Know the task at hand. Effective leaders should understand the problem facing the group and take care to communicate that task to group members.
Know the people. As you will learn, individual group members will have different skills, motivations, frames of reference, and knowledge bases. Understanding how to draw on group members' strengths and manage interpersonal dynamics is a key role of the group leader.
Collect information. The group leader should attempt to become knowledgeable on all issues facing the group. If you are knowledgeable, you will know when discussions are off track.
Distribute leadership. In certain situations leadership should be distributed among all group members. The designated leader may need to delegate responsibility, especially when smaller tasks need to be assigned to individual group members. Distributed leadership, whereby all members share in leader- ship responsibilities, can result in highly productive group outcomes
Organize the discussion. Although some types of group discussions may not need much organization—a short class discussion assigned by your teacher, for instance—most discussions need more structure. The group leader should plan an agenda for the discussion. The agenda should be adapted to the task at hand; however, a general template for the agenda is provided in Figure 9.1. As you can see, the typical agenda requires group members to agree on min- utes from the past meeting to clear up any confusion or disagreement, make announcements, hear reports, consider new business, and reconsider old busi- ness as necessary.
Two major types of group roles are formal and informal.
A formal role (sometimes called a positional role) is an assigned role based on an individual's position or title within a group. For example, Indira may be her service club's treasurer. As treasurer she is expected to perform certain duties, such as paying the club's bills, balancing the books, and making regular reports to the club about its financial status. These duties may even be specified in a job description for the position of treasurer. We also expect the person in a particular position to behave in certain ways. For example, what do you think Indira's fellow group members expect of her in addition to her assigned duties? Very likely they expect her to be well organized and to present her report clearly and concisely, without wandering into topics irrelevant to the treasury.
An informal role (sometimes called a behavioral role) is a role that is devel- oped spontaneously within a group. The role of each group member is worked out by the interaction between the member and the rest of the group and con- tinues to evolve as the group evolves. Informal roles strongly reflect members' personality characteristics, habits, and typical ways of interacting within a group. For example, Rich goofs around during fraternity meetings. He refuses to take anything seriously, cracks jokes that interrupt others, and calls members who work hard for the fraternity "overachievers." Rich's constant failure to take the group's job seriously has earned him the informal role of playboy in his group. In contrast, Jeff, one of the "overachievers," constantly reminds members about upcoming deadlines. His fraternity brothers have started calling him the group's timekeeper.
Group culture is the socially negotiated system of rules that guide group behavior.
Group culture differs from national and ethnic cultures because a group culture is a relatively unstable and short-term phenomenon. That is, group cultures are constantly in flux and they disappear when the group dissolves. National and ethnic cultures change slowly and are relatively persistent. If you compare two groups from your own life, you can easily understand the concept of group
culture.
Your group of friends has implicit rules for behavior inside jokes, slang, norms for touching, and shared objectives. Your group likely has a culture different from that of an assigned group of students you work within one of your classes. Classroom groups are typically more formal, less cohesive, and more task-oriented.
Within-group diversity is the presence of observable and/or implicit differences between group members.
We observe within-group diversity when group
members differ based on visible characteristics. For example, to visually distinguish between males and females or between members of certain ethnic groups is easy. Group diversity can be implicit when members of a group have differing values, attitudes, and perspectives—personal characteristics that cannot be seen.
Differences between group members can have an impact on how they interact with one another and how effectively the group functions.
Making decisions, Many groups exist to make decisions that are unrelated to specific problems. For example, student groups like fraternities and sororities make daily decisions such as planning social engagements, launching community outreach projects, and maintaining facilities. These decisions do not necessarily solve problems; rather, they sustain the day-to-day functions of the groups.
Effect Change, Some groups want to influence society but do not have the power to make decisions. For example, several years ago the staff at one of our universities went on strike in an attempt to get better pay and benefits from the state. That group of employees had little power to make decisions— they could not force the state to provide a better offer. However, their actions as a group were meant to raise awareness and plead a case. They wanted to promote change even though they could not force change.
Negotiating conflict, Groups are often created to resolve conflict. In Los Angeles small groups were used to bring Latino-American and Armenian American high school students together to resolve racial tensions. In fact, the National Communication Association in partnership with the Southern Poverty Law Center has used this strategy across the nation to promote intercultural understanding and to help resolve racial conflict.
Fostering or foster creativity, Groups help us achieve a level of creativity not possible when working alone. The idea that "two heads are better than one" is magnified in groups. People working together to identify creative ideas will likely be more successful than one person acting alone.
Maintaining ties between stakeholders, A final function for small groups is to bring together stakeholders. Stakeholders are groups of people who have an interest in the actions of an organization. For example, most schools have parent-teacher organizations. The principal of a school might bring together selected teachers and parents to discuss issues facing the school so that open lines of communication between various stakeholders (parents, teachers, and administrators) can be maintained. Various organizations, including businesses, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations, use groups to establish and maintain communication between multiple groups of stakeholders.
group members should be willing to share their unique perspectives, Be trustworthy and supportive
Be honest and truthful, they should not intentionally deceive one another or manufacture information or evidence to persuade other members to adopt their point of view.
Be thorough and unbiased when evaluating information, Group members must consider all relevant information in an open-minded, unbiased way by using the best critical thinking skills they can; otherwise, tragedies can result.
Behave with integrity, they must be willing to place the good of the group ahead of their own goals.
Manage group conflict ethically, some conflict can actually help groups make better decisions because ideas are debated and tested more vigorously, too much conflict may result in decreased group cohesiveness and could actually cause the group to cease functioning. To manage conflict, group members must be ethical in the way they approach disagreement and be willing to listen to and compromise with others. Ethical disagreement happens when you express your disagreement openly, disagree with ideas rather than people, base your disagreement on evidence and reasoning, and react to disagreement positively rather than defensively
Relate your statements to preceding remarks, Public speakers do not always have the opportunity to respond to remarks by others, but small-group members do. Your statement should not appear irrelevant. Clarify the relevance of your remark to the topic under discussion by linking your remark to the preceding remark.
•Briefly note the
previous speaker's point that you want to address—for example, "I want to piggyback on Bill's comment by noting that we can meet our goal by . . ."
• State your point clearly and concisely.
• Summarize how your point adds to the comments made by others—for
example, "So, I agree with Bill. We need to fund-raise, but we can't get so
caught up in raising money that we forget about our goal of volunteering."
Use conventional word arrangements, When you speak, you should use clear,
common language so people can understand you.
• After connecting your idea to the discussion or previous speaker, state
your point and then provide one piece of supporting information or
additional explanation.
• When done, ask if anyone needs you to clarify your point.
Speak concisely, Don't be long-winded.
• Write down your idea before speaking. Those who are wordy during group discussions often spend much of their time trying to figure out what they want to say.
• Try
to talk for no more than one minute at a time.
State one point at a time, Sometimes this rule is violated appropriately, such as when a group member is presenting a report to the group.
• As a group, appoint a process observer to be in charge of keeping the group discussion moving along and preventing any member from bring- ing up more than one idea at a time.
• If you have several ideas that vary in importance, provide some of the less important points to group members in written
form for later reflection. Save discussion time for the most important ideas.