Discussion Notes

PART 1: From your school, work, or volunteer experience, think of a group of which you have been a member. Do you believe the members of the group communicated effectively or ineffectively? Explain the reasons for your answer and give examples. Did the group experience any conflict? If so, what strategies were employed to manage it and do you believe they were effective?
PART 2: From your personal, school, work, or volunteer experience, selects a situation in which you were required to deal with a conflict either in a group or one-on-one situation. Explain how you handled the conflict. Looking back, how might you have handled the conflict differently?

Part 1:
I was apart of a group in the last class that I took where we had to work on a group essay. There were three members of the group. One of the other members and I communicated very well. We both had very busy schedules but were able to setup dates/times to meet, came up with a plan to get work completed, and met agreed upon deadlines. We would Skype on a regular basis to go over our essay and then discuss next steps for getting it completed. We worked together well even though we never actually met in person. Unfortunately the third member of our group didn’t work well with us. She lived in California and was difficult to work with. She wouldn’t respond to emails or complete her share of the work. That was the main source of my frustration with working in this group. The other group member and I kept keeping the uncooperative member in the loop about our progress and about what she needed to do. We basically kept the work going and didn’t feel it was really worth it to say anything. Toward the end of the class, the unproductive group member finally started to become engaged because the deadline to complete our essay was approaching. The one other member and I finally sent an email to the other person telling her what needed to be done and when. We said we weren’t going to work with her