Personal Work Group Evaluation

• Choose a group in which you are currently involved or have been involved in the past. A group or team associated with a current employer often works the best, but you may also use group experiences from previous employers or community activities. If possible, choose a group that may be experiencing communication difficulties.
• Prepare an investigative paper that applies group-related communication theories to your selected group. Include the following in your paper:
  • Describe the characteristics of the group and analyze the impact on communication using all of the criteria below:
    • Describe whether the team is ongoing (permanent) or ad hoc (temporary).
    • Is the group a short-term group that will only exist for 1–12 months or is the group a long-standing group that has or will exist for more than one year?
    • Is the group formal or informal? For example, is the group an official (that is, formal) department or committee at a company or is the group an informal collection of people such as a book club.
    • Is the group self-managing or does the group have a clear consistent leader?
    • Is the group best described as a primary work team or a project team? A primary work team generally takes on a variety of tasks (for example, a Human Resources Department or a Maintenance Department). Project teams typically engage in a narrow set of activities such as organizing a specific event or a taking on a single project.
  • Using the 2007 Benne and Sheats article, “Functional Roles of Group Members,” linked in the Resources under the Required Resources heading, analyze the formal roles and communication roles of group members and the impact on communication within the group:
    • Group members’ task roles.
    • Group members’ maintenance roles.
    • Group members’ individual roles.
  • Using Bruce Tuckman’s (1965) team stages model or Backlund’s 2001 article, “Team Effectiveness,” linked in the Resources under the Required Resources heading, describe the group stages experienced by the group and changes in communication throughout those stages.
  • Analyze the group norms and the impact on organizational communication. Norms are the formal and informal rules groups develop. Many norms are never written down and many are not discussed openly but are still learned by group members.
  • Describe positive and negative participation behaviors and their impact on communication.
  • Describe the group’s use of technology for communication, such as e-mail, texting, or the Internet, and assess the effectiveness of the group’s use of technology for communication.

Required resources that must be used.

• Backlund, G. (2001). Team effectiveness. Minneapolis, MN: Capella University.

• Benne, K. D., & Sheats, P. (2007). Functional roles of group members. Group Facilitation, (8), 30–35.
• Tuckman, B. W. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63(6), 384–399. 
  • The initial ideas presented by Bruce Tuckman in 1965, regarding the stages of development that teams go through, are so ingrained in the literature about teams that some authors forget to cite Tuckman. Reading Tuckman’s original ideas about team development will help you understand how later authors formulated their ideas on team development. 

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