Teams as Systems

When you're just getting to know your group, it's basically like you guys start dating. 

Things are a little bit awkward, no one really knows what to expect and sometimes expectations get miscommunicated. A lot of the time it's like an arranged marriage that you have to learn to deal with. But don't worry, we've got your back!!

I proudly present, 

(GROUP) DATING 101:

 5 key's to a successful system

1: Take them somewhere nice

So if you're going on a date and you want it to work out, where would you rather take them?

Choice A:

Or Choice B:

Hopefully you answered B. If you didn't, then you are a terrible date. Really. Awful. You're going to die alone (kidding).

When you want to impress a date, you'll take them to a nice place, and for a second date you'll go somewhere else to keep it interesting.

The same rule applies within groups.  Your ENVIRONMENT affects the experience you will have and how successful it will be.

If you want to work well with a group, meeting in different places can help people feel more comfortable. Instead of 'taking them out' to the library every time you meet, try going out for dinner together or meeting at somewhere more casual, like a group members house. It's more personal and helps people to feel more comfortable around each other. 

2: Don't talk about yourself the whole time

If you're going on a date with someone, you don't want to hear them droning on about themselves the whole time. If they ignore your opinions and only focus on themselves, you aren't likely to want to go on a second date.  

You'd be left thinking: 

Being in a relationship with this type of person leads to arguments, fights, and most likely misery.

So think about it: If you do the same thing in groups, they aren't likely to enjoy working with you, and it will cause conflict. 

This is why BALANCE is so important in groups. 

Balance not only keeps you from boring everyone in the group, but it keeps everyone in sync and with the same idea. It involves dealing with conflict straight up, and not letting it overwhelm the group.

If your group is balancing opinions and dealing with conflict, instead of this, 

You'll be doing this:

3: Trust them and expect the best

There's a psychological phenomenon phenomenon called "Self fulfilling prophecy," It basically means that what you believe about a situation affects what actually happens. So if you go into a blind date assuming that it'll be awkward and awful, it probably will. But if you go to that same date believing beforehand that it will be a blast, it's more likely to be enjoyable. 

Robert Merton explains it pretty well

This phenomenon occurs in groups too. If you're think that your group members are going to be annoying, they are more likely to act like that. And if you think that your group is going to be lazy before you even meet them, chances are higher that they will be slackers. 

Why does this happen? 

Because if you believe they will be annoying, you'll unconsciously treat them like they are. And if you believe they're lazy, you'll automatically begin to do their work.  

The best way to do group work is to INTERRELATE with each other. 

This means believing the best of each other, and trusting that everyone gets their work done. It can be hard to trust other people with your grade, but it shows maturity and growth. And usually people step up the challenge and produce great work.

4: Work together

Have you ever been in a relationship where where you cared more about the other person than they cared about you? They didn't put in any effort to spend time with you, show you that they were interested or generally be a good partner. It's annoying as heck; no one likes to be treated like they're worthless.

Now, have you ever been in a group where the same thing happened? Members didn't show up for group meetings, they didn't do any work and generally were a bad group member? You probably ended up just dividing up the work leading to a final product that was disjointed and sloppy. 

Each situation leads to anger, resentment, and basically just being pissed off at your group members. 
So how do you solve it? INTERACT with each other. Because here's the thing:

Groups are always at their best when they're interacting and using everyone's strengths to their advantages. Groups that interact work together to create a product that is cohesive. 

5: Communicate what you want for the future

So say you're on a date, and things are going well. You've hit it off, and talking is happening easily. Both of you seem to be having a good time. Everything is going so well that you're considering popping the question and asking them to go steady. Until, that is, they casually mention that they aren't looking for a relationship.

Your dreams are dashed and the chemistry you have doesn't matter, because there is no future together. 

This happens in groups all the times. 

If a group doesn't have a SHARED VISION, then they are left without a purpose. 

Groups that succeed know what they want and every person in the group feels the same way. This clear sense of vision helps the group to come up with manageable steps to accomplish their goals.

By telling the other group members what you want to be the final product, everyone can work together with clarity. 

The image on the left shows what groups look like when they dream separately, and the right shows what groups can envision when they dream together.

You get to choose, which one looks best to you?

Regulating Individuals

Working in groups can pose many challenges, one challenge involves keeping everyone on track and working together. In order to overcome this challenge it is important to regulate the individual members of a team along with regulating the team’s spirit. Regulating individual team members is not done by yelling at them and angrily pointing out everything they are doing wrong. The importance of regulating individuals is that is has to be approached in a calm and professional manner. Many times the hard part about this is that no one in a group has the guts to speak up and call someone out for doing something wrong, doing that sounds scary because it may make working in the group awkward for awhile. There is a way to effectively regulate individuals and it is broken down into 3 simple tips:

Address the issue internally:

his simply means that before you bring up a problem with a group members make sure you know what you are angry about in the first place. This is important because it allows you time to think before you speak, and you can focus on the issue you want to address and not get sidetracked with other problems you may have. 

Address the member individually:

This simply means you need to pull the person you are having a problem with to the side and discuss it, do not discuss it in front of everyone. Do not bring up a problem you have with an individual in front of a group of people they may feel like you are ganging up on them and the result would not be good, they would most likely shut down and refuse to participate due to the sheer embarassment of being called out in front of everyone.

Use iMessages:

This means that you need to explain to the person that what they are doing is also effecting you. Make it clear by using phrases like “ I feel________when you do _______” by doing this the other person may feel empathy and want to change because they are now aware of how their behavior is affecting you. Do not just simply state what it is that you don’t like because they may just get defensive, and they conversation will go no where.

