Personal Learning Paper on Group Dyanamic

Personal Learning Paper

On

Group Dyanamics (OB 2)

                                        submitted to

Xavier University Bhubaneswar

[pic 1]

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of

Masters in Business Administration

Human Resource Management

SUBMITTED TO

DR. SNIGDHA

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR - 1

by

SHIV TANEJA

MBA HRM 1

Roll. No. UH17119

ABSTRACT

This personal learning paper is an attempt to put into words the understanding the importance of working as a group, impact of the group as a whole on me. The attempt in this paper is to articulate the process of organizing the event Vakritva – the inaugural event by SRC. The aim of the paper is to relate the concepts learnt during theoretical classes with the process of organizing the event. The topics that have been covered are group dynamics, leadership, decision making and conflict management. The paper also describes what the personal learning is and how it helped me to apply concepts learned with it.

Table of contents

1. INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………………....3

2. WORKING WITH GROUPS……………………………………………………………….3

3. `LEADERSHIP AND INFLUENCE………………………………………………………..5

4. DECISION MAKING…………………………….................................................................6

5.CONFLICT MANAGEMENT ...............................................................................................7

6. PERSONAL LEARNINGS………………….…....................................................................8

INTRODUCTION

Groups – a collection of two or more than two people who come together to form a group to perform a task interaction. In my case the group that I am writing about is the group that was formed in Xavier University Bhubaneswar – The Vakritva group of Social Responsibility Cell(SRC). This was an event that was held on the first day of Xpressions i.e. on 11’th of November 2017 by SRC and SpeakUp. The event was about creating awareness about many social issues that we are plagued with. The format of the event was that the participants were to be given a topic from a bunch of various social challenges that we still face. The various social issues that were included were depression amongst kids, the growing problem of old age homes, sexual abuse, juvenile crimes, honor crime. The participants registered in teams of two and were given about 30 minutes to prepare on the topic and were then expected to deliver an extempore, skit or a presentation for about 5 minutes. The judges judged the participants on their delivery impact, content, time limit, innovation amongst other parameters. As a part of the SRC, I had volunteered to be a Point of Contact for this event hence it taught me a lot on how to deal with groups, people, importance of leadership, power dynamics, handling conflicts and decision-making process.

WORKING WITH GROUPS

The group was made with the aim of task interaction and relationship interaction. The task at hand with us was to ensure that we can pull off the event successfully. This was the first time that such an event was organized by SRC and SpeakUp, hence it was essential that we all worked as a team to ensure that the event was a success. For ensuring that we were able to deliver the event successfully the group cohesiveness was an important factor. The two types of cohesion sources that I associated with were task cohesion and structural cohesion. Task cohesion was evident with the fact that we all POC and the organizing people shared our commitment towards a similar group goal. The group had a potency to deliver well on the ensuring that we deliver the event successfully specially when it was being organized for the first time. Being a closed group of SRC members with whom I connect as this committee is close to my heart I developed strong bonds with them and we had a good cohesion. The group formation followed Tuckman’s 5 stage Model of Group Development. The first stage was Forming. In this stage the group was formed amongst the people working for SRC. After that the next stage was Storming. In this part of group formation, we had a deliberation on what topics we must choose to give the contestants. Also during this stage, I decided to take up the role of an informal leader. This event being close to me I decided to put forward my best foot to ensure we deliver on the required aspects. We clarified the role that everyone was supposed to be doing and how we would like to organize the event. Next, we moved on the stage of Norming. During this stage we had a clear cut devised work that had to be done before we performed the event during Xpressions on the 11’th of November. We had to decide on the topics, the format of the event, judges, rules of the competition, the venue and the prizes to be awarded. During this stage everyone did their part of the job that was allocated to them to ensure that we deliver an event without any hiccups on the day. Then we came to the most important aspect of Performing when everyone came together to ensure we deliver the event. From putting up banners to making the chits for randomly allocating the topics to receiving the judges everything was done perfectly in this stage. The end result was that we were able to hold the event without too many major challenges and it was indeed a succession. Then was the adjourning phase where we all were happy to have been able to hold the event well. The members left the group and went ahead to their other activities lined up for the day with a feeling of accomplishment and happiness. Another concept that I could relate to was the roles that were assigned and how it impacts us. In the Stanford Prison Experiment, we saw how the jailors who were in a position of power got swayed by it and went out of their normal behavior, I as the POC ensured that even though I had an additional responsibility I make sure to take every one along rather than being an authoritarian person. Everybody was assigned a specific task and it was expected that they deliver that on time. For example, some people were allocated the responsibility to frame the rules of the event, some on finding sub topics or caselets for each topic while some were allocated the task to design mails of invitation for inviting the registrations. We had informal norms that were formed and everyone was expected to follow them. The norms included doing our work, managing studies and this additional work given to them alongside ensuring we all help one another to deliver our best. Since our task allocation was specific to every person as to what is expected from them and we all could identify ourselves perfectly with the task at hand some of the causes of Social Loafing were removed and we all had a collaborated effort towards the task. The membership that we shared in the group was Voluntary as we all had raised our hand that we wanted to be a part of Vakritva. When these concepts were taught and I figured out how actually these can be applied it taught me how important groups are. This enabled me an opportunity to reflect how we did well and how we can do better. What I learnt from this topic on group is how to relate so many concepts. Many times, we don’t even realize how exactly these concepts fit in our role even though we may not be familiar with our work.