Group Dynamics Essay

Hundreds of tilt swimming unitedly is called a school. A pack of foraging baboons is a troupe. A half dozen crows on a teleph unmatchable conducting wire is a murder. A gam is a assemblage of whales. But what is a order of battle of human beings called? A convocation. (Forsyth, 2006 P.2) A convocation can irritate up of dickens or to a greater extent(prenominal) people interacting. Bruce Tuckman and Meredith Belbin both devised theories relating to the interactions and dynamics of root words, whilst Tuckman heavy on the radical as a whole, Belbin focused on the intentions individuals cont displace inwardly a group. For centuries, sages and scholars bring in been fascinated by groups by the focal point they form, reposition over succession, dissipate unexpectedly, achieve great goals, and sometimes tear great wrongs (Forsyth, 2006 P.2) While roots of group dynamics go binding to the late 1800s, group dynamics gained prominence as a electron orbit of study in th e too soon 1940s. During World War II, Americans needed a better understanding of how democratic organizations could be made to function much effectively. (Levine, R. Rodreges, A. Zelezny, L. 2008 p.1).Tuckman believed that a group moved through several stages which he referred to as forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. Forming, he matte, was the initial founding of the group when there was a high dependence on a attracter for guidance and direction, whereas storming was the plosive of adjusting and adapting to group roles and dynamics where group outgrowths vie for position as they guarantee to establish themselves in relation to an opposite(prenominal) team members, the norming stage he believed was when everyone had found their place inwardly the group, which was when performing would start to happen and ultimately adjourning, when the group finally disseminated. Whereas, Belbin focused on from each one individual within a group/team and the role the y played A team is not a bunch of people with job titles, but a congregation of individuals, each of whom has a role which is understood by other members. Members of a team seek out certain roles and they perform intimately effectively in the ones that atomic number 18 most natural to them(Belbin, 2014, p1). Belbin believed that there were nine-spot role types spilt into 3 categories- cerebral, action orientated and people orientated. In the graduation of all category he placed plant, specialist and monitor evaluator.In the randomness category he placed implementer, shaperand completer finisher and in the uttermost category he grouped team- readyer, co-ordinator and resource investigator believing that each person in the group would fit into or identify with one or more roles. He devised The Belbin Test in which is a series of statements grouped into categories and a points system which will determine which of the nine role types people doing the test would fit into. When co mpleting The Belbin Test myself, using the two groups I am apart of (the larger counselling group and the depleted research group that we were split into for this units task) I emerged as a ME (Monitor jurist). allot to Belbin the characteristics for this role are sober, unemotional and prudent and I would definitely agree with prudent and sober however, I would strongly disagree with unemotional although, I do touch that in certain situations I can discover emotion, behaviour and so I can stand back from desolate emotion. They are slow deciders who weigh up the pros and cons of options which unwrap me very well. He talks about the strengths of a Monitor Evaluators strengths as being- judgment, discretion and hard-headedness, the latter, in regards to me, I would disagree with.Belbin also thought that their permissible weaknesses were, lack of inspiration or the ability to propel others, which I palpate from doing the research task I permit learnt about myself. Whereas, in Tuckmans team up stool Survey our research group scored as follows 23 froming,20 storming, 16 norming and 19 performing, which according to Tuckman our team is still in the forming stage but he felt that if the scores were all pretty lose together then the group has no clear perception of the way the team operates. sagacity by this I would say that from my perspective that Tuckman is correct because I looking that we werent a team at all, we didnt really kick the bucket together. One contributing factor I tincture was that one member of our group was absent for the first session and was also absent for the first part of the following session and another member of the group went for a short break leaving two of us to discuss what we were going away to do. I felt at this point that we were wasting valuable time because decisions couldnt be made without others present.There was no plan or real discussion, the most vocal of our group decided what she was going to do and asked i f there were any objections and I had already analysed where my strengths lay and decided to utter that opinion too and although another member also expressed an interest, I decided that I would prudently push forthe task of designing the PowerPoint slides. On reflection, when the names were being drawn out of a hat in order to decide on members for the research groups, I felt fairly nervous because there were two members of the group that, given a choice, I wouldnt have chosen to work with, one because I have had the least social interaction with so far and the other because I find her slightly overbearing in her demeanour, although I do feel that her manner maybe due to insecurity rather than disrespect. There are many different types of groups, such(prenominal) as planned groups, which are advisedly formed, concocted groups i.e. military units or sports teams, founded groups- for instance, study groups or clubs, emergent groups such as smoking groups, circumstantial groups for example audiences or crowds and self-organising groups for instance, regular customers in a bar or friendship cliques in the workplace.Groups can be brought together