9.6 Discussion & Activities
[Author removed at request of original publisher]
9.6.1. Understanding Your Group Membership
- List the family and social groups you belong to and interact with on a regular basis—for example, within a twenty-four-hour period or a typical week. Please also consider forums, online communities, and Web sites where you follow threads of discussion or post regularly. Discuss your results with your classmates.
- List the professional (i.e., work-related) groups you interact with in order of frequency. Please also consider informal as well as formal groups (e.g., a BCOM210 study club and the colleagues you often share your communal living with). Compare your results with those of your classmates.
- Identify one group to which you no longer belong. List at least one reason why you no longer belong to this group and discuss your experience in the Exist Stage of socialization. Compare your results with those of your classmates.
- Think of the online groups you participate in. Forums may have hundreds or thousands of members, and you may have hundreds of connections on Snapchat, Facebook, or Instagram, but how many do you regularly communicate with? Exclude the “all-to-one” messages, such as a general tweet to everyone (but no one person in particular). Do you find that you gravitate toward the group norm of eight or fewer group members? Discuss your answer with your classmates.
- Are there times when it is better to work alone rather than in a group? Why or why not? Discuss your opinion with a classmate.
9.6.2. Group Considerations
- Is it possible for an outsider (a nongroup member) to help a group move from the storming stage to the norming stage? Explain your answer and present it to the class.
- Think of a group of which you are a member and identify some roles played by group members, including yourself. Have your roles, and those of others, changed over time? Are some roles more positive than others? Discuss your answers with your classmates.
- Thinking about the organizational socialization process, identify one or more formative moments in which you learned about how to be a professional or insider in a particular organization. What norms, values, beliefs, traditions, and/or ways of behaving would you share with a new member to help make the person feel more a part of the organization?
- In the course where you are using this book, think of yourself and your classmates as a group. At what stage of group formation are you currently? What stage will you be at when the school year ends?
- Think of a decision you will be making sometime in the near future. Apply the cost-benefit analysis framework to your decision. Do you find this method helpful? Discuss your results with classmates.
9.6.3. Group Problems
- Think of a problem encountered in the past by a group of which you are a member. How did the group solve the problem? How satisfactory was the solution? Discuss your results with your classmates.
- Consider again the problem you described above. In view of the seven-step framework, which steps did the group utilize? Would following the full seven-step framework have been helpful? Discuss your opinion with a classmate.
9.6.4. Your Role in a Group
- Do you prefer working in a group or team environment, or working individually? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? Discuss your thoughts with classmates.
- Imagine that you could choose anyone you wanted to be on a team with you. Who would you choose, and why? Write an explanation of why and share it with a classmate.
- Think of a group you are currently a member of. In what stage of Tuckman’s Linear Model of Group Development is the group in? Explain with examples why you have placed your group in that stage and what you might do to enter the “performing” stage.
- Consider the positive, negative, and social team roles discussed in this chapter. Which roles do you most often fill when working in a team? Provide examples of how you assumed these roles. Are you satisfied with taking these roles? Why or why not? What can you do in your next team experience to help achieve team goals?
