Communication Strategies

This essay is a reflective essay on what group dynamics and group communication are all about, and my personal experiences and insights I have gained from the process. Working in a group in never an easy task as every person has a very different mindset and every participant would like his or her ideas inserted into the presentation. We were lucky enough as we did not choose our partners and it was a random selection by the faculty. This made our group diverse both culturally and intellectually, and every participant had a unique faculty to contribute for the group. We had to have an active exchange of ideas within our group that greatly increased our interest among participants, which also helped improve our critical thinking. Shared learning has its great advantages as students participate in discussions, take responsibility for their own learning and as a result become critical thinkers.

Part I
When we started working in a group, we all realized that one of the toughest challenges in working in a group was sharing responsibility and accepting authority. Even though we did not want to have a formal leader in the group, due to the concern and commitment put in by one Chinese classmate, he became the leader by default. We accepted him as a leader as he had the abilities and qualities to lead the team and thus became the designated leader as per Wheelans Integrated Model of Group Development.

With a leader ready, it was then his responsibility to choose the activities to be performed by each member. Knowing my expertise in computers, he assigned me responsibility to research on the internet and get relevant data for the project. I also had to search through the college library to find as much information as possible and condense the same into a presentable manner.

We chose to communicate by text messaging, student email service and instant messenger on our laptops, as these were the easiest way to send communication to everyone in the group and get responses too. As we learnt later from the Wheelan model, there were way too many discussions and debates in the very beginning of the preparation. Our brainstorming sessions went for hours and days with little or no progress and in a way, some of us were getting dejected with the lack of harmony. However, I then realized the flaw we were doing. We wanted everyone to approve every decision and not a single decision could be taken, as a result.

When you read books as the one by John Gastil about decision making in small groups, you would realize that unanimous decision making in small groups was only possible when everyone had exactly the same thought process. When this was not the case, there were bound to be constructive arguments for the betterment of the group.

I identified in the process of preparation that one of our teammates was actually doing close to nothing and when the same was discussed in one of our meetings there was sudden resistance to change.

He believed he was working harder than the lot and had many excuses to give to escape from the responsibility assigned to him. It surely was no easy task making him contribute to the project. We had to implement the theories of JP Kotter by negotiating with them and in some ways coercing our friends to contribute to the better performance of the team. He finally agreed to contribute in the final review of the presentation and the printing of the documents.

Even after this incident, quite some time was spent in bringing minds to meet in the four of us as we belonged to very diverse cultures and backgrounds. The communication channels created in the first few days and the affiliative style of leadership by the leader, who really cared about every teammates shortcomings and never exerted himself onto the team. An affiliative leader according to Daniel is the most successful style of leadership after Authoritative leadership. However, considering the circumstances where there was no natural leader and that the group did not have a binding onto each other as if employees did, there could have been no better style than what was adopted by our leader. For Collaborative learning to be successful, there needs to be two important prerequisites, i.e. group goals  Individual Accountability.  It is the responsibility of every group member that every member has learned something and also that every member has contributed his share to the assignment. Collective learning or collaborative learning also is a great simulation technique as the diverse thought processes of the team members who posed unique questions that acted as a rehearsal for the presentation.

When I look back at the way our team has developed, it was surprising as we exactly went the Wheelman way. From the days of being a group of incoherent members, we learnt to constructively conflict with one another that brought in innumerable new ideas into our processes and systems. We then learnt to build trust, which lead to higher commitments from everyone in the team as a result of which the productivity increased significantly of every member. We parted as teammates and remained as friends at the end of the project.

Part II
The D day was here and I was to start the presentation. We divided the work into four parts as we had four teammates. I was the least confident about my part of the presentation, but my team wanted me to start and did a great job motivating me to take up the challenge. Luckily, I had been practicing by speaking loudly my presentation into the mirror as we decided that it was the best method to overcome fear. I also understood the Aura effect. By using this method of maintaining eye contact with a large audience, it was easy to maintain healthy communication with the audience and also reduce fear.

I started with a strong opening about Networking, the importance of networking and the possible goals of networking. Once the initial jitters were done with, I was surprised to see a very appreciative response from the audience and it was smooth sailing form there onwards. There was a problem handing over the stage to the next teammate due to her unpreparedness. A few minutes of valuable time were lost in the process that made each one of us quite tense. However, our leader rose to the occasion again, exchanged roles with the person facing difficulty, gave her time to prepare and he engaged the audience in an extempore about the barriers to networking, and interlinked how a strong network can help build your list of friends, associates and mentors. He displayed his effectiveness as a leader through his actions in such a situational contingency.

I personally felt that his speech was quite exceptional as he spoke about the barriers to networking keeping in mind the complexities of the human brain. It is a proven fact that us human beings, prefer being in a state where we neither ask for help nor extend the same. However, one of the greatest ways to develop a strong network of associates is to stand with them at their hour of need. Another common pitfall committed is by egoistic people who wish to have all the acclaim for themselves in a group or feel shy or ashamed to ask for help. As a result, they do not divulge information to other team members and keep them oblivious to developments in the team. He spoke at length on handling such people with practical solutions.

The second part of the presentation on mentoring was a very valuable presentation to the audience, as many were influenced with the discussion on the importance of mentoring. Mentoring can be vital for a business to survive in todays competitive environment. There are three kinds of mentors or peers that we come across in our regular lives i.e., Informational Peers, Collegial Peers  Special Peers. The trust and self-disclosure is lowest with informational peers and highest with special peers who are important people in our lives.

The presentation then talked about how ego can be a barrier to development of trust required to be a mentor. Also, the relationship of a mentor and the person should not be mechanical or structured as that might affect the trust between the participants.

We then had a question answer session that lasted for about twenty minutes, wherein many questions were asked by the audience on how to develop human networks and build relationships with their mentors.

Part III
I must say we were quite fortunate to give the presentation in front of one of the finest audience. Though there was initial noise from them, they turned very silent when we spoke, applauded our efforts, encouraged us when we were down and made us give an outstanding presentation.

We passed written feedback sheets to the audience to understand how well or badly we fared in the eyes of the audience, and we were amazed to know that we got the best feedback among all groups. Some members from the audience came to me personally, congratulated me for my introductory speech, and told me about the impact the concept of networking and mentoring had on them.

I was very humbled when my professor too walked to me to congratulate the teams performance and especially when everyone congratulated my part of the presentation. My presentation, which I thought was average, turned into the best presentation I ever gave, which would not have been possible  without the help of my teammates and the support of the audience.