Group Analysis

Group Analysis
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Abstract
A strong association between organization’s culture and group performance exist as caused by members’ personalities, weaknesses, and strengths. This is usually evident in the ways members in a group interact, and the ultimate results an organization achieves. At the lowest level, however, the key ingredients of such achievement include group members’ personalities, the system of beliefs, attitudes, and values, effective techniques for decision-making and leadership (Akdere, 2011). In this study, a practical group is analyzed in relation to its members’ behaviors, capabilities, and weaknesses. This will help in understanding the way organization change depends on group’ performance. Various theoretical concepts both form research and class discussions have been used to steer the arguments towards the study’s objective. Consequently, strong arguments have been achieved accompanied by recommendations for effective change implementation and group performance. The study concluded that individual’s personality, values, and attitude reinforced by effective techniques in decision making, conflict resolution, and planning are the key drivers for a sustainable organization culture.
Keywords: Organization culture, group dynamics, change implementation, group characteristic, decision-making, force field analysis, conflict resolution, background factors, leadership
Group Analysis
Organization performance and productivity are highly dependent on the employees’ personalities, their beliefs, attitudes, and values.

How these factors come into play and influence the ultimate results is hidden in the team dynamics. Tubbs (2011) explains these dynamics from a narrow approach and reveals that people in a group relate with one another based on their self-awareness, and willingness to share about themselves with others. Also, how others in the group see a person or the person’s personality can form a debatable point of increasing one’s participation, interactions, accountability, cooperation, integrity, and honesty. According to Tubbs (211, p.171), these are the factors that increase performance, satisfaction and are likely to accelerate the growth towards the objectives of a group. In this paper, organization’s performance and culture are investigated in relation to the group’s characteristics and structure. In doing so, a working group I belong to at work is analyzed to understand how our interactions influenced our performance and ultimate results. In no doubt, individual’s personality, values, and effective processes in decision making, conflict resolutions and task execution were the key drivers of our success.
Organizational Culture and Group Characteristics
Organization culture represents a working system of beliefs, attitudes, values and acceptable behaviors that influence the ultimate results. These control the way employees understand their roles, one another and their interaction, consequently deciding the dominant behavior supportive to overall success. Organization culture, however, is a result of group characteristics that are the physical formation (territoriality and sitting patterns), group size and structure. I have participated in a research group in a Human Resource department at work. In this workgroup, these characteristics have been effective in the ways important to the group (McBride et al., 2017). The group comprises of five members.
We were strangers to each other but later became both friends and workmates. We all became integrated into almost a single teamwork structure of thoughts, actions, and interaction. Perhaps the most influential person in the group is our leader, Donovan, who although not so talkative influences everyone’s decisions in the group affectionately. He is the most affectionate member of the group but unaware that we consider him as an introvert due to his silent most of the time. Tubbs (2011) refers to this situation in the Johari Window as a blind spot; things others know about us, but we do not. Nevertheless, he is capable of getting everyone along in a conversation and discussion, something that we all looked when choosing him as our group leader. Consequently, the group structure has been effective particularly in the way we interact, make decisions and solve conflicts in the group. Admittedly, the structure has been determined by the many other inputs in a group including a communication network and background factors.
Relevant Background Factors in a Group
Diversity within our group has been both existent and effective. It is a result of different age groups, attitudes, opinions, beliefs, personality and values as represented by members. Briefly, all the five group members were of different ages between 19 and 35 years. Donovan is the oldest, and this possibly contributes to his personality that we all admire. He is visionary, affectionate and coach us towards the success of group activities. The group also comprises people from different cultural backgrounds, and these have provided the group with important values. These values influence how we make decisions and help maintain integrity and ethics in the group. More importantly, they influence how we handle our tasks. For example, there is an Asian lady, Janelle, from Philippines who always take tasks involving physical involvement such as arranging seats and using tools. Despite being a female, she completes tasks believed to be for males in the group. This comes from her background in an Asian farming community where she has pointed out severally that all people believe in hard work and working as a group.
Consequently, Janelle has inspired others in the group to take such tasks with a positive attitude, while congratulations from other members accompany successful completion. This supports the theoretical principles by Tubbs (2011, p. 145) where he reveals that background factors such as age, health, values and beliefs influence group functioning. Notably, these factors differ from one person or personality to another consequently bringing forth a mix of relevant attributes useful in the development of organizational culture. Clark (2015), however, warns that these differences may cause conflict between members. It, therefore, becomes important to see what strategies are in place to both prevent and address conflicts.
Leadership
According to Tsai (2011), effective interaction between the leadership and group members contributes to improved communication and the collaboration. The reason for this is that leadership has a vital role in uniting the group members, keeping them motivated and focused towards the common goals (Quinby, 2016). I am a beneficially of a good group leader. It works to promote unity, participation, and performance within the groups. Donovan has demonstrated strong leadership traits including being intelligent, fluent, affectionate, and charismatic. His characters and personality are supported by the Trait Theory of Leadership that explains that individual’s traits do influence our actions and relationship with others (Clark, 2015).
Good leadership qualities are influenced by one’s values and beliefs (Clark, 2015). This explains why Christianity values such as love, care, honesty, integrity, and forgiveness are found in many leaders. More importantly, they are effective when resolving conflicts between members and sharing of roles within the group without discrimination and biasness (Quinby, 2016). More importantly, they influence a leader when expressing power (Roberts, 2017). For example, being a Christian has influenced Donovan’s leadership as he expresses himself to the members. Consequently, he is liked by all members and this becomes for him to influence the group.
