Chapter 11, 12 & 13 ! Leaders in small group; Workplace communication & issue

Small Group

There are various roles to play in a small group and below is the 12 roles that is inherent in group tasks:

1. Initiator
2. Information seeker
3. Opinion seeker
4. Information giver
5. Opinion giver
6. Elaborator
7. Coordinator
8. Orienter
9. Evaluator
10. Energizer
11. Procedural technician
12. Recorder

However, sometime you need to build the relationship in the group, so below are 7 roles to play in process of group building and maintenance roles:

1. Encourager
2. Harmonizer
3. Compromiser
4. Gatekeeper
5. Standard setter
6. Observer
7. Follower

At the end of the day, every individual will perform their roles as well and you need to identify which one of these people are in your group, there are 8 roles in the group:

1. Aggressor
2. Blocker
3. Recognition seeker
4. Self-confessor
5. Playboy/girl
6. Dominator
7. Help seeker
8. Special interested pleader
9. 
   

Now, how do we ensure a group has good or effective interaction and contribute efficiently?

First, do interaction process analysis by allowing group member to be quantiatively scored in different qualitative areas.

Second, ensure effective member participation by emphasize team work, avoid attacking others, be open-minded to criticism, allow time for understanding and discourage 'groupthink'.

Besides, every groups must have a leader to lead and guide group members, a leader must be able to:

1. Be ready
2. Activate the group Agenda
3. Encourage group interaction
4. Empower group member
5. Maintain effective interaction
6. Keep member on track 
7. Ensure member satisfaction and welfare
8. Evaluate effectively
9. Manage conflict

Organizational Communication 

What is organization? 

Organization is a group of people gathered with the same purpose of working together to achieve an collective and compatible goal

Why organization is important ?

Because it creates jobs/employment adapting to a converging world, influence/power of majority.

An organization’s characteristics is divided into 4 :

1.Rules & regulations

2.Division of labor

3.A system of reward and consequences

4.‘cultural’ values and beliefs

                           How to be an effective employee?

1.Be impressive – appropriate dressing, grooming is essential in any organization.

2.Be positive – the world is a cruel place, but it is also a very forgetful and forgiving place

3.Be culturally sensitive – especially if you are working in cross cultural/international environment.

4.Be respectful & open – because nobody likes rude and unfriendly people.

5.Be interested – because the last thing you want people to think of you is “does he/ she want the job or not?”

Communication within the organization can be divided into formal and informal categories:

Formal :

1.Upward – from lower level employees to higher level employees; for example : executive to manager

2.Downward – from higher level employees to lower level employees : for example : managers to executives

3.Lateral – same level; from managers to managers, executive to executives.

Informal:

            Grapevine/pipeline – no hierarchy and no authoritative intention/action.

            For example: rumors, gossips

            Grapevine communication is an indication that the topic of matter is:

   –Unproven

   –sensitive

Communication has different format in small group :

1.Circle – everyone is communicating with one another

2.Wheel – everyone communicates towards a central receiver

3.Y – a split in one or more area in the communication chain.

4.Chain – ‘pass – along’ communication

5.All channel – everybody talks to one another with no hierarchy and authority level.

However, it's important to remain ethical and maintain when it comes to information, gender issue, bullying and netrwork.

What is conflict?

Conflict is argument or problems that arose because of an extreme in opinions or beliefs between one.

There are 2 types of conflict:

1.Intrapersonal conflict :

–When you have problems with yourself.

–“why am I not good enough to get the promotion”

2.Interpersonal conflict :

–Conflict with others in the organization, but usually through :

•Online channels – emails, messages etc

•Verbal message – insults, words, texts

There are 3 principle of conflict:

1.Conflict can center on content and relationship issues

2.Conflict can be negative or positive

3.Conflict take place in a context

Stage of conflict management:

1.Define the conflict

2.Establish criteria

3.Identify the possible solutions

4.Evaluate solutions

5.Select the best solutions

6.Test and evaluate solution

CONFLICT MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES:

1. Win-lose & Win-win strategy

2. Avoidance and active fighting

3. Force and talk

4. Blame and empathy

5. Gunny sacking and present focus

6. Manipulating and Spontaneity

Video Presentation!

In the same week that we did the mini presentation, we had a video presentation as well.
We presented our video on Saturday which is 29/3/2014.

This video is based on the topic given by the lecturer.
Our topic for this video is Intrapersonal.

During the filming process of the video, it was hilarious and there is a great sense of humor in it.
We hope everyone will enjoy it!

