The Forgotten Group Member

The Forgotten Group member is a case study in the Organization Behavior book that creates a scenario about an A student by the name of Christine who faces challenges while working in a group on a project as the team leader. Initially, the group starts in the forming stage because the group members and especially Christine begin to have concerns about how their personal work and the work of the other team members contribute to the project. Towards the end, the group is now in the storming stage. The storming stage is described as a period of high emotion and tension among group members. During this stage, the group may experience uncomfortable pressures and efforts are made to find ways to accomplish team goals while also satisfying individual needs. I believe the group is now in this stage because a difficult member by the name of Mike has not been showing up to group meetings and has only turned in rough handwritten notes. Because Mike has been social loafing, this will cause the group to express emotions about the situation which will cause tension among the group. The group will then realized that because the lack of Mike’s efforts, they will have to come together to do his work. If Christine, the team leader, would have understood the stages of development, she would have realized that her team was not developing at the pace they should have been. She would have recognized the issues at a time where it could have been easier to resolve.
The primary problem that Christine faced was being elected team coordinator and not following up on what it takes to be a group leader. Christine should have been self-aware of the behaviors, preferences, styles, biases, and personalities of the other team members. By doing this, she would have isolated the issues initially before they become a bigger problem. The second problem was that they did not identify the problems/ problem people and resolve the issues. Mike made it clear in the beginning that he was going to be the problem child of the group and nothing was done to resolve this before it got out of hand.
Christine is certainly not perfect and would stumble across some problems as being team coordinator. One solution to the primary problem is for Christine to identify what it means to become a team coordinator. She would found that to achieve effectiveness, team members must have strong and positive team processes which is led by the team leader. Also, she would have been more aware that the team’s performance could suffer from social loafing when a member slacks off and lets others do the work. Christine would have then identified what needed to be done as a group leader and therefore would have been able to effectively run the group. Another suggestion is for Christine to approach the professor. Sandra Thiel had frequently told them that if there were problems in the group, the members should make an effort to deal with them first. If the problems could not be resolved, she had said that they should come to her. Christine did not have the ability to deal with this situation on her own, so she should have approached the Professor so she could offer some advice for the team members. By doing this at an appropriate time, she would have saved everyone included herself the headache of dealing with Mike. This could unfortunately cause excessive tension among the group by isolating one group member.
In conclusion, Christine in my opinion was not an effective group member because instead of talking to Mike, who was the problem, about the problem he was causing she sympathized with him. By accepting his rough handwritten notes and listening to his excuses about how he could not do the work, she made his behavior acceptable. Although Christine had many traits that would cause her to be a good leader, she was not able to take control of situations that could potentially be detrimental for the group.