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10-04-2006, 03:25 AM
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The Theory of Group Formation
The following is an extract from the Open University Systems Summer School Student Handbook, 1998.
To do systems work successfully we need personal and social skills every bit as much as the rational, intellectual skills of methods and techniques. We have to deal with such problems as:
• how to unify a multidisciplinary team;
• how to develop the client's trust and cooperation, and dealing with misunderstandings, suspicion and manipulation;
• how to avoid getting stuck in a particular view of problems;
• how to elicit useful, and sometimes sensitive, information from interviews and consultations;
• how to handle negotiations to resolve conflicting views;
• how to prepare formal presentations to decision-making committees.
The notes that follow deal with various aspects of these problems. But you will not learn how to deal with the problems just by reading the notes. This sort of learning is very much learning by experience, and the primary purpose of the notes is to encourage and help you to reflect on your experience during the week. Your tutor may refer you to sections of these notes at particular points. But in the end it is up to you, individually and as a group, how much use you make of them.
On ways of reaching consensus
If several people combine to produce a single product (such as a project report) they have to find some way of agreeing. Ways of gaining agreement are essentially of two sorts:
• those that aim to achieve functional, but superficial, conformity;
• those that aim for a deeper consensus.
Methods of ensuring conformity
• delegation of control to a leader; and, if you are not the leader, doing as you are told;
• procedures whereby disagreements are resolved by majority votes: for example, many committee or parliamentary agreements;
• 'horse-trading', or contractual, agreements:
• 'I'll do what you want now, because you will pay me or help me out later' ('I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine').
Methods of generating consensus
A number of ways of reaching consensus are suggested below:
Analysing the objective logic of the situation: that is, impartial scientific analysis;
This can apply quite well to physical problems, but impartial analysis becomes exceptionally difficult, if not impossible, where human values are involved, and even where it is feasible it will not necessarily catch participants' enthusiasm.
Breaking the problem down, to separate those areas where agreement exists and concerted action is possible from those where it does not exist, and concerted action is not possible;
For instance, political parties that are opposed on many topics may, nevertheless, be able to work together on certain issues. It is not easy to be really clear about this approach. You should view any early agreement as suspect. Do not say you agree with something unless you really do agree with it: do not change your mind purely to avoid conflict. Above all, do not imagine you can understand what the other person is saying without serious effort and without checking your understanding.
Finding ways of reformulating the problem so that areas of apparently irresolvable conflict can be by-passed, transformed, or replaced by better understanding;
I want to paint the wall red, and I hate blue;
you want to paint it blue, and you hate red.
The deadlock may be by-passed by, say, demolishing the wall or converting it into a notice-board. Alternatively, closer enquiry may show that I wanted red because all the other surroundings were so drab, and you wanted blue because it was restful for your eyes. These goals are not as incompatible as the original ones, and the conflict could be transformed by a good interior designer. Further enquiry still might even reveal that you thought I meant a crude post-office red, and I thought you wanted a yucky pastel blue; better understanding of one another's intentions would have shown that we had much more acceptable shades in mind, but we had prematurely jumped to incorrect conclusions. Once again, the importance of checking out cannot be overemphasized. ('Are you saying that ... ?')
Using conflict constructively as a source of creative thinking;
The philosopher Hegel argued that all human progress depended on the creative resolution of conflicts, so that conflict, far from being 'a bad thing', was actually the main force for creative development. Blake went as far as saying 'Opposition is true friendship'.
Deliberately seeking out differences among you and examining carefully any conflicts that arise spontaneously;
Provided that your group is not so conflict-ridden that it falls apart, this may be a helpful strategy. For example:
How does the rural village view of your problem contrast with the big city view, or the NorthWest with the SouthEast, or the shop floor view conflict with the managerial?
How does the view of the person at home all day contrast with the view of the breadwinner who goes out to work? Or the view of the unassertive with the view of the assertive?
At the end of the day your 'final report' may look less neat, but you may well be a lot wiser.
On receiving and giving 'personal feedback'
The feedback control model illustrates the point that to achieve adaptive control it is essential to have feedback. That applies as much to you and me as to an electromechanical device such as a thermostat. We receive and act on such feedback continually (I notice people's eyes are beginning to wander, for example, and realize I'm talking too much; or nods and smiles indicate to me your approval of the line I'm taking).
