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Week 3 Case Study The Forgotten Group Member 1. How could an understanding of the stages of group development assist Christine in leadership situations such as this one? Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing Understanding the stages of group development could assist Christine by giving her a proven method to follow and a set of rules in order to set the team up for success from the very beginning. Particularly in the forming stage, she would know how to direct the team meetings and have good methods to try to get people to agree on the how, what, when, and where of an effective team.
A clear set of rules should be established to guide them and set limits on behavior and actions that may be encountered. With this in mind, one must know that there are those that will not live within the guidelines regardless of the conditions and in those instances; a different approach should be pursued for that instance. Mike is the typical, against the grain, individual that has to be dealt with in an alternative way. If Christine is unable to get him to comply with the needs of the team she needs to send him on his way if no other way gets him into the game.
I had a similar group in my final class for my BS, We had one person whose husband was trying to do her work and was sporadic at best. He could not construct a proper sentence and always came up with excuses why his wife was unavailable. We ended up discussing the situation with the instructor who insisted we keep her (him) in the group and give them the chance to help but ultimately we got together and finished the assignment without her inputs and received an “A” in the class. 2. What should Christine understand about individual membership in groups in order to build group processes that are supportive of her work group’s performance?
As mentioned previously, all individuals should live by the rules agreed upon by the team/group. She should learn what each individual is good at and what they are least effective at and then they will have an idea of a direction to go with the group and who is best to proceed in which areas. I would suggest teaming someone who is good with a certain part with someone who is not good at it in order to educate the lesser experienced person into the process. Ultimately the team will agree on the processes and come to a common conclusion over the project as a whole but there are individual parts to the overall project. . Is Christine an effective group leader in this case? Why or why not? In my opinion, Christine could improve in areas but is doing the best she can with what she has. She can ask each individual for input which would get all the best responses by incorporating Diane who is quiet and only responds when directly asked but had high quality input. Janet and Steve are team members that every team wants to have because they go above and beyond and always push themselves to do their best.