Group Communication: Small Group Reflection

Climate, Conflict, & Groupthink Reflection Paper

For this thoughtful application of knowledge reflection I chose a reflection I wrote in a small group course on Jack Gibb’s Defensive and Supportive Group Behaviors which highlights good and bad behaviors members may feel while working in a small group. In the Communication and Public Relations fields, there will be times where working in a group is required or even all of the time.  Knowing what could make a group less productive or could come in the way of the group’s goals will be helpful for when I am in the Communication or Public Relations field.

Gibb’s separates techniques for communication into supportive and defensive. First, defensive behaviors happen when a member of the group feels threatened and feels like they need to defend themselves. Second, supportive behavior is the outcome where the member feel comfortable and able to communicate effectively. Gibb’s has six supportive and six defensive behaviors that contradict each other. The defensive behaviors are: evaluation, control, strategy, neutrality, superiority, and certainty. The supportive behaviors being: description, problem orientation, spontaneity, empathy, equality, and provisionalism. In my reflection I outlined the two major behaviors I saw in my group. The defensive behavior being neutrality. Neutrality occurs when members do not have really any interest in what a member or members are trying to communicate. An example of this is was when we made our decisions usually one person a suggested something and if it sounded good everyone went along with it and had that “whatever” type attitude. This behavior was supported by verbal communication especially since people say things like “Sure”, “That sounds fine”, “Whatever you want to do is fine with me.” This behavior could have a negative effect on the communication in the group because the member coming up with the ideas might not feel like the other group members were listening. The supportive behavior I stated was  provisionalism. This is when a member feels they are right but is open to listening to the another member’s idea. The example I used I was when we as a group would exchange of ideas and when people reassure each other with “Yeah, that sounds good!” or “Great idea!” This behavior was productive because everyone was involved and it generated a lot of ideas.

Jack Gibb’s Defensive and Supportive Group Behaviors which highlights good and bad behaviors members may feel while working in a small group. Identifying these behaviors are essential in how the group works together and ultimately could affect the final product of the group’s task.

Written Communication: Newspaper Article

Article linked here

For the category of Written Communication, I will be analyzing one of the newspaper articles I’ve wrote for the journalism course I took. This article was published in the campus The Courier. I was assigned to attend the events hosted by the on campus organization Spectrum. Spectrum is an organization that advocates for the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, inter-sex, asexual/ally (LGBTQIA+) community. The central concept of this article was equality and how the campus reacted to the events Spectrum hosted as a part of Equality Week. The purpose of this article was to inform the audience of the events that happened during that week.

The audience of my article was Monmouth College students and faculty. The audience affected how I constructed my message in a couple different ways. I chose to write this story the way I did because I thought that the topic of the equality with the LGBTQIA+ community would get my audience’s attention and allow them insight of what their peers on campus thought and how the week went. Because this was going to be published in the newspaper I had to remain objective which affected the language that I used by trying to remain unbiased and informative. I could not put any of my own opinions into the article, but I still had to make it seem interesting to the audience which is why I started with the “Hot Topic” discussion.

I executed the message strategy by giving the audience all of the events that were held and what happened at each event. I also did interviews of people at the events and members of the Spectrum organization. This allowed me to go in provide the audience with what occurred and how students reacted. This article is a skillfully created professional message because I incorporated the key elements of good journalism writing. First, I started out with a solid lead to grab the attention of my audience. The lead was “Last week Monmouth College buzzed with the message of equality.” The word choice of using “buzzed” would catch the audience’s attention because they would ask the question “how?” and would make them read further. Second, was I wrote the story in the inverted pyramid style which gave the more important information first and then trickles down to the least important details. This is shown because in the first few sentences the 5 W’s are answered. “Last week Monmouth College buzzed with the message of equality. LGBTQIA Spectrum hosted a variety of events to celebrate including tie-dye, coming out stories, and a dance.”  I explained the who: Spectrum, what: hosted events for Equality Week, when: last week, where: Monmouth College, why: for equality, how: a variety of events. The article ended up being chosen to be put on the front page of that edition of The Courier. Overall, my article had skillful construction and execution because I had a central concept and purpose, identified the audience and constructed my message for them, provided the audience with all of the events, and conducted the interviews to obtain the reaction from those events.I complied those things and produced a well-written article.