Group Communication Pitfalls

Overcoming Barriers to an Effective Group Experience

John O. Burtis, Paul David Turman

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781452236995
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Group Communication Pitfalls: Overcoming Barriers to an Effective Group Experience treats groups and the work involved in grouping as useful tools humans have developed for responding to pressures or demands faced by group members. This book assumes an orientation that expects and detects group pitfalls as they arise, providing students with the foundation for overcoming barriers to effective group experiences. By assuming this orientation, authors John O. Burtis and Paul D. Turman offer readers a map of the group pitfall terrain and demonstrate how people working well together can use the struggle against such pitfalls to improve their groups.

3

Pitfalls in Task and Supragroup Exigencies

Have you ever been in a group where you got frustrated because you could have done the group’s work better or faster if you had just worked alone? Ever cheered for a team that was hampered because the organization that managed it was lousy? Ever had someone you were working with not pull his or her own weight because of trouble with his or her home life? Ever been asked by someone to speak on behalf of a group you belong to in a way that was uncomfortable because you had no authority to do so? Ever been part of a group that struggled to find new members? Ever had a turf battle against another group? Such experiences are common. They all involve pitfalls that arise because of the nature of the job a group is working on or because of the circumstances in which the group must work. We begin our specific discussion of potential group pitfalls with some that may even be evident before group interaction begins. Purgatory Puddle pitfalls manifest from the supragroup in which the group will work, from the nature of the task on which a group will work, and from the personnel available for the work.

GROUPS AS SYSTEMS

Every human group is an open system. Everything that goes on in a system has the potential to affect every other thing in the system (interdependence). Although there may be many component parts and processes in a system, if you change any one of those, the system itself is changed (wholeness), so we cannot reduce a system to its parts, study just one of those parts, and still succeed in understanding the nature of the whole system (irreducibility). Even if a system is focused on one task, there may be several ways to do the job well (equifinality—many ways to equivalent outcomes: i.e., “there is more than one way to skin a cat”). Every human system is comprised of subsystems and is also enmeshed in suprasystems (hierarchical embeddedness), which provide a context (environment) for the system and a source of necessary resources (inputs). These features of systems help us understand some of the dynamics of the dramatic action in groups.

The dynamics of a system make linear predictions of cause and effect almost useless. Consequently, our attributions of who or what causes problems in our groups tend to be simplistic. Henman (2003) explains:

[A] “domino effect” is apparent whenever group members interact because the effects of any action will cause consequences to ripple through the system. Explaining how or why an outcome occurred is very complex because all the reasons for a result are not obvious. Often group members never find the answers to their questions because they try to look at just one aspect of the group’s system, which is frequently the most recent action of an individual in the group. No one answer is likely to provide the complete story. (p. 6)

Grouping members are interdependent by definition, and a change in one member or in how one member behaves can affect the relative effectiveness of each of the others in a group and of the very nature of the group they co-construct. The ongoing structuration of processes and meanings as people co-construct their groups makes it important to avoid simplistic conclusions regarding the potency and effects of a particular pitfall or person. Unfortunately, the efficient way to transfer to you the information regarding potential pitfalls is in the form of seemingly static lists of phenomena. Beware: though we define and describe pitfalls for you one at a time, none of the issues we are about to discuss is discrete or fully independent from other grouping activity.

PURGATORY PUDDLE PITFALLS

The Oxford Essential Dictionary (1998) defines purgatory as a “state of temporary suffering or expiation” (p. 486), which makes purgatory an effective representative term for the transitory nature of exigencies that are perceived by people for trying to change their status quo. The Purgatory Puddle is not an actual place; it is the group members’ conception or understanding of the circumstances that give birth to a group. A Purgatory Puddle exigency is some sort of charge or complaint against the status quo, against the current way or state of things. A charge is a task given to a group to complete. A complaint is an expression of desire for change. After a salient charge or complaint is stated, members feel obligated to make some sort of response.

Any rhetorical situation is impermanent because perceived exigencies change with dramatic action. A Purgatory Puddle is similarly dynamic because perceptions of exigencies for grouping are temporary and evolving. Once grouping has begun, for example, shortage of time or inadequate effort by group members can become salient exigencies in the evolving Purgatory Puddle. The evolving Purgatory Puddle endures as a dynamic grouping-conducive circumstance of expiation, transition, and change.

Groups, as co-constructions, are only as strong as their interactions to overcome the challenges they face. Our description of Purgatory Puddle pitfalls is organized as supragroup, task, or personnel issues (the latter are dealt with in chapter 4). As you read these pitfalls, remember that the challenge from a pitfall can help a group grow stronger as they work together to avoid or to overcome the pitfall.

