17.

16 Interactions among
members

1
 Interactions among members

 There must be a spirit of unity and co-operation.

2
 Analysis of Individual Behaviour

 The description of member roles performed in

well-functioning groups is classified into three
broad headings:
1. Group task roles
2. Group building and maintenance roles
3. Individual roles

3
 Member roles
Function
Group task roles To select, define and solve
common problems
Group building and Activities that build group-
maintenance roles centred attitudes or
maintain group-centred
behaviour
Individual roles -To satisfy personal needs
-Not related either to group
task or to the group
functioning
Example
Initiator-contributor,
opinion seeker, co-
ordinator, evaluator,
recorder
Encourager, gatekeeper,
standard setter, group
commentator
Aggressor, blocker,
dominator, help-seeker
4
 Sociometry

 Sociometry is a method of indicating the feelings of

acceptance or rejection among members of a group.

5
 Sociometry

 The basis of sociometry is usually ‘buddy rating’ or ‘peer

rating’.
 Each member is asked to nominate or to rate, privately, other
members in terms of some given context or characteristics
( eg. with whom they communicate, or how influential or how
likeable they are)
 Questions may relate to either work or social activities.
 Positive and negative choices may be recorded.
 Sometimes individuals may be asked to rank their choices.

6
Sociogram

7
 Sociogram

 A sociogram is a diagrammatical illustration of the

pattern of interpersonal relationships derived from
sociometry.
 It depicts choices, preferences, likes or dislikes and
interactions between individual members.
 It can display a visual description of the structure of
the group.
 It can indicate cliques and sub-groups, compatibility,
and members who are popular, isolated or who acts
as links.
8
 Sociogram
 Stars?
 Link?
 Unpopular?
 Chain?
 Sub-group?

9
 Sociogram

1. Popular => G and M

2. Link => M
3. Unpopular => H and P
4. Chain => JKMO
5. Subgroup => ABCD

10
 Sociogram

 It can describe the meaningful discussions on

patterns of social interactions, group behaviour and
the perceptions of individual members towards each
other.
 It can serve as a useful basis for the development of
both employability and wider social skills.

11
 Self-insight and the Johari Window

 A simple framework for looking at self-insight is the johari

window.
 This classifies behaviour in matrix form between what is
known-unknown to self and what is known-unknown to
others .
 It encourages a reduction of the individual’s ‘hidden’
behaviour through self-disclosure and of the ‘blind’ behaviour
through feedback from others.

12
 Self-insight and the Johari Window

Public

 Members must establish an atmosphere of openness and

thrust in order that hidden and blind behaviours are reduced
and the public behaviour enhanced.

13
 Self-insight and the Johari Window

 Hidden behaviour is that individual wishes to conceal from

other group members. It is part of the private self.
 An important role of the group is to establish whether
members conceal too much, or too little, about themselves
from other members.
 The blind area (i.e behaviour known to others but unknown
by self) includes manersims, getstures and tone of voice, and
represents behaviour of the imapct on others of which the
individual is unaware. This is sometimes referred to as the
‘bad breath’ area.

14
 Balance between team and individual

“ Effective teams need equilibrium, no matter how

uneasy. The perfect team will have balance, with
each member aware of their role and happy to add
that value to the task.”

James

15
 Friendship and Relationships at work

 Increasing attention has been given to the possible effects of

friendships and relationships at work, and potential conflict
between personal freedom and team performance.
 Work may be one of the best sources of friends as well as the
most desirable place to have them.
 However, friendships at work are full of ambiguities.
 For friendships, the trouble with work is that you are there to
be useful: to do something for a client, team or boss.

16
17.18 Individual compared with
group or team performance

17
 Individual compared with group or team
performance

 Despite apparent advantages of group working, it is difficult

to draw any firm conclusions from a comparison between
individual and group or team performance.
 Group decision making can be stressful as well as costly and
time consuming.
 According to Hall, teams are not always the right answer to a
problem.
 However, the general feeling appears to be that the collective
power of a group outshines individual performance.

18
Social Loafing

 Social loafing
 Risky-shift phenomenon
 Groupthink
 Brainstroming

19
 Social loafing

 The concept of social loafing ( or the Ringelmann effect ) is

the tendency for individual members of a group to expend
less effort than if they were working on their own.
 Example : a rope-pulling task

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 The risky-shift phenomenon
 There is a tendency for groups to make more risky decisions
than would individual members of the group on their own.
 Members do not feel the same sense of responsibility for
group decisions or their outcomes.
 A decision which is everyone’s is the responsibility of no one.
 Risky-shift phenomenon
 People inclined to take risks are more influential in group
discussions than more conservative people.
 Risk-taking is regarded as a desirable cultural
characteristics that is more likely to be expressed in a
social situation such as group working.

21
 The risky-shift phenomenon
 Groups do appear to work well in the evaluation of ideas and
to be more effective than individuals for problem-solving
tasks requiring a range of knowledge and expertise.
 Shaw, suggests that evidence supports the view that groups
produce more solutions and better solutions to problems than
do individuals.

22
Groupthink

23
Brainstorming

24
 Brainstorming

 A brainstroming approach involves a group of between six

and ten members adopting a ‘freewheeling’ attitude and
generating as many ideas as possible, the more wild or
apparently far-fetched, the better.
 Brain stroming is based on encouraging members to suspend
judgement, the assumption that creative thinking is achieved
best by encouraging the natural inclinations of group
members, and free association of ideas.

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