Informal Roles: Productive

Informal Roles: Productive I took on the informal roles of a compromiser, gatekeeper and encourager during the group interactions (Connery & Vohs, 2006). In the compromise role, I offered suggestions and encouraged feedback from the group members on my ideas so that we could all have a chance to weigh in on decisions that were being made and come to a collective agreement on how we wanted to proceed. As the gatekeeper, I kept up frequent communication online with my group members when we did not meet in person in an attempt to help facilitate dialogue and keep group members up to date. I felt that I helped initiate our first few weeks of coordination and assigning roles through these updates and dialogue. During in-person interactions I tried
Blocking I did several times throughout our in-person meetings not realizing that it was likely counterproductive. I brought up topics several times that the group had already addressed and often repeated information several times for clarification on assignments and group roles. There was one specific instance I can remember, where we were discussing what we needed to have prepared for our next in-person group meeting. I believe we were trying to decide if we should have our individual outlines and talking points prepared. One group member suggested that maybe we didn’t need to have quite so much prepared because we still had a lot of time left in the quarter. I quickly responded that I thought it would be better if we had things completed early because we all have busy schedules and we needed to make sure things were coming together. A few other group members quickly jumped on my bandwagon and we collectively shut down any further discussion. I realize now that this was blocking and I should have approached this in a different way, perhaps with a better attempt at negotiation and exploring the other member’s feelings about the
I think one of the biggest things that I will take away from interpersonal communication and group work is Connery and Vohs’ (2006) concept of building relationships before tackling the problem. I see the value to this in any group process and I have seen it work this quarter. I think getting to know the people you are working with, allowing them to get to know you, really sets the stage for better communication by helping to ease tension and gain a better understanding of each other as Connery and Voh’s (2006) would