Tavia CTP Blog 3

            I remember a terrible group experience I had a few years ago. We were supposed to do a presentation. The elements of the presentation included the group having a power point (visual representation), verbal explanation of our parts and an activity where we have to include audience participation. When the project was assigned the teacher gave us about 2 weeks to complete it, before the end of class he put us in our groups. We had informal communication where introduced ourselves and gave out contact information. At this time we didn’t have a clue about what we were going to do for our presentation and spring break was the following week (which counted as week one).

            By the end of spring break no one contacted anyone we were all waiting for someone to say something I didn’t realize we hadn’t started our project until it dawned on me that the project was due in another week. Like always I was the first person to step up and contact (through school e-mail) everyone else to shoot some ideas and to set up a group meeting. That gesture made me the involuntary (there was no discussion or voting) team leader for our group. Without even knowing logistics was what I was doing I set up a

time of day (I asked for times that would be best for everyone and they gave me options that I cross examined and came up with a time everyone could meet) a place to meet which was the library since it’s a quiet place and I brought along a sheet of paper with my ideas jotted down and told everyone to do them same creating a structural format. There were a total of 4 people in our group but every time we met there was also the same person missing so I ended up having to go to two meetings working with the two people who did show during our scheduled time and the one who could never make it (who I often e-mailed) causing a team break. During the meetings we did give each other a lot of feedback and iron out the details, I gave everyone a detailed agenda and deadlines for them to get it done.     

There was definitely a communication breakdown with the whole group that was evident in our presentation. For one the girl who never made it to our meetings made a lot of excuses as to why she couldn’t get her share of the work done. When the teacher gave us time in class to work in our groups I opened up the group discussion and tried including her into the conversation. She sat there and resigned herself I paused, waited patiently and then I asked her some direct questions but when she continued to sit there saying nothing I continued on and spoke to the rest of the group. I remember that her nonverbal behavior was the she was uncomfortable and unwilling. The group had our meeting without her while she sat there the entire time silent and stern not bringing any ideas or volunteering for anything. I felt as a group leader that even if she didn’t do her part of the work or only partially did it she still should have contributed and that’s why I opened up an opportunity for her to receive help like if we had to switch duties or come up with something new. She didn’t take the initiative. There seemed to be some sort of misunderstanding none of us understood why she acted that way. Eventually she got up to speak to the teacher alone about the project and we were wondering if she was mad at us for ignoring her. After reading the assigned writing I didn’t consider her predisposed preferences about us maybe we didn’t handle it in a way that she may have wanted us to. She seemed to be an introvert while the rest of the group was extroverted. Maybe she felt misunderstood.

    The biggest thing that I think was an issue for the whole group was that since we lost an entire week we had to rush to create our presentation and we didn’t have a whole lot of time to practice and because of that we weren’t able to polish off our presentation. On the day of the presentation I didn’t receive a part of a group member (not the one I’ve been talking about) work to add to the power point until the day of and an hour or two before. There ended up being a problem with the file I was sent it was corrupted or something and it put a strain on me because it was a chunk of the power point. So I tried to contact her by e-mail and no response so I had to track her down and when I found her I told her what happened and she sent her part a different way. In fact I got everyone’s finished parts at the last minute (I was using a laptop to finish our presentation in class on the day that it was due). For a while during the process I wasn’t getting much work back from anyone and I sent countless e-mails updating people with my progress and asking everyone about there’s. I tried creating a set of norms in the beginning which was for everyone to participate, update, ask questions and submit their work on time since I was the only one putting the power point together.

Since we were late starting our presentation, when we gave it, everything was good except the audience participation portion. That fell apart and ended up not being as cooperative and smooth as we discussed. The group was broken apart and one other group member and I were the only ones facilitating it while the other two sat on the sidelines. Everyone in the group was supposed to participate. It became awkward, time consuming (we had a time limit) and the point was lost by the end of it. The teacher and an audience member expressed their dissatisfaction, the teacher told us to watch the time and the audience member said that she was mentally drained. I was embarrassed but understood where they were coming from. If we had started this sooner we could have gotten to the point where we practiced the presentation and had adequate training.       

Here is a link to an awesome resource:  https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/improving-group-dynamics.htm

Photo Credits:
https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-illustration-cartoon-girl-running-paper-her-hand-illustration-female-character-isolated-white-image43151869

http://vectortoons.com/product/woman-in-work-wear-struggles-to-balance-a-stack-of-white-paper-documents-with-a-few-papers-falling-floating-to-ground/

http://www.pricelessprofessional.com/relationship-communication-breakdown.html

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