The Importance Of Communication Within A Group

A group of my friends in which we wanted to decide where to go past summer for a holiday trip. In that group we first created a messaging group where we can message each other about that topic. Frist few days we actually talked about where possible everyone can go and how much financial budget would be at places. After couple of days we met up to talk about it but after meeting up with them face to face everyone would talk off topic. Some people were not good with messaging back so it was a good idea that way but it ended up being a total waste of time and not talking about the original topic that we wanted to talk about. Communication is the key to our group which was not led effectively. Symbols did play a role in our messaging communication like our common mother tongue we say things that only some of us would understand in the group others would have no clue and ignore it. Communication should be done transactional process where everyone in the group mutually talk about the plans to make which never happened.
So we were lacking the transactional process. When meeting up with a group listening skills for everyone was not effective because it was group within a group so it would be hard to talk about what we were there for. There were group members who were action-oriented listener basically were on topic and always had an input to stay on topic all the time. There were members time oriented listener which he always had certain amount of time for the group meetings. We were lacking content oriented listener which would have helped us with analyzing information that time. Nonverbal behavior played a big role in our group to get off topic.
Physical appearance of group members was available but for some they were there for certain time and in that time work was not done effectively. Environment where we met was open garden so nothing to worry about like talking too loud or short amount of space for movement. Eye contact was not done to the person who was