Small Group Interaction

1. What do you think was the purpose of your first Small Group Meeting? The first group meeting was basically an introduction and what we need to accomplish as a team, to be proficient.
2. Did you notice how authority exercised? Did it promote or hinder leadership work? As a group, we decided on who should become the authority figure and exercise leadership. She did very well in gathering everyone’s information in order to stay connected for the next couple of assignments.
3. In group conversations, there are often unspoken issues in the room. Something as simple as someone clicking their pen too often, or something as large as side conversations during the presentation, can influence the group conversation. What was the unspoken issue (the elephant or mouse in the room) in your group? There was a couple moments when there was silience since we went over everything we needed to focus on. Overall we managed to keep the conversation going and it was productive.
4.
What role did you play in today’s group interaction? Is this something you would like to change or maintain in the upcoming small group sessions? I tried to keep the conversation going and stay active as much as possible when necessary. I also showed gratitude when one of my group members would offer their help on some tasks we have planned for the future.
5. Sometimes a group member will introduce an idea, class theme, or group goal that sets the tone for your group’s interactions. We will often call these events “interventions.” Whose intervention was most beneficial and why? There wasn’t necessarily an intervention because we were still trying to get to know eachother and focus one who does what and when in the next few weeks.
6. Which of the 5 practices of exemplary leaders was most in evidence today and was most helpful? Why? Inspire a shared vision was the most practiced in our group meeting since we did the best we could do in organizing as well as assigning tasks to the people on a given
days.
7. How/did positive leadership come into play in your first group interaction? If it did, how so? If not, were there opportunities where it could have? Engaging in a conversation was fairly easy, the area where we had difficulty with was dragging on the conversation that is class related because there wasn’t much information given into what we needed to work on in the assignments.
8. Provide a quote from any of the readings we have recently done that you found was most instructive either for (a) what was going on in the case, (b) what you said or did, (c) what you observed about the group’s work. “Leaders must find their own voice, and then they must clearly and distinctively give voice to their values”(14).
9. What was the best thing you accomplished? The best thing I accomplished so was far is balancing school and work with some family time.
10. What values were at play in the work of your group? We focused on the value of teamwork, fairness, and determination in getting things done when we have time.