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Group Dynamics Essay, Research Paper

The group I have decided to closely examine, is the group I encounter every day at work Altogether there is only four of us; David is our boss (he is a lawyer), Paul who is also a lawyer but works under David, Mary is the paralegal and Erica is the secretary. We have been together a little shy of a year. Over the course of this past year there have been many changes. I was hoping to look closely at the structure of this group and the changing aspects of it, mainly the cohesion.

To start I would like to explain how the group first worked, the individuals in this group and their roles. Most of the roles have prevailed, but because of the development of our group, and the increased cohesion, some of our roles have changed.

David should defiantly play the role of task orientation, and for the most part he does. He has this fear of being too bossy and tries not to demand too much. He leaves the details up to Mary, and however we wants to accomplish something he tries not to interfere. David is one of the stronger information givers of the group, but that is why we are a team, no one in the group knows how to do everything necessary to finish a project. David knows the law and the rules of the court. He isn’t too big on details because both Mary and Paul will pick up where he leaves off. Anything that is related to the client’s information, Erica has the appropriate information for doing that. David rarely plays any socioemotional roles. He tries to play the gatekeeper by attempting to keep equal participation, but the truth of the matter is that he is not usually around. Most of his mornings are spent in court and his afternoons consist of work in the field (he is a real estate lawyer so he often goes out to look at property or over see homes he or one of his client’s are having built) or desk work which he gets so engulfed in, he doesn’t know what is going on in the office. Every now and then though, he plays the playboy role and just spends the day “out in the field” or home.

Paul is the information seeker and information giver. He has no time for any socioemotional roles, although he loves to be recognized for his work. He has no interest in the other people or their roles, until he wants something. Unfortunately, he played the dominator for quite some time. He was happy to pick up where David left off, in as far as authority, but his lack of interest kept him at a far enough distance so as not to create any enemies.

Mary is the recorder. She is the last person to see the legal documents before they leave the office and must make sure everything is correct and all the necessary people have a copy. I think that just being a woman and a mother lead her to play a few socioemotional roles. She is big on encouraging the group through tough projects and setting standards.

Erica, I feel, has played the most roles. Not all at one time, but through the course of the year she has fit into a couple roles. The biggest factor being that she was the last one to enter the group. Erica played a lot of socioemotional roles because that is where the lack was. Initially she played the follower role, just accepting the environment and observing the details, kind of “going with the flow”. She slowly came to play the harmonizer and the compromiser because she could. The other three were set in their ways and didn’t want to hear otherwise, among themselves or with her.

Most of the socioemotional roles became descriptive norms. It was Erica’s responsibility to mediate when a problem arose between people in the group. As a result of David not usually being in the office, somewhere along the line, lunch became one and a half hours. No one would ever say anything to an individual who came back late from lunch because they knew they too wanted a longer lunch. This would never go if David was in in the morning. That is where this becomes an injunctive norm. If someone did come back late after David had been in work that morning, there would be obvious hostility between the three members directed toward the late person. Anything that was acceptable when David was out, was not when he was in the office. For example, when David was out, no one really spoke, everyone would tend to their own work. However, when David came in you would find Paul talking to Mary (usually not even about the task on hand) just to look as if he were interested.

It has been very clear how we have worked through the five steps of group development, which is so necessary for our survival as a group and keep production on a high enough level.

The orientation (forming) stage seemed to last the longest because we were almost always missing one member of the group. That is why Erica played the follower at first. She was put into a situation that has already existed without her. Even though she was an important part of the group, she still needed to see how the group worked and work her way in. Everyone was very polite and worked very nicely together. Even Paul was interested in the others work. During this time David was usually around, he worked diligently but kept an open ear of what was going on in the office. He made sure everyone knew what their job was and that they were happily on task. Mary stayed by Erica’s side to make sure she understood her responsibilities. She worked very closely with Erica until she knew the flow of the office. Showing her where all work ended up, how we filed all the clients, how the information was stored on the computers, and so on. Paul took time to explain to Erica and Mary what cases he was working on and some of the interesting facts he had unvailed. He would bring Erica with him to the courthouse so she could witness the process of the papers they would file in the future. Everyone seemed to want to work together.

It wasn’t until the conflict (storming) stage

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