For those who did not get to watch our video on that day, you can watch it here!

Quiz..... and Mini presentation!

Today we had a quiz which consists of questions from Chapter 8 and 9.
It was only True or False questions.
To be honest the quiz wasn't hard if we did study........



Besides, this week we were required to do a mini presentation.
The mini presentation is the subtopic of a few chapters.

Our group's subtopic was Member Participation from Chapter 11.

This mini presentation was on Thursday  which is March 27 2014.

Chapter 10 - Small Group Communication

Everyday when we go to university we will gather and talk to our friends.No matter where we go the small group communication always occur.

For example, every time in class we will sit in group and discuss about random topics and then we go for lunch together.

Our group members Pui Yee, Yin Nee and Joanna are baking.
During the baking process, the small group communication occurred.

Small group is formed when :

• there is a common purpose like doing a project
• one person has to depend on another or to complement each other
• there are certain rules in small group.
• the feeling of being belong to a larger group of common liking and beliefs.

Small group is also considered as TEAM

• Specific purpose - to complete task or solve problems
• Clearly defined roles - must have a leader and members should cooperate
• Goal directed - achieving common goals
• Content focused - not easily distracted

Team can be Face-to-Face or in virtual world like video conference.

There are five stages in small group.

Small group formats

• Round table
  

• The panel

• The symposium

Power in small group

• Legitimate
• Referent
• Reward
• Coercive
• Expert
• Information

Types of small groups

• Idea-generation group
• Personal growth group
• Information-sharing group
• Problem-solving group

Six Critical Thinking Hat

Chapter 9 Friends, Lovers and Families

Major topics of this chapter

1. Friendship
2. Romantic relationship
3. Families

What is friendship ?

Friendship is an interpersonal relationship and must be mutually productive. It also characterized by mutual positive regard (you like me, i like you). There are three types of friendship--- first is the friendship of reciprocity, second is the friendship of receptivity and last is the friendship of association.Friendship is very important in our life. We share, we care, and do many crazy things together. Cherish everyone that appear in your life. These are some pictures that i took with my friends

Stay overnight at joh yee's house

BBQ night <3

During assignment, lets take a selfie first

 

Accompany Alan to buy iPhone,but don't know why we are hyper than the owner xD

Romantic Relationship

The figure below shows the types of love

• Eros--erotic, sensual, desire, lust
• Ludus--excitement' fun, entertainment
• Storge--peaceful and slow 
• Pragma--practical and traditional
• Mania--extremist of opposites
• Agape--unconditional love 

 

Families

Each family has their own uniqueness and characteristics, but they do normally follow a certain set of rules and criteria, such as : defined roles, recognition of responsibilities, shared history and future, shared living space. There are three types of family which is traditional couples, independent couples and separate couples. I think everyone loves their family. 

Group Consultation

Sir Anwari wasn't feeling well today. So Sir decided to do a group counsultation hour. Every group is allowed to ask any questions. So our group came out with all sort of questions about the video assignment and we even asked for a little bits of tips for final exam. Teeheeee~






Although Sir Anwari wasn't feeling well, he still pushed himself to attend the class for US! A big big respect to Sir Anwari! and be thankful my friend!
Take care Sir!!

Chapter 8 Interpersonal Relationships Stages and Theories

On Tuesday , Sir asked us to do our own notes for this chapter and two marks will be given for out effort

Major topics that covered in this chapter

• Relationship Stages
• Relationship Theories
• The Dark Side of Interpersonal Relationships

Relationship Stages 

 

• Contact
•  First stage- where people become aware of one another's existence, perceptual (sight, smell, taste, hear, touch) and interactional contact (first point of contact) take place

• Involvement
• Second stage- people have tighter bonds and engagements with one another, testing and intensifying (amount of times or commitments you committed to one another, eg : dating, appointments ) take place

• Intimacy
• Third stage- people have deep and committed relationship with one another and relationships grow stronger, interpersonal commitment (private commitment) and social bonding(announcing to others) take place 

• Deterioration
• Fourth stage- communication factors such as temporal, cultural or societal context weakens the bond with one another, intrapersonal and interpersonal dissatisfactions become apparent

• Repair
• Fifth stage- try to work things out, intrapersonal(consider changing ourselves behaviors or perhaps changing our expectations of our partner) and interpersonal(talk and discuss about the problems) repair take place

• Dissolution 
• Sixth stage- bonds are broken or returned back to a platonic, interpersonal(you may not see each other anymore) and social separation(avoidance of each other and a return to being "single" , eg: divorce) take place