But the normal responses we give and receive, verbal and non-verbal, conscious and unconscious, are fairly limited and incomplete. I may misinterpret or fail to notice a signal of dissent, or I may not know why people have reacted in a particular way. The social constraints that restrict comment on other people's behaviour exist for very good reasons (it can be very destructive) but they also have their price: we lose out on information that might enable us to conduct ourselves more effectively.
At Residential School (as elsewhere), when individuals or members of a group make comments on each other's behaviour (either explicitly or tangentially) it's a sign that things are going either very well or very badly. The basic condition for the giving and receiving of personal feedback to be constructive is that it should occur within relationships of trust and mutual respect. If things do go well in your group, you may feel it's worth relaxing the usual taboo on 'no personal comments', in order to learn a bit more about how other people see your contributions.
For example, if you have been asked to take the chair for a particular session in the project, you might, at the end, like to receive observations on how you discharged the role.
A group might decide to spend the last five minutes of every session reviewing the process aspects of the session, with individuals commenting on what they have noticed about the way they are working together, and the aspects of their own contributions that they felt pleased or dissatisfied with.
Members can contribute to the group process by:
· proposing new ideas
· seeking clarification
· providing information
· summarizing what has been said
· providing support for other people's ideas
· being open to other people's arguments
On the other hand, they might impede group effectiveness by:
· attacking other people's suggestions;
· being very defensive about their own;
· talking at the same time as someone else;
· talking aimlessly without adding to the discussion.
Comments or reflections on individual contributions do not have to be profound and dramatic in order to be worthwhile and illuminating.
Partly because we get so little practice at this sort of exercise, commenting in this way and learning from the comments are not at all easy. The notes that follow offer some points to bear in mind. (They are relevant to staff reviews and the like, too.)
Some criteria for useful feedback
• it should be descriptive rather than evaluative: describe only what you actually saw and felt: don't be judgemental and don't try to interpret or theorize;
• it should be specific rather than general: give actual examples from what you observed;
• it should take into account the needs of the receiver;
• it is useful if the receivers ask for feedback on particular aspects of their behaviour that they would like to check out;
• it is useful to check with others in the group the accuracy of the feedback. Is the observer's impression shared by others?
• there is no necessity to discuss, let alone agree upon, the points made. The main point is to understand and accept and reflect on perceptions, not to evaluate them or try to reconstitute them into an 'official history'.
Factors which make it difficult for us to respond to feedback
• sometimes it is hard to admit our failings to ourselves, let alone accept that others can see them;
• we may feel that there is an element of critical judgement in the feedback, and react against it;
• we may be looking for emotional sympathy and support rather than rational help in seeing our difficulty more clearly;
• the conditions in the group may be felt to be (and may actually be) unsafe: for example, there could be colleagues or bosses in the group who could affect one's job;
• we may already be under so much pressure that we do not feel able to process any more feedback, however constructive.
T245 students should recognise that in terms of transactional analysis, the second and third points involve ulterior and crossed transactions.
Factors which make it difficult for us to give feedback usefully
• most of us like to give advice. It makes us feel important, but we are then satisfying our needs, not the receiver's;
• we like to feel that we can see what others can't see, so we may try to argue or reinforce our statements if receivers do not appear to accept our observations. (In the face of such insistence the receivers will quickly (and rightly?) become defensive.) In fact, left alone, they may reflect on comment received and come to recognise its value later;
• commenting on other people's behaviour can be a way of relieving our own feelings of exasperation or resentment, say. That is to say, one's supposedly 'frank' remarks may not be formulated to be as clear and helpful as possible for the other person. Rather, they may be a way of punishing or letting off steam;
• a desire not to upset people may make us overpraise them. But this is still distorted feedback and it may confuse the situation. It is much better to create an atmosphere in which receivers know that they can rely on your basic acceptance and understanding, even if you were troubled by a particular aspect of their contributions.
On group process
As mentioned in the previous section, it is important to begin to develop an interest in the process of what is occurring in a group. Most of the time, especially when a group is working hard, everyone's attention will be on the content of what is being discussed. This is fine, until something starts to go wrong. Then someone, and preferably more than one person, should switch their attention to the process that the group is using, in order to try to sort out what is occurring. Just being aware of the process will help enormously. The introductory exercises at Residential School should have provided you with some tools for changing the process, devices for helping the group to get 'unstuck'.
During the activities on the first evening of Residential School you may already have noticed certain aspects of group process, such as:
• your own and other people's 'style' in discussions;
• ways in which a consensus was reached in the group;
• the different roles adopted by different members of the group.
