Effective application of good leadership and group dynamics remains as one of the most effective methods of maintaining intrinsic group member’s commitment to their work, relationship with others, cooperation with the management and contribution towards achieving the mission of a group for the sole purpose of growth and sustainability.
Effective leadership has been considered as a necessary ingredient in providing the needed role modeling for members to assimilate in their groups. Although this concept is voluntary, it has strong effects especially at the team level. Through the use of effective role models at different levels of a group, effective leadership is easily assimilated as part of a group’s culture and further used in setting up high standards in work performance.
Description of the group in terms of membership, size, whether it is open or closed, type, its purpose and agenda as well as stage of development.
The group I observed was the social workers group which was composed of members who were mainly concerned with creating awareness on health related issues and enhancing community health awareness. This group was made up of 20 members most of whom were of female gender. The age group of this particular set was at an average of 18-30 years. It is also imperative to mention that most of its members came from different cultural backgrounds.
In addition, the group was comprised of a leadership team made of a chairperson, a secretary and quite a number of coordinators. One important characteristic of t this group is that it was open ended in nature characterized by a drop-in format whereby its sessions received different memberships and its times for meeting varied a lot ranging from daily, bi-weekly to monthly. The last group meeting that was held had sixteen members in terms of total attendance.
The purpose of establishing this group was to provide the community (especially those who were sick or undergoing through some kind of pain) with empathy and support. The two aforementioned values were considered to be key ingredients towards recovery as well as creating awareness on community health.
The group has been in existence for nearly three years and is considered to be one among many related groups that is well established. Its meetings are frequent and its leadership is well developed. Its agenda during th last meeting included expanding its activities to new regions, providing primary care to the sick in the community, creating awareness on protecting the environment against health hazards and promoting education at all levels.
Interpretation of the questions learnt from discussing the group: role of the formal leader in the group, how the members got along with each other, what were the successes or failures and what would have been done differently.
Leadership in this group appears to be effective and competent as already discussed and evident in the previous question. In their view, Buki and Hornig (2011) point out that effective leader facilitate reestablishment and review of groups’ visions toward achieving the holistic mission of an organization.
Chou and Garcia (2011) are quite categorical that leaders must be able to link their groups’ visions with expected benefits that derive the desire to achieve them while cautioning on mechanisms of establishing group leaders in an organization or when managing groups from various backgrounds.
As contingency theory of leadership indicates, a leader must be able to operate from a much higher platform compared to the rests of the members. The leader in this group links the group’s vision with desired performance outcome and provides the much needed effective guidelines that keep the group members united and focused on the benefits they are to achieve from commitment to their work.
According to London, Sobel-Lojeski and Reilly (2012), poor autonomy in an organization has remained a key demoralizing factor and therefore a major force against attaining holistic objectives.
Whether poor motivation results from lack of autonomy in a given group or from other considerations, providing groups with effective autonomy creates a sense of trust by the management to its employees and therefore generates a stronger sense of identity not only with the ideologies they propose, but also the management delineations towards the organization’s mission. In this group, the level of autonomy has been guaranteed and effective assessment has done to facilitate only the level that can be effectively articulated.
The composition of this group has factored internal regulatory mechanisms that further propagate and propose the need to trim or add their independence of operations. In their group meetings and the various activities that they have already carried out, the group was cohesive and exhibited a teamwork spirit. The group members were active and their cohesiveness was witnessed in the manner in which they showed positive relationships and worked towards attaining a positive outcome.
This formed the better part of the group’s success story. However, the group appeared to lack homogeneity among the members especially when it came to discussing common issues such as goals and objectives. There were members who were quite often resentful of proposals brought forward even without any good reason.
Finally, I suppose the group should be providing its agenda well in advance so that members can openly debate on the issues at hand even before the actual formal meetings are held. Any suggested rectifications on the agenda from any member should be taken with keen interest.
References
Buki, A. & Hornig, J. (2011). Group dynamics. ASEE Prism, 20(9), 19.
Chou, S., & Garcia, D. (2011). Group organizational citizenship behavior in the stages of group development. International Journal of Business and Management, 6(10), 3-15.
London, M., Sobel-Lojeski, K., & Reilly, R. (2012). Leading generative groups: a conceptual model. Human Resource Development Review, 11(1), 31.