A social friendship group is composed of friends who genuinely care about each other's welfare and enjoy spending time together. Their interactions are characterized by positive relationships and concern for one another.
Support groups are composed of people who come together to support each other by providing encouragement and a safe space to express feelings about common problems.
Service groups come together to perform charitable works or raise money for charitable causes. They aim to encourage members and praise accomplishments while communicating politely.
3. Social Friendship Groups
A social friendship group is composed of friends who have a genuine concern about each other’s welfare
and enjoy spending time together. Their interactions are characterized by “interpersonal ties and
positive, amiable preexisting relationships among members” (Thompson, 2003, p. 239)
Social Friendship Groups
4. Social Friendship Groups
Most of us belong to more than one social friendship group during our lives.
You may have had a group of friends you were close to in high school, a group of buddies you were
close to when you served in the military, or a group of friends you play golf or softball with regularly.
Sometimes people who work together evolve into a social friendship group when they begin to get
together for social activities outside of work.
Social friendship groups may initially form around a shared interest like a book club or Bible study, but as
members spend time together and find they enjoy one another’s company, they may evolve into a social
friendship group.
6. Support Groups
Support groups are composed of people who come together to bolster each other by providing
encouragement, honest feedback, and a safe environment for expressing deeply personal feelings
about a problem common to the members.
Support groups must create an environment where members feel safe to disclose highly personal
information. So members need to make sure that their messages follow the guidelines in Chapter 8 for
comforting, which include clarifying supportive intentions, buffering face threats, using other-centered
language, framing, and selectively offering advice.
8. What is an Interest Group?
An interest group is composed of individuals who come together because
they share a concern, hobby, or activity
9. What are the types of an Interest Group?
These groups may be:
- formal with defined goals and tasks
- informal
10. What can be an Interest Group?
They may be part of a larger organization
Some interest groups are externally focused on a common political or
social issue and adopt an agenda to achieve change.
Other interest groups are internally focused on increasing skills or
knowledge of their members.
11. How do the Interest Group’s members meet?
Commonly, the group members meet each others offline
But, there are also some interest groups meet online.
12. What are the aims of an Interest Group?
Because interest group members share some passion, all members ought to
have an opportunity to communicate their expertise by:
- encouraging members to share success stories
- doing so in ways that all members highlight what they know without
demeaning the knowledge or opinions of others
14. Service groups are composed of individuals who come together
to perform hands-on charitable works or to raise money to help
organizations that perform such work.
15. Service groups may be local affiliates of larger secular or religious
service organizations like Break Away, Lions Club
International, Red Cross, Salvation Army, B’nai B’rith, and Habitat
for Humanity.
16. The Salvation Army
The Salvation Army is a Christian denomination and international
movement known for its charity shops and other charity work, operating
in 126 countries.
17. Red Cross
The International Red Cross is an
international humanitarian
movement which was founded to
protect human life and health, to
ensure respect for all human
beings, and to prevent and alleviate
human suffering.
18. Other service groups are local and function independently.
Small soup kitchens, urban gardening groups, and community
beautification groups perform charitable work that may include
raising funds and interfacing with government agencies.
19. Because service groups are both voluntary and task-
oriented, they need to be dedicated to the task as well as
sensitive to the ego and emotional needs of members. So
communication should :
20. (1) be clear about individual tasks, roles, and responsibilities:
“Jim, as I remember it, today you agreed to work on
patching the roof.”
(2) encourage and praise member accomplishments: “I was
really impressed with how sensitive you were when you
turned her down for another bag of groceries”
(3) be polite: “Mary, it would be great if you would please
work with Mike on stuffing envelopes for that mailing.
Thanks so much!”
22. • Get to know each other. If you're going to be working in a group
with other people for any extended period of time, spend a few
1 minutes talking at the outset of the first meeting. Introduce
yourselves if you do not already know one another.
• Assign roles if the project requires working together in a group
for an extended period of time to reach a specific goal. For
instance you might designate one person the group leader or
2 facilitator and another the scribe or note taker.
• Exchange contact information to enable group members to
communicate effectively outside of scheduled meetings if the
project is long term.
3
23. • Identify the group's goal. For instance, perhaps a professor
asked you to accomplish a specific task within your group, or
your company asked you to research specific information and
4 report back. Discuss and document the group's goal to make
sure you all agree on the primary goal of the group's work.
• Divide tasks into steps and assign each member a specific task
to attack long term projects. Often this will go easier if people
volunteer for tasks they like to do.
5
24. • Listen to each other and encourage each other. Make sure
everyone in the group is heard and offer encouragement when
6 others contribute a good idea or perform a task effectively.
• Deal immediately with conflict if it arises. Although difficult to
deal with, conflict or discord in a group can undermine the
group's objectives. As quickly as possible, address any conflicts
to keep the group members focused on the ultimate goal.
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26. Unified Commitment to a Goal
• When the team is presented with a goal, they can come
together and work as a single unit to complete the task.
27. Participation
• In order for a team to act as a team everyone must be
participating in the creation of a solution.
• A team does not have extra members. Each member of a team
is essential to the team's success, and when the group is given
a task, each member knows what their job is and sets out to
put in their fair share of the effort.
28. Open Communication
• Issues within a team are handled by face-to-face
communication. Team members do not talk behind each
other's back as there is a respect developed among team
members that necessitates direct and open communication on
all issues.
29. Decision-Making
• The members of the group are respected for their various
areas of expertise, and the leader of the group has developed
the ability to obtain the group members' opinions to formulate
the group's response.
• This applies to decisions made within the group ranging from
resolving internal conflict to a potential change in group
leadership.
30. Efficient Use of Ideas
• Brainstorming is one way that groups come up with the
solution to a problem.
• An effective team is able to gather information from each
member and formulate that information into a response.
33. Evaluating group dynamics
Effective groups periodically stop and evaluate how their
interactions are affecting what they are accomplishing and how
members perceive themselves and others
Tuckman’s framework
34. Evaluating group dynamics
At times you may be asked to provide a formal evaluation of the
group dynamics of a class project group or other work team
35. Evaluating group dynamics
One way you might evaluate members is to describe how each
member performed his or her specific tasks and how well his or
her communication contributed to the cohesiveness, problem
solving, and conflict resolution processes in the group.
36. Evaluating group dynamics
Like the evaluations business managers make of employees, these
evaluations serve to document the efforts of group members. They can
be submitted to the instructor, just as they would be submitted to a
supervisor.
In business, these documents provide a basis for determining
promotion, merit pay, and salary adjustments. In the classroom, they can
provide a basis for determining one portion of each member’s grade.
37. Sum up
Sometimes you might be asked to evaluate how you and other
members participate in a group.
Doing so might help your instructor grade group dynamics or help
your employer determine merit pay or bonuses.
