Group Dynamics
Our team was supposed to come with a catalog of an action plan to be carried out for a given financial year. It was a team made up of team managers and team players. There was an advance communication for members to form ideas and present their proposals during the annual general meeting since the activities were to be the climax of the end of the financial year. During the meeting where the views were supposed to air, some members had prepared while others came without proposals and had attended the meeting casually. After lengthy deliberations and sharing of ideas, many ideas were intersecting. When it was the team manger’s time speaks, his thoughts never matched any of the team’s plans. He, however, went on to impose the same ideas on us and without choice; we had to agree with them. The mistake we made as a team was lack of a common front for popular opinion. This was despite the fact previously, individual decision making was welcome in certain circumstances, but this one required a collective responsibility having been notified to craft ideas in advance.
Voting would have been the brightest idea after we had submitted our proposals and debated over them. The meeting also would have been a virtual meeting via teleconferencing to give each member an opportunity and an equal chance to contribute. This way, even for those who did not have ideas yet would end up supporting or critiquing other peoples’ ideas to forge a common front. The purpose of personal opinion is what may kill a group and especially when a critical decision has to be made, and the leadership has a preconceived judgment or direction. For us, physical meetings worked against the group as the final decision was unanimous.