for many different reasons which can be split into four categories, inter-group communication groups (families), task groups (teams), weak associations (crowds) and social categories (women or doctors etc.) There are bakers dozen people in our student group, comprising of eleven females and two males and the one thing we all have in common is our goal of reaching the end of the two year course which will enable us to work as qualified counsellors. There are also many other similarities but there are also many differences. In therapy early forms of group work were pioneered by Moreno with psychodrama, by Lewin through his invention of T-groups and by Bion in his psychoanalytic groups. (McLeod 1993, p.445) Carl Rogers coined the term, The Basic Encounter Group to identify groups that operated on the principles of the p erson-centred approach. The Basic Encounter Group is quite unique and, in fact, offers a different paradigm for group therapy. (The Basic Encounter Group 2014)And in 1968 Carl Rogers, along with Richard Farson, took part in a touching documentary/ lease of an encounter group, in which eight strangers were brought together in a direction and permitted to explore their inner thoughts feeling openly which was facilitated by Rogers and Farson. After ceremonial the video and order to get a flavour of how it felt to be a part of an encounter group, our counselling group set up an encounter group session where anyone could offer a thought or feeling they had about an issue that they didnt mind disclosing to the rest of the group and other members could join in or just observe. For me it felt both heart-warmingand frustrating. Heart-warming because it felt as if there was a collective consciousness and accredited warmth towards each other, however there were times when I felt as if a few people were starting to give advice which I found frustrating because I felt as if they were trying to fork up people instead of listening without judgment.Although there are many advantages of functional in groups therapeutically, such as, a feeling of shared experiences and unity, a thought of support and social aspects (meeting new people) there are also disadvantages such as, issues around confidentiality, concerns around emotions or people getting out of strain and feelings for some people of vulnerability amongst others. In the large counselling group, although I would describe myself as an introvert I dont feel that I am too quiet and I wouldnt describe myself as shy I feel that I contribute to the group and I definitely feel as if I am an organic member of the group. If I were to analyse my role(s) within the group according to Belbin, I would say that I am Monitor Evaluator and a Team Worker because I weigh things up before making a decision and look at all the option s and I am kindle in other peoples point of view as well as trying hard to be as versatile as affirmable but the down side to that is that I find it hard to motivate others and have great difficulty making a quick decision. However, in the research group I feel that I did take more of a dominant role because there was no natural leader/organiser so after realising that I just naturally started to make suggestions and ask opinions.In my opinion I would agree with my results (when doing the Belbin test) of Monitor Evaluator and if I had to guess at the roles the other trine members of our research group according to this test, I would say that LK was an Implementer because she was disciplined, reliable, conservative and efficient but DJ played the role of Team Worker because he was co-operative, mild perceptive and diplomatic, whereas LEs role, in my opinion, was Resource Investigator because she is extrovert, enthusiastic and communicative. The debut I felt came together fairly w ell, although I feel it could have been more of a success if we had had more time for the group to incur and had discussed equally and openly our thoughts and feelings about the task ahead. Personally I felt that we wasted valuable time and avoided issues that may have caused conflict. Our group researched German-American psychologist Kurt Lewin who set up a ResearchCentre for Group dynamics (RCGD) in the late 1930s and 1940s.The RCGD revitalized the empirical approach and, more important, created one that was different from anything in the past and that still defines the best of the firmament today (Levine, R. Rodreges, A. Zelezny, L. 2008). Our presentation mainly focused on his Three re-create Model for change. Lewin recognised a need to provide a physical process whereby the members could be engaged in and committed to changing their behaviour (Lewin, 2004 p. 983) His 3 stage process for change comprised of the principle of unfreezing, changing and refreezing. Using the doc trine of analogy of an ice-cube, the first step is to unfreeze/melt the cube, the second stage is to change the shape of the liquid and the third stage was to refreeze it into a different shape. He believed that if there was good communication, rumours were dispelled, everyone was included and by praising peoples efforts, change could occur but it would take time.I like this manakin of change because I can relate to it and I have lately had experience of such a change because the school that I work in has just (on June 1st) become an academy. In conclusion, I feel that I identified mostly with Belbins theory of roles people play within groups because the results from the Belbin test, for me, fitted very well with how I worked within our research group, however, having frequently worked with groups of boyish people, I know that Tuckmans theory can be useable in determining where a group is at in scathe of effective performance and it would have been valuable in our research group if we had had more time to develop as a group. Lewins three stage model I feel would be effective when on the job(p) in a team/company although I got a adept of how it worked within our whole counselling group when unforeseen circumstances meant that the group had to get used to a new tutor and teaching style.