The forgotten group member

¶ … Forgotten Group Member

Group Development

There are four main stages of group development: forming, storming, norming and performing (MindTools, 2013). During the forming stage, members are attempting to discover their roles and logistics. Team leadership is solidified during the forming stage. The storming phase involves people clarifying roles and begin to work on the project; some group members may try to avoid tasks. The norming stage involves the establishment of a hierarchy, solidification of leadership skills, a greater commitment to the team goal, and progress towards the goal. The performing stage involves hard work leading to the attainment of the goal (MindTools, 2013).

Christine's group is in the performing stage of development. The team members are all working to the attainment of the goal. Even Mike, the team member who is failing to meet expectations has performed some work to teach the goal. However, because there are problems in the team, the team seems to be prone to relapses back to the storming phase. Mike is clearly trying to avoid tasks, and, in addition, seems to question his role in the group. It is important to recognize that the group backslides to the storming stage, since the storming stage is when groups are most vulnerable.

Part II: Problem Identification

It would be easy to label Mike as the only problem in the group since he is the lone group member who is failing to show up at meetings, is not completing his work, and is behaving in a passive-aggressive manner towards the other group members. However, as the group leader, Christine has to take some ownership of the situation with Mike. She has not been sufficiently assertive with him about his presence at group meetings. Moreover, it appears that Mike, like the other students, may have lunch in the school cafeteria and sometimes arrives early for classes. She could have attempted to schedule meetings during those times, to attempt to accommodate Mike's schedule. Although Mike resisted her initial effort to schedule meetings prior to class, she could have told him that he could record Happy Harry on the DVR and that he needed to get to the meetings. Most significantly, Christine needed to realize that she had no power or authority over Mike; in order to encourage him to be a productive team member; she needed to find out what motivates him and use it.

Part III: Retrospective Evaluation

From his first Happy Harry comment and unwillingness to meet before class, despite not having a real scheduling conflict, Christine should have been aware that Mike was a potential source of problems. Furthermore, as he continued to make excuses for failing to live up to group expectations, Christine permitted and enabled that behavior. What she should have done was outline her expectations to Mike, clearly, and then discuss consequences for failing to meet those expectations. Moreover, this should have been done in the initial team-meeting forming section, so that the expectations would not have been targeted solely at Mike. Instead, it could have been brought up as a hypothetical scenario for how the group would handle it if one of the members was not participating and meeting group deadlines. Therefore, there would be pre-established consequences for failure to participate, and Mike would have had an opportunity to help determine those consequences.

Christine does not have to give up on the idea of Mike being a fruitful group member simply because the group failed to establish consequences for failure to perform duties. She has been warned by the professor that they are to make every attempt to solve group problems possible before coming to the professor. She needs to send Mike an email giving him three alternative meeting times, telling him to select one, and reminding him that all of the group members have completed their parts and that his part must be complete by that time. If Mike fails to pick a time or attempts to skip the meeting, then Christine needs to take all of her documentation to her professor and consult with the professor about what needs to be done. First, in a business scenario, an emerging leader would do well to pick a mentor and ask for that mentor's advice when faced with difficulties. Second, the reality is that the working world has different consequences than school; team leaders are frequently in supervisory roles with team members and have some influence over hiring, firing, promotion, and salary decisions. However, in a scholastic scenario, if Mike is not motivated by his own grades, he is not going to be motivated by concern for his team member's grades.