Page1 Kevin Conrad Reflection Paper MGMT 525: Group Dynamics 7 December, 2009 Over the course of the semester, I encountered several group assignments. Though I liked all the group members I was assigned to work with, it didn t seem to me that there was a lot of chemistry between us. I had been in several courses with these members throughout my college career, but had never been partnered up with them before. Needless to say, I don t think we were nearly as productive as we should have been and our grades were examples of this. At the beginning of our first major group assignment, one individual, not myself, seemed to want to take the lead on the project. The objective was to write a case study about a company that we had read about. This one individual wanted to make sure that the project got done several weeks before it was due. For whatever reasons he/she had in mind, I don t know, but what I do know is that this put adamant amounts of pressure on the rest of us who were working on several other projects for different classes. It was decided that we would allow this person to take the lead and see what he came up with. It is safe to say that we were in the first stage of group development, Forming. No one wanted to disagree and it was everyone s thoughts that it would be nice to finish the case study weeks in advance to alleviate the stress of everything going on. The major problem with this was that none of us realized that the work that was done was extremely rushed and not very good. However, being that we were in the first stage of group development, either no one wanted to point out that the work was somewhat carelessly done, or no one was completely aware that it seemed to be lacking a lot of depth and should have covered
Page2 a whole lot more thinking and effort. Either way, the job was completed early and without much structure to it. Our communication structure for this project was a very open one. There was no set structure to it, everyone talked to whomever they needed to and it seemed as though it was going to work out fine. However, this made it hard to disagree with anyone because if I had something to say about the work of someone else, I would say it, but some of the other members didn t want to open up and say how they were feeling so to not hurt anyone s feelings. Therefore, it made it very hard to fix anything that one person didn t agree with or wanted to tweak a little bit. Looking back on the first assignment, I wish that we had set up some sort of consensus that if anyone had a problem, they could openly state it and no one s feelings would be hurt. This did however change during the second major assignment. Once again the same individual thought it was important to get the presentation done about a month before it was due. While this one member was trying to get the other three of us to follow his lead again, it seemed as though the three of us agreed that we were not going to be rushed on this assignment, in hopes of creating a much stronger and better presentation so that we could get a better grade. With this came disagreements; this made me believe that we could definitely do a better job. The second stage of group development is Storming, which is what we were going through and it is usually more successful than stage one. We were able to communicate what we were thinking this time without really feeling that anyone s feelings would be hurt. We decided to focus on four major types of leadership for our presentation; these were Autocratic, Democratic, Laissez Faire, and Consultative Leadership. To decide who was going to be responsible for each style we picked out of a hat. I don t know whose idea this was because I
Page3 was not around when it was decided upon, but it seemed that the other three members were all in agreement that it was the best way to handle the situation, so I went along with it. I drew Democratic and was fairly happy with my pick. Looking back at it now, I don t think that any group project in the real world would be split up this way. It s not a professional way of splitting up work and I knew from the beginning it might be a bad idea. I believe that there should have been an open discussion about what style each person wanted to focus on or felt the most comfortable with and it could be split up that way, but it wasn t. I was the first one of the group members to send the group my PowerPoint slides and it was then decided to use the format that I had chosen when developing my part of the presentation. No discussion was really needed, it was clear that it was an effective way of getting our message across. The next step was to have one of the group members make the presentation look pretty and professional, to give it that eye appeal that is needed for a successful presentation. This was also completed very nicely and without any discrepancies. Needless to say, our second project was much more effective than our first. We may have not got the grade that we wanted, but it was a much more successful group decision-making process. If there were conflicts or disagreements that arose, we talked them through. We made it perfectly clear that the second project was not going to be rushed and that poor work was not going to be tolerated. There was no ganging up on anyone, so everyone felt as much a part of the team as any other member. It is my opinion that the leadership roles changed significantly from the first assignment to the second assignment. It was as if the first assignment was following the Autocratic Leadership style and the second assignment was under the Democratic Leadership style. During
Page4 the first group project, one member seemed to take the lead and make sure that everything was done his way and when he thought it should be done. Whereas the second project was more like an agreement between the whole group of when things would be completed and who would be completing what. The second project was the more effective one and I believe that this is because everyone felt very strong in the sense that we all contributed to the main goal of contributing sufficient research to the objective. After thinking long and hard about similarities to other groups I have worked with here at Wentworth, I don t think that there are many. I have always worked with peers who had the same goals and desires as I did, and the work completed has always been of much higher quality. I will be completely honest when I say, that I would never want to work with the group I worked with in Group Dynamics, again, in any future classes. It is my understanding, that if someone feels that they should be the team leader, or what they think is a team leader, they should make sure that their work is very well done as to set the precedent for the other members to follow. This was not the case, and in my opinion, added to the low grades of our group. In the past I have worked with many people, some of whom were great leaders and some of whom were just great contributors to the overall success of a project. I have also worked with people who just plain didn t care what we got for a grade as long as they passed. Maybe I have been spoiled, but I think I know what kind of person it takes to be a great leader, and this group over the course of the semester did not consist of one. I do think that we could have been a strong group, even without a leader, per say, but it felt like a couple individuals weren t as interested in receiving a great grade, as much as just, getting by.
Page5 I am sure that there are many similarities between our group this semester and groups on job sites. I believe that it is very hard sometimes to get a group of individuals to come together and just work perfectly with one another. I believe that this has a lot to do with why there is such a high turnover rate at many companies. Major corporations and companies don t have the time to see if a group can work things out over a long period of time. If there isn t a good fit, it is noticed and changes are made. This isn t usually the way things are done in the classroom, because it is a learning opportunity, and without one, no one would know any better or learn techniques to help solve problems quickly and more efficiently. I saw this happen over the summer at my Co-Op. I was working for a general contractor and there were many instances where some of the sub-contractors would be lacking significantly in their fields. They were given many opportunities to step-up their work; some of them did, while others just couldn t and they were relieved of their duties. With the economy the way it is, if you re not completing work the way that it is desired, you will be replaced. There are so many people that would love the opportunity to step in and do the job, that there is not room for error. If we were able to fire people in our group this semester, I m sure that we would have. In fact, I m almost positive that every person would have wanted to fire someone, myself included. But this is a class, and the main goal is to learn from our mistakes so that we are not faced with the same problems in the work place. I don t think that our group had any distinctive characteristics that made it different from that of other groups here at Wentworth. We had some problems throughout the semester, but we resolved most of them just as any group would do. I don t think that anyone could say that they have never had a problem with a group project, and I m happy to say that I don t think that we had nearly as many as we could have. I ve seen fights
Page6 occur between people over how they thought things should be done; therefore, I would say that our group could have been a lot weaker and less successful. Overall, I would say that it was a good learning experience. I do believe that we were tested by our professor to see what we could come up with, being assigned to random groups. I feel that this is how the real world will work, and it is good to see the differences that we may be faced with in the future. I only hope that whatever I am doing, and whomever I am working with, can come to some kind of agreement early enough that our jobs are not jeopardized and the overall project is a success.