Task 4. Define set of tensions described in the following situations.

1. “Were you going out with your boyfriend a long time?” asked Luis.

“We’d got into a rut,” I explained. “I’d got into a habit of going out with him”.

“I know exactly what you mean,” said Magdalena. “And it’s a habit that’s hard to get out of.”

2. “I said I’d ring you tonight, and I would have.”

“It’s just that I haven’t seen you in ages,” I said.

“You don’t own me,” said Tim.

3. “I just don’t think that women can be themselves if they’re chained to some man,” she said. “As soon as a girl gets married she puts her husband’s needs ahead of her own.”

4. “I know sometimes I’d like you to be there all the time – that’s why I thought we should get married – but now I’m afraid. I like being on my own too. I’m not comfortable with the idea of having someone wanting to know where I am every minute.”

Unit 7

Group Communication

I. NOTES

Groups affect us throughout our lives. We are born into family groups, play and learn in friendship and school groups and spend much of our adult life in work groups. We are shaped by the groups we belong to, and, even after we leave them, they continue to live on in us. Much as we may hate to admit it, groups tell us what to think and feel and how to act.

What Is a Group?

Not every large aggregate is a group. Groups, like dyads, develop over time. A group is a special kind of entity. It is a collection of individuals who, as a result of interacting with one another over time, become interdependent, developing shared patterns of behavior and a collective identity.

Characteristics of Groups

One way to see how “groupness” develops is by considering the development of a team. The athletes who show up for tryouts at the beginning of a season are not yet a group. Although they hope to become a group, at this point they are merely a collection of individuals. As they begin to train together, however, they gradually take on the characteristics of a true group.

A collection of people develops into a group through interaction. It is through interaction that an aggregate of individual athletes becomes a functioning team. If the team is relatively small, communication is direct and participation is equal. If it is larger, specialized roles such as trainer, captain, and assistant coach develop, and messages are conveyed through specialized networks. Whichever is the case, without communication the team could not exist.

As a result of communication, the behaviors of group members become interdependent; in a true group, any action by one affects all. Interdependence is an important characteristic of a group, for it means that separate individuals have become a functioning whole. If team members act independently, pursuing individual goals rather than team goals, the team never gets and may eventually disintegrate.

In the process of becoming interdependent, members develop and share stable and predictable norms, values, and role structures. Each group develops a unique culture that sets it apart from other groups, a culture that tells group members how to behave, what to value, and who to be. Once these shared behavioral standards develop, members experience a sense of identity and psychological closeness. They take pride in their shared membership, and being part of the team becomes a primary identity for them. The stronger and more cohesive their sense of membership, the stronger their collective identity and the more they become a true team. When all these characteristics develop – interaction, interdependence, shared behavioral standards, and a sense of membership – “groupness” has been achieved. Without these characteristics, individuals remain separate and isolated.

Group Size: How Big Is a Small Group?

Although most people agree that the lower limit of a small group is three, they disagree on a small group’s upper limits.

For a number of reasons, triads, or groups of three, are much more complex than dyads, and three-person communication is different from two-person. One reason is that the number of communication channels increases dramatically with three people. In a dyad, partners don’t need to choose whom to talk to; there is only one channel, A to B. In a triad, there are suddenly six channels: A to B, B to C, A to B and C, B to A and C, and C to A and B. And as the number of people in a group increases, the number of channels rises dramatically. In a seven-person group, for example, the number of potential relationships is 966. Members in large groups must work harder to include one another and to ensure equal participation. Often groups solve this problem by developing formal roles, such as leader, fol­lower, or harmonizer and by using specialized networks.

Groups also tend to break down into smaller units. If you have ever lived with two other people, you may have experienced the tendency of a triad to breakdown into a primary dyad plus one outsider. Three-person groups have to work hard to maintain cohesion. If more people join a group, the tendency to divide into subunits increases markedly.

As groups increase in size, they become more unwieldy. At some point, they become too large for the members to interact directly with one another. At the point when members no longer recognize and relate to one another as equal individuals, the small group ceases to exist, becoming a large group or an organization. Under extraordinary circumstances, a small group may include as many as twenty people, but most of the time the upper limit is much smaller, around ten or twelve.

What is the ideal size for a group? Dan Rothwell tells us, “the appropriate size for a group is the smallest size capable of performing the task effectively”. Other experts are more specific. They feel that the optimum size for a problem-solving group is from five to seven people. A group of this size has enough members to ensure a large pool of ideas and information yet not so many members as to inhibit equal participation.

Why Communicate in Groups?

People enter groups because there are advan­tages to working in groups. Whereas some tasks are best done by individuals, other tasks benefit from the input of several people. In general, the more com­plex the task and the more difficult its implementation, the more it needs the multiple inputs that occur in group interaction.

The first advantage of working in a small group is that groups provide more input than do individuals. Often complex problems need knowledge that goes be­yond that of a single individual. Having five or six heads rather than one means that more ideas can be generated and explored. Researchers who have studied small groups often speak of an effect known as group synergy. Put simply, group synergy is the idea that groups are often more effective than the best individuals within them. Something extraordinary happens to people when they work with oth­ers: their output surpasses what it would have been if they had worked alone. People working in groups can pool information, share perspectives, and use one another’s ideas as springboards. They can also motivate and energize one another to keep searching for a solution.

A second advantage of working with others is that cohesive groups provide support and commitment. Sometimes tasks are too large for a single individual, ei­ther because they require a great deal of planning or because special effort is needed to implement them. Sometimes problems are too serious to face alone. By sharing the workload and by offering encouragement and support, groups can take on difficult and complex tasks that individuals would hesitate to un­dertake by themselves.

A final advantage of groups is that groups can meet members’ interpersonal needs. We often work with others because we like being with people and because we feel they can help us meet individual needs. One way to think of need satis­faction in groups is to consider the three basic interpersonal needs described by psychologist William Schutz: the needs for inclusion, control, and affection.

The inclusion need is the need to establish identity by associating with others. As we saw in the previous chapter, other people give us a sense of self. Groups are especially important for enhancing identity. People with espe­cially high needs for self-definition can find a stable sense of self in working with others. Croup members can also help others establish identity by offering them inclusion.

In addition, groups satisfy control needs. The control need is the need to prove one’s worth and competence by making effective decisions. By providing opportunities for leadership, groups can validate members’ feelings of self-worth. Groups can also provide guidance and control for people who feel over­whelmed by responsibility.

Finally, groups can satisfy affection needs. The affection need is the need to develop close, caring relationships with others. By establishing friendships and by getting to know one another intimately, group members can satisfy their need to receive affection, as well as their need to show affection to others.

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