Over the period of the Residential School your particular group will pass through several different phases in the transition from coming together as individuals to behaving collectively, as a team. The four basic stages in group formation can be summarized as forming, storming, norming and performing. Your group may form quickly or slowly; some stages may seem to last for ever and others may pass by in a few hours; changed membership or changed circumstances may lead to some stages being repeated; but all the stages will be there at some point.
The forming stage is the introductory stage, during which issues about what the group wants to do and how it can operate will be raised. There will usually be a fairly rapid consensus on most issues, but it will be a false consensus, since the people in the group do not yet know each other well enough to risk saying what they really think.
The second, or storming, stage is the most difficult, and the most critical, stage of group development. It occurs when the false consensus of the forming stage starts to crack, when people start to argue, have fundamentally different ideas about how to proceed or who is the leader.
The greatest error in this stage is to try to 'patch it up' or 'pretend it is not there'. These strategies leave the group stranded in the false consensus stage and they never develop real working relations.
The best strategy is to find a way whereby the disagreements can be safely voiced. (In some groups this stage is handled by humour and banter, which nevertheless can serve a similar purpose.) It is a good idea at this point to ensure that after each communication someone 'says back' to the speaker what has been understood from the communication. It is crucial that everyone feels heard in this stage. If they end up feeling unheard, then they will usually mentally retreat from the group and cease to make a useful contribution.
Once everyone has had their say about what they think should happen, then go around again and find out what people want to know, in the light of what everyone else wants, again making sure that everyone is heard. Experience shows that this quite quickly leads to a convergence, though it may be necessary for the group to wait for the 'stickers' to come round to the consensus. The key is neither to duck this stage, nor to try to hurry it.
Once out of the storming stage, the group can then enter the norming stage, which creates genuine patterns of responsibility and working within the group. Tasks are effectively shared or farmed out; there is no further dispute about how to do things: it is just a question of who does what.
This moves smoothly into the fourth stage, that of performing. This last stage is when the group is functioning really effectively. It seems to be a general rule in this whole cycle that the groups who dare to face the storming stage most honestly are the ones that end up performing the best.
These stages occur for each group that sets out to work together on a project. They recur for each new project, though obviously if a successful strategy has emerged from an earlier project it can quickly be adapted and carried over to the new project.
On group roles
Group or team work involves collective effort, but a team made up entirely of born leaders would probably not be very effective. Each group member has a different contribution to make and can bring different experiences to bear on group problems. This is not just a matter of their individual technical expertise and knowledge, but also of the way they relate to other people.
Studies of the way people work together in teams have led Belbin to suggest a number of distinctive roles that individuals tend to adopt in a team (see Table 1). Belbin suggests that the most successful teams are those that include a range of role types. Some people have a strong preference for a particular role, while others are more versatile, capable of filling a number of alternative roles, depending on the situation.
Roles and descriptions Team-role contribution Allowable weaknesses
PlantCreative, imaginative, unorthodox. Solves difficult problems. Ignores details. Too pre-occupied to communicate effectively.
Resource investigatorExtrovert, enthusiastic, communicative. Explores opportunities. Develops contacts. Over-optimistic. Loses interest once initial enthusiasm has passed.
Co-ordinatorMature, confident, a good chairperson. Clarifies goals, promotes decision-making, delegates well. Can be seen as manipulative. Delegates personal work.
ShaperChallenging, dynamic, thrives on pressure. Has the drive and courage to overcome obstacles. Can provoke others. Hurts people's feelings.
Monitor evaluatorSober, strategic and discerning. Sees all options. Judges accurately. Lacks drive and ability to inspire others. Overly critical.
TeamworkerCooperative, mild, perceptive and diplomatic. Listens, builds, averts friction, calms the waters. Indecisive in crunch situations. Can be easily influenced.
ImplementerDisciplined, reliable, conservative and efficient. Turns ideas into practical actions. Somewhat inflexible. Slow to respond to new possibilities.
CompleterPainstaking, conscientious, anxious. Searches out errors and omissions. Delivers on time. Inclined to worry unduly. Reluctant to delegate. Can be a nit-picker.
SpecialistSingle-minded, self-starting, dedicated. Provides knowledge and skills in rare supply. Contributes on only a narrow front. Dwells on technicalities. Overlooks the 'big picture'.
Table 1 Belbin's team roles
Ideally, people should be given tasks that suit their preferred role.
For example, a 'completer' can be relied on to tie up the loose ends in a project, or ensure that a project report is well presented. If certain roles are missing from a team, it may be possible to recruit another member or to persuade an existing member to adopt the missing role.