Relationship Theories

 Attraction Theory
 -similarity
-proximity
-reinforcement
-physical attractiveness and personality

Relationship Rules Theory
-friendship rules
-romantic rules
-family rules
-workplace rules

Relationship Dialectics Theory
-the tension between closedness and openness
-the tension between autonomy and connection
-the tension between novelty and predictability

Social Penetration Theory 

Social Exchange Theory
-individuals form relationships with one another based on whether or not it would bring benefit to them (Rewards > Costs)

Equity Theory
-forming professional relationships (Rewards = Costs)

 The Dark Side of Interpersonal Relationships

Jealousy

• Cognitive Jealousy
• Emotional Jealousy
• Behavioral Jealousy

The lecturer also gave us some suggestions for the video. He discuss with us and also teach us how to record the video that the topic have chosen by ourselves. Thank you sir and rest well :)
P/S : Sir get sick by this week

Chapter 7 Interpersonal Communication

What is Interpersonal Communication

Interpersonal communication is exchange of information between two or more people. It is also an area of study.Related skills are learned and can be improved. During interpersonal communication there is message sending and message receiving. This can be conducted using both direct and indirect methods. Successful interpersonal communication is when the message senders and the message receivers understand the message.The essence of interpersonal communication is through conversations and dialogues.

The Conversation Process 

• Opening
• Feedforward
• Business
• Feedback
• Closing

Principles of Conversations 

Principles of Turn-Taking

• an active exchange of roles between speakers and listeners,the exchanges of cues is called conversational turns 
• Speaker Cues
• Turn-maintaining Cues
• Turn-yielding Cues
• Listener Cues
• Turn-requesting Cues
• Turn-denying Cues

 Principles of Dialogue

• where two person share messages to one another
• indicates an interaction rather than just a conversation
• example : two friends talking about common interest

Principles of Immediacy and Flexibility

• effective communication  and conversation requires both parties to take into consideration the relationship and intimacy of one another.
• adjusting to the environment and the context

Immediacy : creation of closeness , a sense of togetherness, of oneness between speaker and listener 



Flexibility :

1.  imagine that you are in specific situation
2. consider the course of action identified
3. estimate how much this choice would be similar to the choice you will make in the same situation

Everyday Conversations 

• Small Talk
•  slowly introduce ourselves into a bigger issue or message

• Excuses and Apologies
• Excuses : maintain a fair stand of your excuses- do not lie and do not be too extreme
• Apologies : maintain an open position  and apologize if u are at fault- say it like u mean it

• Complimenting
• Qualified : praises that really justify the words
• Unqualified : praises that is used to just pass on the impression or to mask certain behaviors and intention 

• Advice

• Explore options
• Expert advices/second opinion
• Delay decision

 

 

Chapter 6(b) Non Verbal Communication

Our lecturer continues the lecture for chapter 6 and talked about the channel of nonverbal message. Those are spatial message (a specific distance maintain yourself and others), artifactual  communication (message that are human-made), smell communication (communication through odor), touch communication (haptic), paralanguage (nonverbal dimension of speech), silence and time communication.

We usually apply touch communication and silence in our daily life. For example, touch communication might occur when we’re comforting a person who is sad or down with sweeping his or her back as calm down sign. Furthermore, most if the time we keep silence if we’re angry and do not want to respond to others.

For cultural part, the gesture is the most interesting part out of facial expression, eye communication, touch, paralanguage and silence. I didn’t know that a sign means different in different country. For instance, an “OKAY” sign mean okay in most of the country but mean asshole in Brazil and Argentina. Moreover, boys should learn about the meaning of roses in terms of the amount. Different amount represent different meaning.

Chapter 6(a) - Non Verbal Communication

Winking is a form of nonverbal communication.

NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

What is it?????

Well based on our understanding, it is communication without words.
There is no need to speak.


Nonverbal messages have many functions and some of the are defining relationship, expressing emotions, forming and managing impressions.
There are a total of 6 functions but that three functions are the easiest to remember because we use it in daily.

Defining relationship is a function that we use everyday.
For example, when we talk to lecturer we will always be polite and smile.

We can use nonverbal communication to express ourselves too.
If we are sad we will cry.
If we are happy we will laugh.
If we are stressed out, we will frown.
If our friends did a good job in something, we give a thumb up.

Besides, we also use nonverbal message in forming and managing expressions.
Sometimes we will avoid eye contact with people when we did something wrong.
Like in the class when the lecturer is asking a question, everyone will avoid eye contact and pretend that they are busy.

