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In ten years, I anticipate that I will be working for Victoria’s Secret. I want to be working in their marketing department. I want to be working to promote the company and their merchandise. I want to also help with the runway shows, whether it be planning the setup of the shows, working with the models backstage, or marketing the show. I want to be one of their key people; a person the company relies on heavily for their success and survival of the company. While doing my job, I will be inclined to form group meetings as well as participate in group meetings. The meetings will allow the members to collaborate ideas. Also, the meetings will be used as a way to contribute and discuss ideas. They will also allow the members of the group to get to know each other. The better people get along and know each other, the better they will work together. A key skill that will be needed for these small group meetings is communication. Communication is very symbolic. It is also a process and it is personal. Communication is symbolic in that a symbol is a person-created signal that represents something with which it has no direct or natural relationship. These are important because they are convenient for thinking and communicating with other people. It allows us not to have items present to represent them to other people. Symbols also have liabilities. Their meaning must be interpreted. Symbols can be misused and misunderstood. Communication involves human senses, feelings, meanings, and cultural experiences. It is not just the words of nouns and verbs. Communication is a continuous process. It never ends and is always on going. Communication is also very personal. The meanings of communication are in people. A word may mean something completely different to somebody else. Also, communication is a transactional process. Communication is simultaneous and multidirectional. People must work together to create mutual understandings for what words and concepts mean. Also, members can consciously help each other in this process. All of these characteristics of communication play a huge part in allowing communication to take place. To effectively use communication, the group’s communication needs to be made productive and that is the responsibility of every member. Also, one must keep in mind that perfect understanding among group members is impossible. Without communication, messages would not be sent and received. Ideas and concepts would not be understood by others. Therefore, communication is a key skill that all members of a small group must perform in order to be successful. Some other skills needed for small group success is the ability of one to listen, receive, interpret, and respond to messages from other group members. To listen, one must perceive a message, interpret it, and then decide what the message means. Finally, one must respond to the message to let the sender know the message was received and understood. I would need all of these skills to perform well in my group meetings. Communication will allow us to convey messages and listening would allow me to perceive the message. Then, interpretation would allow me to understand the message. Finally, response allows me to convey ideas on the message or symbol communicated. Currently, I have a good portion of these skills. I have communication skills. Sometimes, though, I keep some ideas to myself because I am scared of what others will think of my ideas or messages. Also, sometimes when I randomly blurt out my ideas, I just speak without thinking the answer through. The answer doesn’t come out right. Immediately, people assume the “dumb-blonde” stance. I’m really not dumb; I just don’t think things through before I speak. Also, I am a good listener. I listen to people well. I also interpret the messages and I perceive them. Sometimes though, I don’t respond to the message. This happens because I either don’t feel like sharing my opinions or that I don’t understand the message completely. Also, sometimes I just feel like the message doesn’t need a response. I do this when I feel that the message given was common sense and it’s not worth taking an extra breath to speak a word about. I do this quite often. People sometimes perceive me to be ignorant when I do this. I need to brush up on my responsive skills if I want to be successful in my dream job. I don’t want people to think of me as being ignorant or dumb. Both of these can be avoided if I take time to think through my response and respond to a message. Leadership Small group leadership skills which I feel are most important are those involved with performing administrative duties, leading group discussions, developing the group, and managing written communication. When one performs duties of leadership that involve performing administrative duties, they usually start with planning and preparing meetings. The leader makes sure that there are only meetings held if there is a reason to hold a meeting. They also make sure that everyone knows what is expected to be accomplished during the meeting. The leaders make sure everyone knows the place, starting and closing times for the meeting. If the meetings are constantly starting late or running overtime, the members of the group are going to be less inclined to attend the group meetings. The leaders also make sure that the special resource people are present at the meeting, and then the leader must advise and prepare them for the meeting. They must also make all physical arrangements, such as reserving the room, arranging seats appropriately, and bringing the needed supplies. The leader should also keep track of member assignments, and to answer any questions or comments that other groups have with the leader’s current group. Also, the leader must follow up on the meetings. Some administrative duties of performing leadership that are important are leading group discussions and developing the group. For leading the discussions, the leader needs to help initiate discussions. He/she can do this by helping to reduce primary tensions, giving members informational and organizational handouts, seeing that special roles are established as needed, suggesting procedures to