Aspects of a Team

The three system variables are input, process, and output. 
Input is where all the members of the group have different strengths and talents that can benefit the team in some way. 
Process is how the team deals with conflict and how they use everyone’s ideas, and output is the outcome or conclusion of the team’s efforts. The process is also the stage in which more learning and growth will take place. If a team can overcome and work out their problems, they are more successful than a team who bitterly gets through their projects. 
Output is the group's final product. In this stage you must figure out how to solve the problem and what you can learn from the journey.

As far as the process goes, one specific thing that’ll most likely remain with me for the rest of my life was this in-class activity that dealt with marbles. The objective of the activity was to get a series of marbles across 3 blocks of wood. As a group we pretty much found a solution right away; 4 of us held the wood in place mid-air while the 5th person dropped the marbles down the wood. 

Yes this solution did work, however our instructor was adamant about us continuing and finding another. We did just that as we took another 5 minutes of pure brainstorming. This resulted in us holding the wood against the wall, once again the marbles flowed down the wood, but this time it was better! The point that I personally got from this activity was that the first solution isn’t always the best, trial and error is okay and completely acceptable.

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Regulating Team Spirit

Regulating team spirit identifies the importance of keeping a team motivated, it is easy to be excited to work with a team in the beginning, but a lot of motivation can be lost as you continually work with them. There are three steps that can help keep the team motivation high and they are:
1: Don’t stop dating your team
The concept here identifies that it is important to keep group meetings exciting. You need to keep that spark alive, this can be done by changing the places where you meet with your groups, do other things not involving schoolwork with your groupmates. If you get to know your teammates on a more personal level you may be more inclined to want to meet up and work with them. 
2: Don’t let there be static
Stay in tuned, let your teammates know what is going on in your life. If you having other things going on that may be affecting your performance in your group, let your teammates know. They will be more understanding if you explain what is going on instead of not saying anything at all.
3: Check yourself before you wreck yourself
The concept here is that you need to be able to control your emotions. Do not let one small thing ruin your day, and don’t transfer your frustration onto your teammates. If you let your emotions get the best of you it will most likely show through your work and performance, and it will affect the whole team as well.  

Mission Statement

Creating a mission statement means creating something that you wish to live by. You identify something you wish to do and create a statement that explains why you want to do this. Creating a personal mission statement is the first step before creating a team mission statement. Once all team members have identified their own personal mission statements it is then easier to combine them into one powerful mission statement that combines the important concepts from each individuals mission statement. Here is an example of a group mission statement:

“Create a positive environment absent of fear, where every individual can gain advanced knowledge and skills, take risks and be themselves without judgement.”

Synergy

If you’re having trouble with group work understand that synergy is obtainable. 

If I were to pinpoint a direct cause of poor group work it would be a lack of synergy. 

Synergy refers to the level of which a group cooperates with each other to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects. 

Synergy is the crucial component that allowed for our Small Group Communication’s team to excel on various assignments. Synergy is most simply the energy that expands through cooperation. When each group member brings a positive attitude to the group, success is more easily achievable. Though your group consists of multiple people, the closer you all get to flowing as one the better.

Strengths and Roles

Knowing your strength or the role you play in a group is very important to know as well as for your teammates to know. 
As a team everyone has a role in the group whether they are a leader, motivator or unifier, which are a few examples of roles. However, sometimes before we know what a person's exact role is, as human beings we often stereotype a person’s role. For example, when you think of a CEO of a corporate business, the first thing that comes to your mind is a white middle aged man. As humans we don’t mean to do it, but sadly it’s apart of our culture. There are also negative roles that people stereotype others to be, which are procrastinators, control freaks, and the confused individuals. These are all common roles that are viewed to be negative in a group.

It doesn’t matter how people stereotype as person’s role in a group because people are different and unique in their own way. If you don’t know what your strength is or what role you play in a group, there’s a way to figure that out it’s called the Myers Brigg test. 
This is test is designed to help figure out what type of role you are by asking questions dealing with your personality and characteristics qualities, and then your final results will be four letters combined ( Ex. ENFJ, INTJ..). 
If you have never taken this test before the four letters can be confusing at first, but they all have a specific meaning: 
1) Where you draw your energy from 
2) What indications you prefer 
3) How you make decisions
4) How you view the world
Where you draw your energy from is the letters E=Extrovert, which is a person who enjoys being the life of the party or I=Introvert, which is a person who is shy. 
What indications you prefer is the letters N=intuitive, which is using your gut instincts or S=sensing, which is using facts or figures to back up something. 
How you make decisions is the letters T=thinking, which is thinking before you make a decision or F-feeling, which is making your decisions based off how you feel. 
And how you view the world is letters J=judging. which means you love to make decisions and checking them off as you're done with them or P=perceiving, which means you don’t like making decisions and you look at the big picture.  

Perspective Taking

Perspective taking 
is keeping an open mind about where your group members are coming from. Be considerate of their ideas and opinions. You can’t complete a task until you have heard everyone’s perspective. Make sure to express your own perspective as well, and try to find a common ground with your teammates.

To get a hands- on experience with perspective taking, try getting your group to do an activity. Do one using toy blocks. You can print out pictures, each one representing a different side of a building. Each member will receive a different picture. You will not be allowed to show anyone your picture. Quietly, stack the blocks and try to re-create your side of the image. See if your group can put together this building, using all of your different perspectives with only a limited number of blocks.

If you are having difficulties experiencing positive perspective taking, try to learn more about your group members. Try putting yourself in their shoes. If they seem angry or short, they could be feeling stressed. Maybe they are trying to balance a high course load and work a job at the same time. Maybe they are experiencing problems with a friend. You never know unless you talk with them. And make sure to show some compassion. There is always someone out there who is worse off than you are.