Abstract
The knowledge acquired from Small Group Communications course will prove to be beneficial to most in their personal, professional, and educational endeavors. The lessons attained from the readings, the tasks accomplished by working with another class member, and the opportunity of being able to see the final presentations of other groups in the class really helped increase my understanding of what it takes to effectively make a small group work. I firmly believe that the experiences I gained from this class will help me implement better forms of communication in other areas of my life where small groups are present.

Small Group Communications has given me a better understanding of how to improve communication within groups in all areas of my life. The readings provided in the book and the interactions I had working with another team member in a class that is focused primarily on how to work better in groups, really gave me a better idea of how to conduct myself properly when working in a group and a greater insight as to what I can expect. I think I will walk away from this class with a better understanding of what it takes to organize a group and to actually keep it going.

Upon completion of this class and reading the material assigned, I realized that being a member of a group requires a lot more than I had originally thought. In the reading, they talk about how a group typically forms when there are a few people who have common interests or goals but each person in that group is unique and can more than likely bring something to the table that someone else may not have been able to. Now that the class is over I can see some of the things that caused my group to experience some setbacks and just as the book says there are many forms of communication that are overlooked.

There needs to be communication between group members. A group should plan out ahead of time exactly how they are going to complete every assigned task so every member is aware of whatever responsibility they have. Each member of a group is interdependent and they are each relying on one another to do their designated parts to the best of their ability for the good of the group.

Many of the things I read in the book are things that I deal with on a day-to-day basis at work. On Tuesdays I have a weekly Home Team Meeting and as the secretary for the division, I must prepare and provide an agenda to every person attending the meeting. There is a section in our agenda that is blocked off for the Roundtable discussion of the invited employees and this is where they voice their concerns or address any issues they may be encountering that is preventing their shop from accomplishing the mission. My Division Chief usually facilitates these meetings, so you could also call him the “leader”, but due to massive egos and some individuals not wanting to comply with what he is putting forth, there is often conflict. This doesn’t help the group come any closer to solving the issues at hand, instead I think it actually pushes them even further back. They are not a cohesive group and even though they all have to solve the same problem, they are not willing to come together and work as a team. I thought it was normal for people to act so stand offish to one other and that’s just how these meetings were supposed to be held. I look at the way they act now and I cannot wrap my head around the fact that they are usually in their work positions for a long period of time and they are representing themselves in an uncooperative and unprofessional manner to people they are going to have to work with for months or years to come. They are not working together effectively to resolve any problems that they may be experiencing, and it’s likely that as long as they continue to be hard headed and not respectfully listen to one another that their problems are going to stay just as they are, unresolved.

I think for them to be successful in their meetings, they would first need to come into the meeting with an open mind and not walk in expecting to give someone a hard time. My chief listens to the opinions of employees and I feel since he gives them enough respect to listen to them, they should also give him the respect to come forward with their issues in an appropriate and respectful manner. I feel that many of the people who bring these issues forward come into the meeting trying to adversely affect the Division Chief’s role as a leader and trying to make him look incompetent in front of other members of the team. I think it would be great if this was a course that my employer made mandatory for everyone in a supervisory positions, because sometimes you need someone to make you aware how your own actions, attitude, and unwillingness to cooperate can be detrimental to the very existence of your group. Someone may not realize that he or she is the central negative of the group, but even if the supervisors do not like the boss, they should still support and encourage him because regardless of who it is, we are still working towards the same objective.

Relationship building is something that I believe could really help them get more productivity out of their meetings. Everyone wants to have the right answer and they don’t want someone else to be able to solve it before they do. They need to realize that someone else may see something that they overlooked, because people come from all different backgrounds in life and have had different experiences that can make them more knowledgeable when coming up with solutions for certain types of issues. I firmly believe that if they were more willing to accept each other’s differences that they would be able to use this as a tool to overcome almost any obstacle. When people from different backgrounds come together, they can emphasize on the different skills and experiences they each bring to the table and it will enable them to increase the benefits of the group’s diversity.

