Group Work Practice

1. Group Work Practice Group Dynamics Chapter 3

2. Group Dynamics • One of the worker’s most important tasks is to help groups develop dynamics that promote the satisfaction of members’ socioemotional needs while facilitating the accomplishment of group tasks.

3. Group Dynamics • The forces operating within a group that affect how group members relate to and interact with one another • Relates to: • Communication and interaction patterns • Cohesion • Social control mechanisms, that is, norms, roles and status • Group Culture

4. Communication and interaction patterns • Verbal and non verbal communications are the components of social interaction • Communication entails • the encoding of a person’s perceptions, thoughts and feelings into language and other symbols • The transmission of these symbols or language • The decoding of the transmission by another person

5. Communication as a Process • The first step in understanding and intervening in interaction patterns is for the worker to be aware that when ever people are together in a group, they are communicating • Workers who are aware that group members communicate for many reasons can observe, assess and understand communication and interaction patterns • Noise and other distortions inside or outside the meeting room can interfere with effective communication

6. Interaction Patterns • A variety of interaction patterns have been identified in social work literature • Maypole • Round Robin • Free floating • These focus on increased social interaction, group morale, member commitment to group goals and innovative decision making

7. Group Cohesion • Group cohesion is the result of all forces acting on members to remain in a group • The need for affiliation, recognition and security • The resources and prestige available through group participation • Expectations of the beneficial and detrimental consequences of the group • The comparison of the group with other group experiences

8. Social Control Dynamics • Social control is the term used to describe the processes by which the group as a whole gains sufficient compliance and conformity from its members to enable it to function in an orderly manner • It involves and is related to • Group Norms • Group Member and Leader Roles • Group Member and Leader Status

9. What Are Norms? • Consensual and often implicit standards that describe what behaviors should and should not be performed in a given context.

11. Development of Norms • Sherif’s studies of the development of norms in groups • Convergence in actions, thoughts, and emotions occurs over time

12. Sherif's (1936) autokinetic effect studies Judged distance a dot of light moved in a darkened room

13. It moved about 3.5 inches Autokinetic effect: the stationary dot of light will seem to move

14. Looks like 1 inch I’d say 2 inches 7.5 inches What if people make their judgments with others, and state estimates aloud?

15. Person A Convergence Person B Person C Average distance estimates Alone Group Session 1 Group Session 2 Group Session 3 Conformity! Initially, they differ; but over trials, they converge TAKE HOME MESSAGE: Guard against group member conformity

16. Group Culture • Group culture refers to values, beliefs, customs and traditions held in common by members

17. Stages of Group Development • Often a cyclical movement of group members from feeling: • invested in the task to emotionally displaced from the task • part of the group to autonomous • defended to open • isolated to enmeshed • Open-membership groups that are able to move beyond a beginning level of development are those that have a membership change less frequently than every other meeting and those with less than a 50 percent change in membership