The Focus Statement
Discuss about the Importance Of Group Session And Its Outcome.
This essay highlights the importance of group session and its outcome on the productivity of the team. Darmann et al. (2012) depicts that team work enhances creativity and innovation among the team members and they together work for accomplishing the assigned task to them. Stenlund, Jonsson and Jonsson (2017) also stated that teamwork also helps in building strong relationships. However, on the other hand, groups in society are advantageous for enhancing the individual’s capability, personality development and culture transmission.
This essay will illustrate the observation of a group of eight people including two facilitators. The activity that the selected team is performing is to play a game “The Whale Watch”, where they have to balance on the plank in pair without touching the ground. Moreover, the observation also linked with two theories that are “stages of group development” and “perspectives of group work and group facilitation styles”. Thus, this essay will highlight where or not the activity of the selected group follows the outcomes concluded by the two concerned theories. The focus statement will be presented followed by the main discussion that links the two selected theories. Lastly, the conclusion section will be incorporated which details the outcome of the overall discussion.
Raes et al (2015) portrays that behavior of a person in individual and in group varies. Forsyth (2018) also stated that in the initial stage, individual face problem working in collaboration as they started to blame the other person if the assigned task is not completed properly. In the selected group also, during the initial phase, the team members also blamed each others for not performing well and they are performing the task without any plans but in the end when all the members proceeded with a plan, they succeeded. This essay highlights two main theories- “stages of group development” and “perspectives of group work and group facilitation styles”. The theories of the ‘stages of group development’ illustrates that a team is going through several stages during a project and these stages are important for enhancing the performance of the team members (Chou & Garcia, 2011). Betts and Healy (2015) on the other hand stated that the theory ‘perspectives of group work and group facilitation styles’ focuses more on empowering a group to work. These facilitators can be a teacher, a guide, a councilor, career planners and a community.
Thus, this essay will emphasize on the similarity of the two selected theories with that of the findings of the group selected for the observation. Thus, the scope of the essay is to find the relevance of the two selected theories with the selected video excerpt.
In the theory “stages of group development” Betts and Healy (2015) highlighted five stages- forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning.
Manges et al. (2017) also highlight that the team that goes through all these five stages are the most performing one. The first stage is forming in which the teams are getting acquainted. Benton (2017) stated that during this stage the knowledgeable person intends to control everyone. Team member interaction is the most common aspect in this stage. In the video also in the first stage, all the team members started talking about how they going to perform the task. Some of them argued that their team will be the best; while some of them have the understanding that the game is not a competitive activity and they have to perform it together.
Main Body
The second stage is the ‘storming’ stage, the person, who taken in-charge encourages every participants and continues the process till the allocated task is accomplished. Lunenburg and Lunenburg (2015) also highlighted that the facilitator also support the leader and tries to focus on team energies for achieving the goals. According to the video clip, the group moves into the phase of conflict and they started to blame each other. The facilitator also stepped in and make the members realize that their actions is not correct and they have to work together to get the result.
The third phase focuses more on the togetherness of the team they develop a friendly nature and intends to complete the task by showing greater willingness. The improvement of the assigned job can be seen during this stage. Cardno and Tetzlaff (2017) portrays that the leader also seeks for the similar aspects from the team members. According to the video clip, some of the members started leading the whole group and re-evaluates the game and they found that they just have to distribute the weight equally on both the sides. After the evaluation they all discussed a plan to perform the task.
The fourth phase is the performing and in this phase, team members started realizing that the group’s life is coming to an end. Raes et al. (2015) portrays that the members also share their experience and showing evidence of their commitment during the group performance. In this phase, they recognize the effort of their team member to complete the task allocated job. In this phase, the group of 6 members and 2 facilitators formulates group of two and on stepping on the wooden plank they mutually decided in which direction each individual from a pair will go. The members make their step slowly and they also help each other to put their steps carefully, so that the plan cannot touch the ground. They completed the game together and the sense that the group activity comes to an end rose.
The last phase is the adjourning or also known as rejoicing and in this phase, team members rejoice about the recognition given to them. Borek and Abraham (2018) also stated that the team members address the sense of loss and they conduct ‘saying goodbye’ activities and celebrate the achievement they obtained together. In this phase, the video shows that all the members are sitting together and they praise their victory. The group reflects their experience on “The Whale Watch” game and admits that they are going to miss each other and what they have leant from the other members.