SUPRAGROUP PITFALLS

Supragroup issues are external-to-group contingencies that may motivate or affect grouping action. Supra means above, beyond, or transcending. Supragroup pitfalls manifest as environmental constraints, which may diminish or overpower grouping exigencies or grouping efforts. There are some dynamics that are beyond the control of a group, at least in terms of the fact that they predate grouping, but none of them are beyond the capacity of a group to talk about. Failure to expect, detect, and attempt to avoid or to work through such problems constitutes a group communication pitfall by omission.

Table 3.1 Summary of Purgatory Puddle: Supragroup Pitfalls

Inappropriate or Inadequate Resources

An environment that includes insufficient or inappropriate resources for grouping can become a potential pitfall to group efforts. Potential for success is diminished when environmental contingencies allow too little time or in some other way retard the resources necessary for effective grouping. Being forced by a plane crash to share a small lifeboat as the group’s only potential workplace and a shortage of food or water necessary to allow members the sustenance needed while paddling themselves to safety are two examples. Physical resources can be conducive to grouping or they can hinder, even hurt, the attempt. Effects of a resource shortage may manifest throughout the life of grouping activities. Faced with inadequate or inappropriate resources, grouping members change what they would otherwise do in order to orient to their struggle against environmental constraints. When poverty or being reared in an abusive family is used to explain aberrant behavior, it is recognition of the effects that environmental variables can have on individuals and on their actions. The group co-constructed under such circumstances may become jaded by its ongoing responses to the circumstances, just as it might also find ways to become strengthened by how it overcomes its challenges.

Crisis in the Supraenvironment

Crisis in the group’s supraenvironment also diverts energy away from grouping. Examples include a building that is on fire while a group is trying to meet or when group members try to work though their company is facing bankruptcy and may lay off some of the group’s members. Although a supragroup crisis may sometimes be turned into a point of opportunity, it also always competes for the attentions of group members. A group’s response either helps strengthen or diminish the group. Temporary delays in grouping can be appropriate, but not when a group uses them to construct an excuse for failure. Environmental issues that command the attention of group members threaten to divert energies from grouping and to provide an excuse to fail.

Competition With Other Groups

Competition between groups manifests two ways. Either can be responded to in beneficial ways or in harmful ways. First, competition occurs in disputes regarding allocation of resources or outcomes (who gets the resources; who gets to win). Second, competition occurs in disputes regarding how to frame the Purgatory Puddle, which can influence the loyalties of individuals engaged in task issues involved in that Purgatory Puddle. Sometimes competition with other groups helps a group to accomplish more than if they were working without such an external basis for comparison. Some co-constructions of competition may, however, divert grouping energies toward destructive aspects of the competition at the expense of more important grouping activities. How grouping people frame and co-construct competition with other groups is the key to whether they create more or less energy for their grouping.

When two or more groups require the same resource, and only one of them can actually have the resource, they co-construct a zero-sum game (e.g., only one team can win a game: the other team loses). Sometimes intergroup competitions involve a zero-sum game. Sometimes grouping members just co-construct the perception of a zero-sum game out of their preference for the energies such competition provides them. Sometimes grouping members are just too limited in their vision to conceive of other possibilities such as co-constructing a win-win situation in which energy and value are added to both competing or cooperating groups. The real question is whether beneficial or harmful effects result from their framing and co-construction of their Purgatory Puddle. Competition helps if it enhances the ability of the groups involved to serve their three functions (task, relational, individual).

When competition is harmful, however, its negative effects may go beyond the loss of the energy required for grouping. Bormann (1996) elaborates on the possible negatives of competition. A modified version of his list of ills includes (a) when one group belittles members in another group, (b) when nonmembers are treated unethically or when the ethical code of group members is violated, (c) when group members are encouraged to behave badly to demonstrate their loyalty, (d) when turf wars focus energy on getting resources rather than on using them wisely, (e) when the group protects or advances itself at the expense of the suprasystem, and (f) when group members try to elevate their status to gain exemption from the laws or norms that govern other members in society. When such harmful effects become evident as a result of competition, a pitfall is in play and should be responded to with a change in grouping practice.

The second manifestation of competition involves alternate framings of a Purgatory Puddle. Multiple groups sometimes form from the same Purgatory Puddle if the task or issue involved is sufficiently salient in the perceptions and rhetoric of grouping members to become constitutive of a number of different kinds of grouping responses. Each different response is probably based in a different framing of the Purgatory Puddle. Such alternate framings may stir an interest among g...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Unit I. We Co-construct Our Groups by Communicating
• Unit II. We Struggle to Co-construct and Frame Our Circumstances and Processes
• Unit III: We Co-construct Our Exigencies for Grouping Into Our Group Outcomes
• Notes
• References
• Index
• About the Authors