Group Dynamics and Organizational Behavior: Reflecting on Your Group's Effectiveness

Personality and Trust

Report contents: This assignment is designed to reflect on some of the group dynamics that we discussed in this course and to determine how they may have impacted your group.  You do not need to come to a consensus on the answers. If individuals have differing views, explain those views.  

This task is to help you determine how effective your group was.  Please note that you do not earn marks for being the “perfect” group.  You earn marks for giving an honest and realistic reflection of your group.   This assignment is to be written in paragraph form and must be compiled as a team, with each person’s perspective considered for each question.

You will discuss the concepts identified below; you can add more discussion on anything you think is relevant to your team, as all teams are different in their development.  You must incorporate the relevant OB terminology and concepts into your responses to demonstrate your understanding of the concepts. You must use examples from your group’s functioning to demonstrate your understanding of and ability to connect organizational behaviour concepts and its effects/impacts on your team.

1. Personality – discuss the concept of personality as it applies to the members of your group and how your group worked as a team.  Discuss trust (textbook page 240) and its impact on the performance of your team. Provide specifics from your team experience. (4 marks)

2. Discuss roles and their impact on your group.  What roles were established? Discuss maintenance and task roles within your group. Discuss role conflict, ambiguity, role underload or overload, social loafing, and its impact on your group. Provide specifics from your team experience. (6 marks)

3. Norms and your Team Contract, providing specifics from your team experience:

(6 marks)

a. Identify the norms of your group.  Where possible, identify the norms as performance, social, arrangement and allocation of work, etc.

b. Identify the positive and negative norms established by your group. Assess how the norms established by your group affected your group’s progress/performance.  

c. Discuss the effectiveness of your team meetings and your progress on the project with regard to the norms of behavior you established for your group.

4. Stages of Group Development , providing specifics from your team experience (6 marks):

a. Identify how your group progressed through the stages of group development. Identify the highest stage of group development your group reached.  (Note, adjourning should not be discussed as you are still working as a team.)  

b. Did you fall back at any time during the project?  Why or why not? OR Did you move ahead of schedule at any time during the project? Why or why not?

c. What were the implications of the team’s development on your project?

d. Discuss the impact of Groupthink symptoms on your team.

5. Choosing Conflict and/or  Power (3 marks):

a. Conflict: Describe the source(s) of the conflict(s), conflict handling strategies, impact on the group – functional or dysfunctional.

Power:  Discuss what specific types of power were exerted in the group that influenced the decisions and actions of the group either positively or negatively. Were there power struggles in the group?