follow and to ask a clear question to help members focus on the first issue on the agenda. Also, the leader should briefly review the purpose of the meetings, the specific outcomes desired, and the area of freedom with the group. The leader needs to keep the group goal oriented, put the discussion or problem-solving procedure in front of the group members faces, and structure the group’s time. The leader needs to speak to the group as a whole and make eye contact with everyone, especially the less-talkative people. The leader should control dominating or long-winded speakers, encourage the less-talkative members to participate, avoid commenting after each member’s comments, ask questions to make sure everyone point-of-view is on the same track, and remain neutral during arguments. Most importantly, a big part of leading group discussions is developing and stimulating creative and critical thinking within the group. The leader can develop creative thinking by suggesting discussion techniques, encouraging the group to search for more alternatives, discuss the components of the problem one at a time, and watch for suggestions that open up new areas of thought and pose a question about it. The leader can stimulate critical thinking by encouraging group members to evaluate information and reasoning, make sure that all group members understand and accept the standards, criteria, or assumptions used in making judgments, and see that all proposed solutions are tested thoroughly before they are accepted as final group decisions. When developing the group, the leader should establish a climate of trust. He/She should do this by establishing norms to build trust. The leader should also function as a coordinator, not a dictator and encourage members to get to know each other. The leader needs to develop teamwork and promote cooperation. The leader can develop teamwork by speaking of “us” and “we” rather than “I” and “you”. The leader can develop a slogan or symbol to represent the group, watch for evidence of hidden agenda items that conflict with group goals, and use appropriate conflict management approaches and procedures. The leader should share the rewards with the group, and lighten things up by laughing and joking. The last important leadership skill needed is managing the written communication. The leader can do this by making sure the group keeps accurate records and copies of all written communications. Lastly, the leader must make sure that the report and resolution is turned in on time at the appropriate place. If the leader fails to do this, the whole group gets sacrifices, and the leader will gain a lot enemies. I believe that when I am leading a group, I perform most of these duties. Some I do neglect though. Those which I should improve on and incorporate into my group leading skills are structuring the group’s time, asking questions to make sure everyone point-of-view is on the same track, and also making sure that special resource people are advised and prepared for the meeting by checking up with them and plotting a timeline that has needs to be met. I could start making timelines of how the group’s time is used. I figure out what needs to be done and we always make sure it is done in the time allotted. A timeline, though, may keep things more organized and less stressful on both me and the group members. I rarely ask questions, for anything, so imagine how hard it is for me to ask fellow members of a group questions to try and stimulate critical thinking. This is necessary and I need to improve on that. I will try and incorporate questions from now on that allow creative thinking as well as critical thinking. I have never really dealt with special resource people. They always did it themselves or I didn’t have any at all. I will make sure in the future to make sure they are prepared and won’t be wasting the group’s time. Leadership skills like these would help me a lot when it comes to working with runway shows and marketing for Victoria’s Secret. These skills would allow me to be the role model, to be looked up to. The skills would keep me organized, and make me look professional to my clients and fellow employees. They would help me attract the attention of my boss, and allow me to be a respected individual. Observations During the first semester, the class participated in various formal group activities. We did a study group for the exam, we did a problem employee and we did an interview group. For the study group exam, we all got together and put together a study guide for our assigned question and also we developed six multiple choice questions to help the other students study for the exam. We all got together and decided right off the bat what to do. We split everything into parts and assigned each part to every person. We made sure all of the parts were fair, and that everyone had equal amounts of work. The idea was to bring to the next class each person’s assigned part typed up and photo-copied. We created an outline from the notes and also an outline from the book for our section. We also produced six multiple choice questions which allowed the students to think creatively and to help them prepare for the exam. We all communicated very well. We made sure everyone knew what parts they had to do and when they were due by. We listened to each other and collaborated ideas. We got everything done successfully and effectively. Therefore, the group was very effective. Also, we were posed with a problem. SRT tech has an employee named Darla Dangle. She is a computer network specialist who is responsible for the company’s local network and its interface with a variety of software providers and clients. She is an independent operator, and she keeps to herself. She also has an office space that is a complete disaster and she never socializes. The idea was to come up with a letter to give to Darla describing in a polite but formal way describing her weaknesses and asking her to improve on her weaknesses without intimidating her or without her quitting. We formed groups (and well, only Jalet and I were in this group) and we both collaborated our individual, original letters to form one letter which we think best suits the described, ideal letter. We both