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SWK 292 S10 Task Group: Foundation methods, In the beginning
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- In the beginning
- Introduction of members
- Stating brief purpose of meeting
- Recapping of previous meeting
- In the middle
- To help group follow agenda and not stuck at one point for too long
- Worker should model the behaviour expected to be seen from members
- authority, control and discipline only used to reduce threat to group functioning
- In the end
- Summarise meeting's accomplishments
- Praise members for their efforts
- Identify issues and agenda that needs to be look into more
- Planning ahead
- (1) Seeing that decisions and tasks decided on are carried out
- (2) Preparing for the next meeting
- Meetings are to be used as a means to share member's concern, experiences, perspectives and expertise
- Social issues and problems that affect communities and tasks group can be brought up so that there can be sharing of different perspective from workers from different agencies
- Open communication and unimpeded sharing of information are prerequisites
(1) Ensuring members have clear understanding of the topic being discussed
(2) Ensure relevance to what's discussed in order to keep members stimulated
(3) All members to have equal opportunities to share
- Helping member feel that they are vital part of agency members
- Helping members to become involved through their participation in task group that benefits organisation & its employees
- Task group provide an organised means for developing, implementing and getting employees to follow their policies and goals of the agency
- Help member generate information & creative alternatives in responding to different issues and problems in group members
- Remind members that all kind of inputs are welcome
- Group factors that inhibit ideas and creativity
- Status conscious member may be afraid of offending individuals with high status with their inputs.
- Norms and social pressure may limit expression of new and creative ideas
- Group have the advantage of variety of opinions and knowledge offered by all members but they may be censoring controversial opinions
- Developing information and creative ideas
- Encourage norms that promote free discussion of ideas
- Model an open exchange of ideas presenting creative, controversial and thought provoking ideas
- Important for worker to differentiate between relationship conflict & task conflict
Task conflict Based on differing opinions about ideas information and facts. That allows healthy development of group
Relational conflict Based on emotional and interpersonal relationship among members within & outside the group
- Handling conflict Viewing it as healthy group development, encourage group norms of openness and respect for other's viewpoints, helping members to recognise conflict, help remember to avoid focusing on personality conflict or personal difference but to express facts and preference for their alternate view points etc
- Groups are better than individuals in influencing opinions and obtaining commitments from members members
- Problem solving: Group VS Indiviual Group is more superior as problems can be subdivided so that each person can do their area of expertise
Group thinking
- Should be avoided, occurs when members fail to express their own personal thoughts and feelings about the issue at hand
Group consensus
- To reduce conflict within the group and make group more effective
- Not to overlook political function even tho it is an uncomfortable topic to discuss on
- Task group help managers exercise their power & position within organisation
- Power oriented analysis of task group:
(1) Physical setting: A place with pen and paper, chairs and desks or with coach & pillows
(2) Membership: Inclusion and exclusion of certain group/individual will show one's organisational position
(3) The agenda: Used for political purpose, power can be exercise by confining to the scope of decision making to the issues managers are willing to give up control over
(4) Procedural rules: on how group conduct its business can be developed with political purpose in mind
- Focus on both group process & outcomes members
- Leader monitor group processes to ensure that they are leading a satisfying experience for group members while facilitating group's work
- Dual focus: Member's satisfaction & goal accomplishment
- Task group need to be clear about the mandates from agency and ethical, moral and legal obligations expressed by regulatory agencies, professional societies, legislative bodies & larger society
- Each task group may have own set of standard rules or guidelines to follow
- Worker is to develop feedback mechanism to help obtain the result of a decision they wish analyse
- How problem is identified will determine (1) What data will be collected, (2) Who will work on the problem (3) Who will be affected by problem resolution members
- Steps to define & promote problem solving (1) Clarify boundaries (2) seek member's perception on problem & expectation on solving it (3) Develop a problem solving orientation (4) Define a solvable problem (5) Specify the problem as clearly as possible
- Often modified and specified when more information is accumulated
- Worker should allow member to share their perspective of the problem solving perspective
- Goal statement need to be clear & specific
- Principles for developing goals (1) Consistent with group's mandate: overall objective, values agreed on by the group as a whole (2) Framed by worker to gain maximum commitment, cooperation & investment by group members (3) To be realistic & attainable through the resources available to group (4) Goals to be timelimited
- Collection of data should be separate from analysing facts & making decisions. As analysis of data may include biasness within it
- Maintain group's openness to speculations
- Encourage all members to present their ideas
- Appreciate the difference
- Display information on flipchart/ board to help member view the full range of information that has been collected
- Organise, analyse and synthesize facts, ideas & perspective generated from problem exploration
- Members should be encouraged to develop many alternative solution as possible
Handling information generated by group Seperate irrelevant from relevant information, combine similar facts, identify discrepancies, look for patterns across different facts
- After all members have presented their alternatives , a review is necessary.
- Review to: (1) Clarify misunderstandings
(2) Discuss how will the plan overcome possible challenges that may come
- Group will come up with a deciding criteria to choose plan (1) Weighing disadvantages & advantages
(2) Cost vs benefits for implementing
- Considerations need input from people who is influential in the implementation of plans. Support from people that needs to be accounted for the decisions should be seek early as well
- Helpful to delineate steps in the implementation sequence and to develop a timeline Objective can be specified for each step & group can obtain periodic feedback about the implementation progress
- Implementing proposed solution involves identifying, contracting and utilising available resources