According to class notes, the kind of a leader has referent power. This is the kind of leadership power that is achieved through truth, admiration, appeal, and respect. It is one of the most effective and thus most important in a group environment. According to Roberts (2017), others kind of power include expert, legitimate and reward, and they all influence a group performance significantly.
Decision Making
Another important aspect of an effective group is the ability to make decisions when effecting change or addressing a challenge. There are many techniques for use when making in a group context (Akdere, 2011). However, the key drivers are members’ inclusion and involvement in the process. At a personal level, decision making has been an important process that requires everyone’s inputs. Consequently, the diversity in the group tends to enrich this process and increases the chances of arriving the best decision (Chitpin & Jones, 2015). Normally, reflective thinking has been the group’s preferred decision-making process when implementing change. This is the process that involved identification of the problem, its causes, both acceptable and available solutions, and finally picking the best (Beebe & Masterson, 2016, p.291). Also, the implementation of the chosen solution has to be affordable, and achievable (Quinby, 2016). The best thing about this process is that it uses inputs from all members of the group thereby utilizing diverse skills, capability creativity the members’ present (McBride et al., 2017). The ultimate of such inputs include satisfaction, effective strategies and increased participation in group tasks.
We have also used the Kepner-Tregoe approach in decision making. It is a troubleshooting technique when solving a problem that may arise in the middle of the change process and when a project fails to meet the expected results. This including identifying the problem causes the point in which it occurred in the process and the required action to correct the fault (Beebe & Masterson, 2016). Even in this techniques, members have to give ideas, and this comes with several ideas and finally pick the one considered effective and realistic regarding implementation, time and other inputs (McBride et al., 2017). Consequently, the group can come up with solutions and strategies that demonstrate a high level of collaboration, innovativeness, and creativity. Finally, another important tool for decision making that the group uses at times is the Force Field analytical model. Similar to others mentioned here above, this has been helpful in identifying both driving and restraining forces in group activities
Force Field Analytical Model
This model was developed in 1951 by Kurt Lewin as a graphical tool for effecting change in an organization or group context (Swanson & Creed, 2014). The keynote when analyzing a team using this tool is finding the differences between how things are and how they are supposed to be, then identifying factors for change and those against it (Swanson & Creed, 2014). In our group settings factors for change has been skilled and experienced members of the group. Also, effective leadership by Donovan and his assistant Mary has been helpful in planning, execution, and completion of activities. Finally, strong group attachment and relatedness has been another factor that is attributable to the achievements made. More importantly, this has strengthened the group structure in that values such as accountability, honesty, caring, and love exist in all members.
The restraining forces in the group during the project activities include the resistance to change, which is sometimes caused by the fear of unknown. For example, when the team leader announced that we were to research new strategies for employees’ engagement and motivation, many of us were afraid since we could not believe were to abandon the progress we had made up to that point (Akdere, 2011). Besides, we thought we had given the best in the project, and we could not find other better than those strategies. However, things became easy when the criteria for developing and selecting the strategies changed. Another restraining factor to change is resources. There are many times when we have planned a project but failed to finish due to lack of resources. Moreover, reduced participation in a group has been restraining factors since some members may fail to share their ideas or even complete the tasks given to them. Finally, some conflicts in the groups have also contributed to project lateness.
Conflict management
In some ways, conflict management is an aspect of group effectiveness and success. The reason for this is that conflicts do occur in group contexts, especially in the early storming stage of group development (Quinby, 2016). Conflicts between members and the leadership of a member and another have risen in the human resource group, almost leading to a serious breakdown of the group. At one time, one the members named Mohammed came into a disagreement with another Miriam. The disagreement was on the appropriate on a question that was supposed to be included in a questionnaire for marketing research. They both almost busted into insults when Donovan intervened and helped them agree.
This supports the finding in Chitpin and Jones (2015) research that differences in our cultures, gender, age, religion and personal values are the source of conflicts that may arise in a group. However, with strong and effective leadership, and proper interactions in the group, the likelihood of conflicts occurring is minimized (Akdere, 2011). Even when people are offended, they are quick to forgive, love and agree on peaceful measure based on the values they uphold. Specifically, Christianity advocates for forgiveness, love and assisting each other in times of conflicts. Such systems, therefore, enables people in a group to live together as a family and address each other as friends, with respect and honesty.
Conclusion
In brief, organization and group achievements are highly dependant on the group structure. The structure refers to the way the members interact, plan and execute the core activities. The most important thing in developing a sustainable and effective group structure is having a strong system of values as the members’ diversity supports. This helps the entire group in coming up with ideas and sharing of roles. Also, having powerful techniques and tools for use in making decision and troubleshooting processes in a group is important. Such techniques include the Kepner-Tregoe Approach, Force Field analysis, and reflective thinking. Perhaps another important input in every group’s setting is personality. This refers to the narrowed behavioral characteristic of each member in a group, particularly how they interact with others as described in the Johari Window theory. By understanding ourselves and others, then we can come up with better ways of addressing each other, thus reducing and preventing conflicts. Consequently, individuals’ performance and productivity in a group will increases which translates into a high level of organization performance and productivity.
References
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