Groups and Teams Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Groups and Teams - Essay Example Several reasons were collected and comparison made. The major reasons that had affected the performance of the groups were: leadership, communication, perspective towards one another, and commitment. According to Tuckman, the issue of leadership can be resolved according to his model, which describes leadership in four stages namely; formation, forming, storming, norming, and adjourning. The latter being the end of the task. Leadership is the determinant of group success, and with Tuckman’s model, the team issues can be resolved. Keywords: Teams, Members, Communication, Leadership, Tuckman’s Model QUESTION ONE Factors that Caused Poor Functioning of Team A Lack of consistency in terms of attendance by 3 group members during the initial stages of project development, there was a lot of absenteeism. Lack of defined leadership; there was no right procedure for the appointment of leaders, in fact, there is the case where the caretaker and the organizer were appointed in the absence of some members. Poor communication approach: Due to various commitments of the members, it was difficult for them to meet; this was further affected by the methods of communication preferred by members. Some preferred face to face, while others preferred the use of discussion tools. Furthermore, these two methods had other challenges. For the case of face to face, there were conflicts on the meeting points, and at times failure by members to attend. For the case of discussion tools, some members did not have time to read what had been posted. These communication problems greatly affected the progress of the project. According to the statistics collected in the socio-gram, results showed that members could not work well with one another, since there were differences amongst them. Coping up with such an issue in a group is very difficult and usually leads to failure. Lenience of the members in dealing with defaulting members became a routine, and this resulted to overworking on the part of the other members, hence creation of imbalance of workloads. Lack of commitment: some members had taken lightly the task that was before them and therefore could not give it priority; ideas could not be well tapped and often, there was over reliance on a few individuals. Factors that led to Poor Functioning of Group B Late commencement of the project: the members dragged themselves too much, and this reduced their time to work, while they still had to beat the deadline. Poor communication: members rarely met and used discussion tools inadequately. Lack of commitment: this is seen through the two dropouts who earlier on showed some signs of commitment and later retreated. Internal conflicts: although some members denied this, it was still evident that misunderstandings prevailed; some were angry and stressed while doing the work, but could not communicate it out. Norms were not set to enable each member to have a guideline to follow. QUESTION TWO Comparison of Conflic ts in Group A and Group B Tickman’s stage two of group formation is regarded as the storming stage and is seen as the conflict stage. In terms of decision making, there are similarities between the two groups (group A and B). At one point, members agree on certain approaches, but fail to honor the decision. For the two groups, in most occasions, each member decides what to do, regardless of the impact on the project. The position of leadership differed in the two