I think this class gave me a lot of insight about good and bad forms of communication, especially in the working environment I am in now. I am not actively involved in the meetings other than taking minutes, so I get the opportunity to be the one on the outside looking in. I definitely want to continue with communication classes, because I think that knowing how to effectively communicate is a skill that many of the supervisors in my division lack and I think that if it was something that they worked on, the results after each meeting would be much better.
The environment I work in is definitely male-dominated and it seems as though the two women who do attend the meetings try more to fit in with the men, rather than act in a feminine way. I think it is good to be competitive and want to keep up with your male peers, but at the same time I think you should always be yourself because you’re never going to be happy with your current state if you can’t be your unique original self.

When my Division Chief first got hired he was all about Lean and Six Sigma and I thought I was not going to get along with him and that he would make my time at work very difficult. Before he came to our division all of the other supervisors were talking about how he was a micromanager and that the work he required was going to be ridiculous. For the first month, I was hard-headed like everyone else and continued to think just like them, because I knew them first and figured they had to be right. Months later, I now think he is one of the best supervisors I have ever worked for in my entire life. I think because some men can be very competitive, they didn’t like that this new younger man was being put in a position that was superior to them and that he would ultimately be invading “their” territory, so they tried to put a bad taste in people’s mouths before he arrived. I now support my Division Chief and do my best to complete the tasks he assigns to me. The other people in my division think I am doing this to get ahead and the sad part is that some day when I do get promoted they will more than likely say it’s because I am a woman or that I flirted my way to the top, but it will never, ever be because I was qualified for the job. No matter what people think or say, the reason I do it is because I respect him and if there I know if I ever have any problem or issue I can talk to him about it and if it’s legitimate he will do everything in his power to help me. I do know though that there are people out there just like the man I work for and that the people who matter will respect and support me the same way I would do for them.

When dealing with my group interactions, my group member and I realized we were going to be the only two people actively participating in our assigned group to complete the group tasks. With only two members in our group, I think it is pretty safe to say that we could be classified as more of a team than a group. I think that we both did our best to be team players and effectively communicate in our virtual environment, but I do think we could have been a little more effective if emails were replied to more efficiently and if brainstorming was used more effectively. We were able to finish the assignments and come to agreements on how the assignments were prepared, but it seemed at times decisions were made in a hurry just so assignments were turned in.

I believe my team member and I had common values, beliefs, behaviors, and procedures that the book describes as ‘norms’. We are both two young women working toward a common goal of acquiring a degree to achieve our objective of having more opportunities to do the things we love in life. We did communicate openly and I do believe that we partook in relational talk at times about things and situations in our lives unrelated to the group projects, which gave us a better report when communicating and completing our group tasks. There were definitely some things we did better together as a group than others, but we treated each other with respect and listened intently to one another’s ideas and never dismissed them in a negative manner. I think this was vital to our team’s existence since there were only two of us there would be no one else to turn to if we were not able to find a way to get along and work together.

My team member and I knew that we would only be working together for a short amount of time and I think that sometimes this is a piece of knowledge that could seriously hinder the performance of a group. When groups are together for a longer period of time I believe it gives them more of an inclination to ensure they take responsibility for the tasks they are assigned, because they know they will be in the group for a long time and that if they do not complete their part it will affect the way they are perceived by the rest of the group. Whereas, in a group that only needs to come together for a short period of time, a group member may feel that although their lack of participation will affect the team it will not be something they will be responsible for forever.

When working on our first assignment as a group, we were tasked to come up with a group identity that would include a group slogan and logo. My group member and I tried to relate it to what we had in common. Like I previously stated we already knew that we were two young women in pursuit of a degree which we subsequently hope will open up a lot doors for us in the future. There was a little confusion in the beginning, but I felt that by communicating with each other we were able to brainstorm together to come up with our common values and ideas to successfully define our group identity.

The logo we used for our group was a picture of twos peas in a pod and I felt that pertained to us because unlike the other groups our group had only two members. I believe the slogan we used, ‘cause two heads are better than one’ fit perfectly with our logo. This was not my first time working in a group to complete a class assignment, but I have never had to come up with a group identity for the teams I was involved in. I felt that this exercise gave the groups more of an opportunity to get to know one another, because you had a chance to talk about your values, ideas, and beliefs and you had to find a way to relate them to the members of your group so you could all come to an agreement on the identity you chose to represent your group.