Another theory considered in this essay is ‘perspectives of group work and group facilitation styles’. Chen and Chen (2015) highlighted that there are some of the principles of group facilitations that are listening, respect, equality, agreed goals, trust, encouragement and giving positive feedback. If considered the given video, it can be said that the facilitator actively learn all the statements presented by the group members and communicate with them respectfully. There are two facilitators and their approaches towards all the team members are humble. They also help all the members to share the experience from the activity. It can also be said that the facilitator also gave the members a positive review.
Conclusion
Hermann (2015) stated that the facilitators in the video have taken a re-session decision, where they have introduced their group activity that the members have to perform. Robson and Beary (2017) portrays that the pre-session involves some aspect that are establishing session’s objective, outlining what needs to be achieved in the session and presenting decisions on how to achieve and evaluate the success. However, when compared to the video, it has been seen that the facilitators did not discussed about the SMAT goals that have to be implemented but they have just introduced the game and asked them to perform. However, the facilitator guides them in between the game whenever the team members create arguments and negative environment. According to Hunter and Bailey (2017), the group facilitators also have to search for the background information of the group members so that they can handle them accordingly in between the activity. However, in the given video the facilitators might know each other as they call the name of the group members when one of the facilitator make member understand that his approach to perform the activity is not appropriate.
Conclusion
Thus, it can been found from the assessment that out of the two theories that are “stages of group development” and “perspectives of group work and group facilitation styles”, only the former theory aligns with the activity shown in the video clip. Additionally, there in the later theory, not all the activities listed in the principle of the facilitator are followed by the guide in the video. Thus, in the second case, the theory is not completely related with the actual action of the guide in the considered group activity. It is also found that, all the stages of the group development are followed that shows that initially the group members arguing with each other and they considered the activity as individual activity. However, from the second stage, the members started performing collaboratively and re-evaluate the plans and then performed the activity based on their discussions. At last they performed well and achieved the goal that is successfully performed the “The Whale Watch” game successfully. The team members also shared their experience and evaluate their behavior starting from the initial phase to the end. They together rejoice the achievement and then admits that they will miss them after the group activity will over.
Reference List
Benton, S. (2017). Development of Team Performance. Psychometric Testing: Critical Perspectives, 129.
Betts, S., & Healy, W. (2015). Having a ball catching on to teamwork: an experiential learning approach to teaching the phases of group development. Academy of Educational Leadership Journal, 19(2), 1.
Borek, A. J., & Abraham, C. (2018). How do Small Groups Promote Behaviour Change? An Integrative Conceptual Review of Explanatory Mechanisms. Applied Psychology: Health and Well?Being, 10(1), 30-61.
Cardno, C., & Tetzlaff, K. (2017). Tracing the stages of senior leadership team development in New Zealand primary schools: insights and issues. MOJEM: Malaysian Online Journal of Educational Management, 5(3), 64-78.
Chen, Y. H., & Chen, P. J. (2015). MOOC study group: Facilitation strategies, influential factors, and student perceived gains. Computers & Education, 86, 55-70.
Chou, S. Y., & Garcia, D. C. (2011). Group organizational citizenship behavior in the stages of group development. International Journal of Business and Management, 6(10), 3.
Darmann, A., Elkind, E., Kurz, S., Lang, J., Schauer, J., & Woeginger, G. (2012, December). Group activity selection problem. In International Workshop on Internet and Network Economics (pp. 156-169). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Forsyth, D. R. (2018). Group dynamics. Cengage Learning.
Hermann, K. (2015). Field theory and working with group dynamics in debriefing. Simulation & Gaming, 46(2), 209-220.
Hunter, D., & Bailey, A. (2017). The facilitation of groups. Routledge.
Lunenburg, F. C., & Lunenburg, M. R. (2015). Developing high performance teams: Long-standing principles that work. International Journal of Organizational Behavior in Education, 3(1), 1-17.
Manges, K., Scott?Cawiezell, J., & Ward, M. M. (2017, January). Maximizing Team Performance: The Critical Role of the Nurse Leader. In Nursing forum (Vol. 52, No. 1, pp. 21-29).
Raes, E., Kyndt, E., Decuyper, S., Van den Bossche, P., & Dochy, F. (2015). Group development and team learning: How development stages affect team-level learning behaviour. Human resource development quarterly, 26(1), 5-30.
Robson, M., & Beary, C. (2017). Facilitating. Routledge.
Stenlund, T., Jönsson, F. U., & Jonsson, B. (2017). Group discussions and test-enhanced learning: individual learning outcomes and personality characteristics. Educational psychology, 37(2), 145-156.
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