The other three functions are integrating nonverbal and verbal messages, structuring conversation and influencing and deceiving.

Structuring conversation is like in a conversation, we will give and receive cues.
Those cues are signals that we are listening or to speak.
Often people will nod.

For the influencing and deceiving, we can influence by offering support or affirming a statement.
We can use nonverbal gestures to influence others to follow our beliefs and ideas.
We can also deceive people by winking. We might use winking as a signal to another friend to cover a "white lie" which means that person already know you are lying to someone else.

During the lecture, Mr. Anwari mentioned that they are many channels of nonverbal communication.

• Body messages
• Spatial messages
• Artifactual communication
• Touch communication
• Paralanguage
• Time communication
• Eye
• Silence
• Facial
• Smell

I think that the channels that we frequently use are body messages, facial communication and eye communication.

There are 5 types of body movement.

• Emblems - thumbs up for good job
• Illustrators - holding up two fingers to say you will be back in two hours
• Regulators - Glancing at watch to indicate you have to leave
• Affect displays - Smiling, crying
• Adaptors - rubbing your nose

Facial communication

• Intensifying - feel surprised
• Deintensifying - covering up joy
• Neutralizing - cover up sadness
• Masking - pretend to be happy
• Simulating - express emotions that you don't really feel.

Chapter 5 (b)- Verbal Message

Today, our class continued with the previous chapter, Verbal Message.

And this is what we learnt about...

Disconfirmation and Confirmation

Disconfirmation is a communication pattern which we ignore someone's presence as well as that person's messages. While confirmation, the opposite of disconfirmation means your acknowledging the presence of the other person, the person's importance and your acceptance of this person. Four obvious practices, which we'll consider here are racism, heterosexism, ageism and sexism.

Racism

"Any language that, through a conscious or unconscious attempt by the user, place a particular racial or ethnic group in an inferior position is racist"

Racist languages for example, expresses racist attitudes. For example, by calling English American as "white" and African American as Black/ Nigger are very rude.

Sir Anwari actually showed us a video to describe the racism situation. A pretty hilarious video and you should watch it! Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xyhVO-SWfM

Sexism

Sexism is a practice or support favouritism that criticizes or having a bias towards specific gender.

How to avoid sexist remarks? This is how:

-Avoid disconfirming or confirming to statements or messages because of genders.

-Do not insult or attributes others according to gender bias.

 And also avoid sex-role stereotyping!

Heterosexism

Heterosexism is an attitudes, behaviors and language used to disparage gays and lesbians, language that presumes all people are heterosexual. 

Suggestion for avoiding heterosexist language:

- Avoid offensive nonverbal mannerisms that parody stereotypes.

-Avoid "complimenting" gay men and lesbians on their heterosexual apperance.

-Avoid assuming and individual gay person can speak for all gay people

Ageism

Ageism is a discrimination based on age.

Respect the elderly! Be patient with them!

Appearance do not change their young passionate heart!

Cultural Identifier

—Preferred terms used in talking to and about members of different cultures; language that is free of sexism, heterosexism, racism or ageism. 

1. Race and nationality- —Avoid labeling them with names they don’t like to be called(based on their skin,       colors, or traits)

2. Affectional orientation- "gay" or "lesbian" may be offensive

3. Age and sex- Respect anyone despite their age or gender.

Using Verbal Message Effectively

Language symbolizes reality (partially)

Intensional orientation- the tendency to view people, objects, and events according to the way they're talked about

Extensional orientation- the tendency to look first at the actual people, objects, and events and only afterwards at their labels.

Allness- forgetting that language symbolizes only a portion of reality, never the whole.

Language can express both facts and inferences

Languages that enable you to form statements of both facts and inferences without making any linguistic disctinction between the two. For example:

“ I love the color Red”   > factual statement

“I hate the bright color” > inferential statement

Language is relatively static

Static evaluation is the tendency to retain evaluation without change while the reality to which they refer is changing. For example, —A few years ago, you are different from where you are at now, so if you are known as a liar a few years ago and you don’t lie now, is it still fair to be called a liar?

Language can obscure distinction

Indiscrimination-is the failure to distinguish between similar but different people, objects or events.—Example: linking terrorist attacks to all Muslim in the world

Polarization-  the tendency to look at the world in terms of opposites and to describe it in extremes. Example, authorities such as police personnel- just because some authorities practices corruption and abuse their power, DOESN’T mean all police personnel are like this.

That's all for chapter 5 verbal message.

Thank you for reading!