I also believe that during this process of coming up with a group identity, it gave my team member and I more of a chance to voice our opinions on how we wanted to work together as a team. We were able to establish what roles we would fulfill and it also gave us a chance to set some ground rules on types of communication that would be acceptable during the process of finding ways to complete our assigned tasks. I thought this was a great exercise, because despite the fact that most groups come together because they are working towards a common goal, members of the group still need to maintain an open mind and be team players. There will be times when groups cannot come to a mutual agreement or some members may feel something should be done differently and this is when it is important to have those ground rules already in place. This gives group members the opportunity to address the issue by respectively listening to the views and ideas of each member and coming up with a solution that would be most beneficial for the group.

Our last assignment as group gave us a greater chance to be more productive and work more actively together as a team to come up with a final product. We were tasked to complete two PowerPoint Presentations and the first decision we made together for this assignment was to present Chapter 6 to our classmates. I felt this chapter was a good selection, because it reviewed leadership qualities someone in a superior position should possess to confidently lead a group in a successful and confident manner. Considering my group only had two members it would be hard to determine by my thoughts alone who the actual leader of our group was, but I feel in a way that I fulfilled more of the leadership role in our group. I would have to say that I was more of an emergent leader, because neither of us ever said that one of us would make decisions more than the other, but I feel like my team member put her trust in me to ensure the projects were being completed as they were way assigned and that they were being handed in on time. I think my teammate would have been able to do the same things, but in this situation she looked more to me for guidance when it came to fully discerning what the assignments entailed and when ensuring things were submitted in a timely manner and that all of the required documentation was included. I feel that I did a lot of the final decision-making with the group projects, but that wasn’t really a role I minded taking on.

There were some issues with our communication over the course of the last project that hindered our capability to be punctual with the turning in of the assignments. We never established another form of communication other than our Keystone email accounts and if we could not contact each other via email, the communication was non-existent. I consider our mishaps a learning experience now because it made me more aware of what roadblocks groups can encounter when trying to complete a project. I gained the knowledge that you can’t rely on one source of communication, because it could counteract what you thought was a good plan for communicating and leave your group with a form of communication that could be considered non-existent. We worked hard to guarantee quality work was turned in, so to have something as small as not being able to get in touch with one another affect our overall work was frustrating. Different forms of getting a hold of each other should have been one of the first things we required alternatives for when our group was initially organized, but it was something we overlooked. You learn something new every day and this will be one lesson I carry with me in the future for any group situations I may encounter, whether it’s dealing with my educational, social, or professional goals.

I genuinely enjoyed participating in the project to create a program proposal because it gave us a chance to tap into our creative sides, which is something I haven’t been given many opportunities to do. I knew that if I was given the chance to create a program that would air on television; I would to develop a show that could motivate and inspire people. A lot of the current programs on television influence children and teenagers in a negative way and I wanted to create something that could motivate and influence in a positive way and to show them the importance of never giving up on their dreams. I know there are people who end up in situations they are not proud of, so I thought it would be a good idea to show them someone who made choices that landed them in a place they were unhappy in but decided to turn their life around in a positive way. I discussed these ideas with my team member and she liked what I came up with, so we decided to go forward with it. I really enjoyed the reactions other team members had when viewing the PowerPoint we created, because I believed in it and I was glad that others agreed with our end result. I am sure it wasn’t perfect and if it was a real program proposal it would need a lot more convincing for producers to create it, but I was proud of the final product we turned in to present.

To sum up my experience in Small Group Communications, I think it was great. I have actually changed my major to pursue a communications degree and I am very excited about this. This semester was a difficult one for me and it made me really take some time to step back and rethink some things. I do think I ran into some issues, but nothing that was so catastrophic I couldn’t overcome it. I really think the group assignments were interesting and they definitely gave me a better idea of what kind of difficulties you can run into when having to complete assignments with the help of others. The readings gave me a much better insight on all the challenges and all the great experiences you can have when working in a group. I am really looking forward to starting my next semester where every class I am taking is pertaining to something I am interested in. I know I may not have seemed like the most motivated student this semester, but after having a lot come up and realizing the steps I need to take to prevent it from happening again in the future, I am ready to be the student I need to be. This class has taught me so much and I genuinely excited to see what else I will learn on my path to earning my bachelor’s degree in Communications Arts and Humanities.