent and easy access to the people in which may leave an opening for someone such as Mark to follow through with his threats. The adequacy of the procedures that can be implemented after full consideration of the difficulty of
The group has reached the Norming stage when they begin the second stage. “The team is faced with creating cohesion and unity, differentiating roles, identifying expectation for members, and enhancing commitment. Providing supportive feedback and fostering commitment to a vision are ne...
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...
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)
... that areas of expertise can be exploited, different people are good at different things. Groups can discuss material, and that discussion can improve the quality of the decision. Groups are less likely to suffer from judgmental biases that individuals have when they make decisions. People are more likely to follow through on decisions made by groups that they are connected to. Also, more monumental decisions can be made in groups, because one member will not be singled out for blame, making the entire group responsible.
Tuckman, B., & Jensen, M. (2010). Stages of small-group development revisited. Group Facilitation, (10), 43-48. Retrieved March 27, 2011, from ABI/INFORM Global.
Corey, Corey, and Corey (2010) describe the main focus of task groups, to be the application of group dynamic principles and processes to improve, practice, and foster the accomplishment of identified work goals. In a task group setting, the members usually work together to complete a specific goal. Corey, Corey, and Corey (2010) describe task group leade...
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.
Stewart, G., Manz, C., & Sims, H., (1999). Teamwork and Group Dynamics. New York: Wiley. pp. 70- 125.
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.
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.
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. Having now completed my group work task, I can look back and reflect upon the process that my group went through to get to the presentation end point.
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)
The first stage in developing a team as it relates to group dynamics is forming, this is the stage where team members come together and they question what they are therefore, who else is a part of the team, who they are comfortable with, and this enables them to get involved as well as allowing the team the opportunity to introduce themselves to each other. The second stage is storming, and in this stage the team members begin to voice their opinions and differences as well as align themselves with others who share their same beliefs. This is an important stage for the team because team members will begin to become more involved with one another, and when they voice their concerns, they can feel like they are being represented and understood. The third stage is norming in the stage team members begin to establish a shared common commitment to the purpose of why the team is there, where they can establish their overall goals and how the goals are going to be achieved. In the fourth stage, known as performing, the team works effectively and efficiently to gather towards achieving the goal.