Identification of Belbin role-types among team members can be achieved either by using self-perception questionnaires and personality testing, or simply by observing role playing.
Reference
Belbin, R.M. (1981) Management teams, why they succeed or fail, Heinemann, London (team roles amended in 1993).
عاشقةالغروب
10-04-2006, 03:29 AM
هــــاذي الاسئله عليها
Tutor-marked Assignment 01 (TMA01)
Cut-off date: April 13, 2006. You should read this page thoroughly before beginning your assignment. If there is anything that you are unsure about please ask your tutor.
Purpose of this assignment
This is the first of your tutor-marked assignments (TMAs). It is summative, which means that together with TMA02 and the one quiz, it forms the Continuous Assessment component of your grade for the course.It has been devised to:
give you some practice in completing AOU assignments;
help you to become more practised at submitting assignments online using the AOU-LMS (the Arab Open University Learning Management System).
help you to become a more reflective learner;
provide you with feedback from your tutor on your work so you can use this advice to improve how you tackle and answer TMA02.
What the assignment is about
In completing this assignment you will need to apply some of your learning from:
the 'Effective Groupwork Online' Tutor Group Activity 2;
the effective groupwork section of the website (Section 2.2);
the Clear Thinking paper in the Preparatory Activities booklet.
Your tutor will give you guidance in TGA2 Forum on how and when to do the tutor group activity.
What you have to do
There are two main parts to this assignment, but you will also need to give some thought to the way you present your work, as a few marks are awarded for this too:
Part 1 (50 marks - 300 words max.)
Read the paper The Theory of Group Formation which was introduced in the effective groupwork, and write your own review of it.In your review you should:
list the key points the author has made (15 marks);
clearly indicate, with reasons, if these key points are based on observations, theories or opinions. Your reasons could simply be examples from the paper which provide evidence for your views (15 marks);
describe the perspective of the author. For example: What audience is he writing for? What is his background? Does he state the purpose of writing? (10 marks);
include the text of a message that you have sent to the TGA2 Forum which illustrates some of the points made in the Section "Methods of Generating Consensus" It can be an example of one or more of the types of message listed but you should say which points you think it demonstrates. (10 marks).
The easiest way to include the text of your message in your document is to copy and paste the text into your TMA.Note: The text of your message does not contribute to the word limit for this part of the TMA. However, the words used in your analysis of the message do count towards the word limit.Notice the words used to describe what you should do as part of the review: 'list', 'describe', etc. A major essay is not expected from you. Expanded notes would be a more appropriate description of what is wanted. So, keep your review short, no longer than 300 words, and respond directly to each of the bullet points above. In writing your review try to apply the principles in the Clear Thinking paper in the Preparatory Activities booklet.
Part 2 (30 marks - 200 words max.)
Draw up a list of the three factors you consider to be the most significant for effective groupwork to take place. You should indicate clearly the reasons for your choice of each factor and why you think they are important.Each factor you list together with your reasoning is worth up to 10 marks.These factors could be drawn from any or all of the following:
your own review as completed for Part 1 of this TMA;
your group discussion for the 'Effective Groupwork Online' activity;
your personal reflection on the experience of working with your group. For example, what happened, why you think it happened, what you would do differently in another activity and why.
Overall presentation, clarity and organization of your TMA (20 marks)
You should devise an overall title that, in your view, reflects the nature of your work. You should also devise appropriate section headings to break work up into manageable chunks that draw attention to what each part of the work is about. Avoid simply using 'Part 1', 'Part 2', as headings - add something descriptive as well which clarifies the nature of your work for each part. Each part of the assignment has a number of subsections so it would be a good idea to devise headings for each of these too. These should indicate what the subsections are about and how they relate to the assignment. In these ways the presentation of your work will look rather like the layout of this assignment - headings with blocks of writing below each one.You should also try ensure that your work is written in a clear and logical style.Note: You will gain up to 20 marks for presentation, but up to 80 marks for the quality of the content (Parts 1 and 2) of your assignment. You should bear this in mind when planning how much time to spend on the different tasks needed to complete the assignment.
Submitting your work
You may write this assignment in any word processor package with which you are familiar. You could use WordPad (the simple word processor that comes with Windows).Both parts of the assignment should be combined into one document. Make sure it is clear where each new part starts.Your TMA solution should be submitted through the AOU Learning Management System. If you submit your assignment in any other way, it may not be marked.
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