The departmental meeting that I attended is a general scheduled meeting that occurs every Thursday at a specific time, like clockwork. Within this group meeting, several entities from the branch come together to discuss a multitude of topics; ranging from the past weeks performances, issues that have come up, how the issue was resolved, and future business. Generally, there are eight people involved with this process; evenly divided among gender. However, there is a variance of age groups as well as ethnicity. The general purposes of the meetings reflect the company’s core values with regards to the relationship with the group’s purpose, mission, and overall goal. It is through my observation, which I gained great insight with regards to the flow of the meeting and the overall behavioral influence that individual attitudes have upon the impact of the group's effectiveness. The purpose of the weekly meetings is to raise awareness with regards to how the group is doing individually and as a team through constructive criticism. It is through these meeting that the group is enabled to discuss a variety of issues that may arise throughout the week while providing feedback with regards to lessons learned and how they can provide better customer service while employing the company’s core values. The mission of the group meetings enables the team to engage and discuss an array of items that include ways to enhance our job performance while focusing on the self “individual” and the group as a team. In addition, each employee is encouraged to voice their concern of what they are experiencing with regards to the field employees and how they can assist them. The overall goal is to allow the employees to engage one another to build upon team work and to enhance communication. In addition, these meetings allow the team to forecast what obstacles and hurdles they may have to overcome with regards to the customers. The group meetings are very well structured and are held weekly usually lasting approximately an hour. There are some rules of order in which they follow. Some of these rules include being respectful, one person speaks at a time; no one singles any one person out unless it is to praise them. The agenda starts off with the good highlights and leads into what the team can work on to improve efficiency. Each member of the group is given time to discuss what issues that they are experiencing and how we can overcome these issues internally. In addition, the team discusses planning and manning issues. However, the main agenda of the group meeting is to raise awareness to any issue that they are experiencing; regardless if the issue is internal or external. In addition, they discuss best practices as what has worked or has not worked in the past. The structure of the group includes the manager, assistant manager, the operations specialists as well as the lead recruiter. The group is organized with the branch manager sitting at the end of the table. On his left side sits the operations specialist and on the right side sites the assistant manager as well as the lead recruiter. The primary facilitator of the group is the branch manager. He controls the flow as well as the tone of the meeting. In addition, the assistant manager takes notes and emphasis items of concern and addresses issues and concerns. The branch managers role is to oversee the branches functionality and continued growth and to meet the expectations of our customers; as well as handle any external issues with clients as well as corporate. The assistant branch manager’s role is to manage the day to day operations of the branch while ensuring the operations specialist and the lead recruiter are meeting and exceeding expectations and to handle any internal issues. The operations specialists’ role is to fill client orders and assign field employees their daily assignments. In addition, they issue verbal and written warnings to field employees who are not meeting the company’s expectations. The lead recruiter’s role is to compile statistical data daily and recruit new employees according to his statistics with regards to increased business per county and region. In addition, he prescreens and interviews new personnel and conducts new hire orientation weekly. The subjects and issues of concern with regards to this group meeting include field employee attendance as well as their tardiness; the growing client list and new orders within the western counties as well as the concern of hiring additional field employees to cover the ever growing business within the western counties. The type of information that the operations specialist exchanged included the names and frequency of the individuals who are constantly late with regards to reporting to their job assignments. In addition, they provided information with regards to new clients and what they were ordering on a daily basis. The lead recruiter acknowledged the limited number of employees within the western counties and provided statistical data of the increased work. In addition, he was able to reveal his recruitment strategy with regards to the most western counties as he intends to increase the number of employees through broader recruitment utilizing both print and online advertisement as well as utilizing county and state work exchange. The group’s communication pattern was very organized as each member of the group respected the other members who were speaking. As each person spoke, they looked at the other members of team and spoke with confidence. There was sense of uniformity and camaraderie among the team as well as clear and detailed information flowing around the group. The members of the group were all taking notes and interacting with each other while offering information as well as sharing data throughout. It was clear that the group shared the same interest and goals. The shared interest was team building while expanding upon leadership, knowledge, and experiences. In addition, it was very evident that the team understands team work while striving to meet and exceed expectations of the common goal. There is no indication that would suggest that the members of this group may be vulnerable to groupthink. Although there is loyalty, harmony, and conformity within this group; however, each member of the group expressed their concern while providing input. They each provided critical evaluation as well as alternative measures to reduce concerns and issues. Our text talks about conformity and obedience. Conformity is defined as a type of social influence with reference to change of a person’s behavior or belief in order to be accepted to fit in (Myers, 2010). In addition, obedience is defined as “acting in accord with a direct order or command (Myers, 2010); essentially complying or submitting to one’s orders or rules. I see these traits upon all my co-workers. We all assemble in the conference room on Thursday mornings, promptly at nine o’clock. One rule of thumb is to be prepared to talk about and discuss any issues or problems that have come up in the course of the past week and to discuss future plans. Nevertheless, this is in direct correlation to compliance. We all comply with specific orders as well as the ground rules of the weekly meeting in order to have a productive and informational meeting. I believe acceptance is a major contributor to the success of the meetings. As a whole, I believe we all have the need and want to fit in and to be accepted. One of the driving factors is conforming to the team’s ground rules through preparation and meeting the team’s expectations. It is my opinion that everyone involved with the weekly meeting acts and believes accordingly based upon the social pressure. More so, no one wants to be labeled as a non-team player. Overall, the group’s behavior was very positive. I believe this behavior affected each person’s attitude positively. Each person of the group was engaged in the conversations regarding the issues and concerns that were brought up and discussed. I believe everyone feed off of each other’s attitude hence providing a positive atmosphere. The effectiveness of the group was extremely apparent as they were able to come up with a plan to reduce the field employee tardiness as well as recruit addition employees that embrace the company’s core values.