Being in school and having to work on projects or labs in groups was always one of my favorite and least favorite part of the classes. If you get in a group which functions well together, the work gets done which usually results in a good grade. If you end up in a group where everyone has no idea whats going on or does not even care about the project, the whole group will get a lower grade.
The 7.4 table does a great job at covering the roles group members play. My role in a group usually changes depends on the class subject. In science classes when we are grouped together for labs, I am always the initiator-contributor of the group. I am always the one who gets the group moving and suggests ways to go about the lab assigned. Actually, this past semester I played multiple roles in the group. I was also the energizer, elaborator, and occasionally an encourager. Science has always been one of my stronger subjects so i felt confident when playing these roles in the group. However, unfortunately in other classes I was not always playing these roles in the group. I would usually take on roles which were less noticeable and just hung out in the background. Such as, a recorder and group observer. Even more, in groups which were not school related I would usually play the negative role as joker or clown.
I feel everyone can find a role to play in a group and there will always be the joker of the group, the dominator who never lets anyone else express their opinions and ideas. I feel this section really helped me learn the different roles in groups which i had never known about.
Hey!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your experience in group participation! It was interesting to note how different people prefer different role, which I think is important! As president of my sorority at Cal Poly, I took part in numerous different groups, from the sorority on a whole, to our executive board within the chapter as well as executive board within the Cal Poly Greek Life. In these groups I was normally an initiator-contributor and evaluator-critic. It was important though, when working within these groups to have people who preferred other task and maintenance roles (as you quoted from table 7.4). If everyone in the group wanted to take the same role as I, it would have been necessary to change the way in which the group functioned in order to accommodate our role preference. For this reason I think it’s great you shared your experience and it goes to show that differences in communication can pay off because we can feed off of these differences in order to become more productive!
Have a great week!