Explain The Four Main Group Task Roles

The four main group task roles are initiator-contributor, elaborator, coordinator, orienter. Initiator takes charge to direct the group by proposing ideas and ways to problem-solve. The elaborator gives examples and experiences from their life to help decide whether or not an idea or approach to a problem would be effective or not. The coordinator organizes ideas and will often do this by restating ideas and points. The orienter keeps the group focused and in the end summarizes the discussions and ideas made by the group.
There are two main maintenance roles; the encourager and the gatekeeper. The encourager will be supportive to ideas and suggestions given in order to make sure no good ones are excluded. This is most useful when the discussion
Two good examples are the blocker and aggressor. The blocker will be plain disagreeable and all around negative to any ideas given. This pessimistic attitude will discourage other group members throwing out potentially great ideas. The aggressor will try to lower the status of other group members by asserting a false sense of authority and taking other people’s credit for work.
Know these roles and being able to assign people and yourself these roles can be quite useful in a small group. Knowing if someone is being an individual role can help identify that member to change them. The same goes if there are too many maintenance roles, since not many are needed. However, if people identify with a role too much, they will feel locked into that role and lose flexibility to shift through roles depending on the situation. In general, the majority of the group should be group task, while a small minority of maintenance roles will keep the organized, on track, and
When listening to someone, they may look around if bored, lean in if interested, cross their arms if they feel insecure, or purse their lips if they feel the urge to say something. Overall, more nonverbal is done than verbal communication, and it is important to watch out for these signals to best know other group members. According to Albert Mehrabian, only 7% of communication in a conversation is done verbally. The other 93% is done through subtle movements of the body and the tone of voice when speaking verbally. According to his research, 55% of the communication occurs on the face where most emotion is shown. This reinforces the idea that eye contact is a must not only for manners, but to know when the person being spoken to is becoming uninterested or needs to say something. Of course though, when the person stops eye contact to not stare, feet can also tell if the person wants to leave, or is