Politeness Taken Too Far
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Here at Alverno, we have a lot of group projects in every class. In one class, we had a huge group for a group project. It was seven of us in one group. Seven people had seven different personalities.
One of the group members was always about twenty minutes late for class and that was almost all of the time that the instructor gave for us to speak in groups before she started her lecture. When this particular group member arrived one day, we filled her in on the minutes of the group. Every idea we had come up with, she shot it down. She didn't have any input of her own. Then as we continued our group discussion, she finished homework for another class.
At the beginning of the next class, before she showed up, the group talked about how rude she was and how she didn't contribute. When she arrived, no one made a mention of her behavior.
This was an example of indirectness. The entire group decided not to say anything to her and that caused friction and frustrated everyone. No one believed she was contributing enough but no one said anything about it to directly to her. It was a breakdown of communication because no one knew how to go about telling her these things because they did not want to hurt her feelings and be involved in any kind of conflict. Needless to say, she continued to act that way, the issues were never resolved and bad feelings grew for her because of it. Thinking back, she may not have even known that she was causing a problem because no one said anything.
Here is a link that has ways to deal with communication breakdowns at work. Since school is a sort of "work environment", I thought it'd be helpful.
I'd imagine that must have been frustrating and stressful for you and your group. Part of being in a group is communicating effectively, being on time, being open minded to others ideas, do your role in the group. I had the same experience with a group member last semester and remember how frustrating it was. I also thought your picture went really well with your piece!
ReplyDeleteThe ideas in this piece were incredibly well organized: I'm so impressed by the way you connected concepts from the reading with your group experience so well. Your experience--as frustrating as it was--is a great example of differing personalities, indirectness, and some tough communication break-down. I will mention, though, your sentences seemed a bit choppy at the beginning, but overall, your ideas are solidly congruent with one another.
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