analyzed each others letters and then we discussed what we thought worked and what we thought didn’t work. We also cleared up any confusions one had about the others papers. We then decided to take certain parts from each letter that were good and we put them all together to form one, master letter. We typed up the letter and turned it into Maryellen. We received a thirty-fie out of forty which isn’t too bad. Maryellen wrote that we had some organizational problems and a few generalizations. This probably happened because we compiled different parts from the two different letters, and we weren’t thorough enough with our information. We should have read over and discussed the final project, which we did not get a chance to do. We did however share the leadership responsibility, and we could have worked more on communication. I think our group could have been more effective. We had a few organizational problems that weren’t worked out and happened to be right before the due time for the letter. If we would have been more organized and on top of things, the letter would have been a lot better. If we communicated on the final product, we would have noticed mistakes that the other didn’t, and we may have gotten a perfect score. Lastly, the class participated in the interview group. Unfortunately, I was not in class one of the first meeting days for this project so I was not allowed to complete the assignment. The groups that interviewed me, I’d say, were fairly organized and knew what they were doing. Team Youth had excellent questions and the whole group got into asking questions for evaluation. Also, Alfred accounting interviewed me. They seemed organized too, but it seemed like there may have been a few who were doing more of the project then the others. If the whole group does not work on a project together and does not function as a group, the “group” assignment cannot fluctuate. It seemed as though two students asked questions while the others sat there not paying attention. Now does that really pay off for learning how to work with a group? I’d think not. All of these group projects really paid off. They all taught me that everyone in the group needs to put in his/her part fairly. Also, I learned that if one person slacks, the whole group goes down with them. You need to help keep your fellow group members up to speed, and everyone needs to listen and communicate. Also, I learned that I can’t always be the leader because honestly, some things I just can’t handle. It’s better to share leadership with someone. That way, it’s not as much as a dictatorship. The leader needs to be a friend as well as a model. The leader holds the group together, and makes sure everything is completed in order and on time. Finally, I learned that it’s not about liking the people in the group. You all have a common goal and that in itself is enough to share friendliness, form a friendship and get to know someone you wouldn’t have bother with before. Summary and Assessment Over this past semester, we have worked on various projects which were suppose to improve our group skills. Skills which we have all improved on are participation, communication and leadership. For participation, I participated a good amount. On September 30th, I answered three questions from Maryellen. Then, on October 2nd, I asked one question and answered on question. This is a step up from not asking any questions at all in class. On October 14th, I answered two more questions. My goal also was to ask around two questions per week, and to comment on other student’s ideas. I did, however, answer one question. This does not reach my goal of around eight to twelve questions. I also answered six questions; my goal was to answer around eight to twelve questions in the weeks of evaluation. I did, however, obtain one part of my goal: not to over participate and to allow the other students chances at participation. I have overall good participation skills, and don’t have much of a problem expressing myself in class. As you are aware, I participate a lot. I am always willing to express my ideas, even if its ninety percent of the class against my ideas An example would be the setup that we did about the black student and the student with a learning ability getting the same grades, etc and how we split the class room in half and I created examples and such to get the classmates thinking. I even changed my opinion willingly without worrying about what others thought. I was just purely expressing my ideas. I did not ask as many questions as I had hoped to, but I did improve overall in participation. I plan on participating more when it comes to class and I plan on asking questions to the professor. This will help me improve on my weak areas. The strengths I have will allow me to overcome my fear of asking questions. When it comes to leadership, I have a couple of weaknesses. The things that I should improve on and incorporate into my group leading skills are structuring the group’s time, asking questions to make sure everyone point-of-view is on the same track, and also making sure that special resource people are advised and prepared for the meeting by checking up with them and plotting a timeline that has needs to be met. For organizing the meetings and planning for special resource people to come, I realize that I have never really dealt with special resource people. They always did it themselves or I didn’t have any at all. I will make sure in the future that they are prepared and won’t be wasting the group’s time. I also rarely ask questions, for anything, so I need to ask fellow members of my group questions to try and stimulate critical thinking. This is necessary to improve on. Overall, I think that the group skills I learned this semester in Maryellen’s class will provide some life-long skills. I now know a lot more about groups and participating in them then I ever have. I know what to expect in the future. I know what my weaknesses are and how to improve them. I know what my strengths are and how to use them to my full advantage. I know that no matter what, a leader will always be in me, and I will always know how to organize and hold effective group meetings.
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