Download CH 4 Developing the Group Climate

In Mixed Company
Chapter Four
Developing the Group Climate
Speech 140 Chapter 4 Developing
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The Group Climate
• A group climate is the emotional atmosphere,
the enveloping tone that is created by the way
we communicate in groups.
• A positive climate exists when individuals
perceive that they are valued, supported, and
treated will by the group.
• A negative climate exists when group members
do not feel valued, supported, and respected,
when trust is minimal, and when members
perceive that they are not treated well.
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Competition: Winner Takes All
• Competition is a mutually exclusive goal
attained (MEGA) process.
• When transactions in groups are
competitive, individual success is achieved
at the expense of other group members.
• Competition, by definition, necessitates
the failure of the many of the success of
the few.
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Cooperation: Winners All
• Cooperation is a mutually inclusive
attainment (MIGA) process.
• Individual success is tied directly to the
success of other group members.
• Group members work together, not against
each other, when attempting to achieve a
common goal.
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Individual Achievement:
Going It Alone
• Individual achievement- the attainment of
personal goal without having to defeat
another person.
• For conceptual clarity it is important that
we understand the difference between
competition and individual achievement.
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Hypercompetitiveness:
Winning is Everything
• Hypercompetitiveness- The excessive emphasis on
defeating others to achieve one’s goals.
• It is hypercompetitiveness, not competitiveness itself,
that poses the greatest challenge to establishing a
positive group climate of trust, openness, directness,
supportiveness, and accomplishment.
• Constructive competition occurs when competition
produces a positive, enjoyable experience and
generates increased efforts to achieve without
jeopardizing positive interpersonal relationships and
personal well-being.
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When Winning is Relatively
Unimportant
1. The less group members emphasize wining as the primary goal of
competition and instead focus more on having fun and developing
skills while competing, the more positive will be the group climate.
2. When opponents are equally matched, allowing all participants a
reasonable chance to win.
3. When there are clear, specific rules that ensure fairness. When
there are clear rules enforced without bias, competition can be a
constructive enterprise. When there are no rules, or rules are
enforced selectively or haphazardly, competition induces strong
dissatisfaction with remaining a member of a group.
•
All three of the above conditions must be satisfied for constructive
competition to occur.
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Competition and Communication
Competence: Can Me Be We?
• First, communication competence is a matter of degree.
• Second, although competent communication requires
We-orientation, this does not exclude any consideration
of individual needs. Orientation implies primary, not
exclusive, focus. The emphasis matters, not the mere
presence of occasional competitive, individualistic
communication patterns.
• Third, many activities combine both competition and
cooperation. Intergroup (between groups) competition
usually requires a great deal of intragroup (within a
group) cooperation.
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Group Productivity: Achievement
and Performance on Tasks
•
The cooperation advantage is especially significant when
compared to the disadvantages of competition that is
hypercompetitive, between unequal opponents, and conducted
unfairly.
•
There are two primary reasons why cooperation promotes and
competition dampens achievement and performance for most
groups and individuals.
1. Attempting to achieve excellence and trying to beat others are
different goals.
2. Resources are used more efficiently in a cooperative climate. A
cooperative climate promotes the full utilization of information by a
group, whereas a competitive climate typically promotes
information hoarding.
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Evaluation versus Description
•
Negative evaluations include criticism, contempt, and blame. Positive
evaluation includes praise, recognition, and flattery.
•
Description is a first-person report of how an individual feels, what the
individual perceives to be true, and what behaviors have been observed in
a specific context.
1. Use first-person singular language, they begin with an identification of the
speaker’s feeling, followed by a description of behavior linked to the feeling.
(A you-statement however, places the focus on someone who is an object
of attack.)
2. Make your descriptions specific and not vague
3. Eliminate editorial comments from descriptive statements.
•
We must be willing and able to place the focus on our won feelings and
spotlight the specific behaviors we find objectionable without sending mixed
messages composed of verbal descriptions and nonverbal , negative
evaluations.
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Control versus Problem Orientation
• Issuing orders and demanding obedience, especially
when no input was sought from group members that
were told what to do, is controlling communication.
• Psychological reactance means the more someone tries
to control us by telling us what to do.
• We help prevent a defensive climate from emerging
when we collaborate on a problem and seek solutions
cooperatively. The orientation is on the problem and how
to best solve it, not on how best to control those who
have less power.
• The competent communicator must know how to
problem-solve, have the requisite skills, and be
committed to finding solutions.
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Manipulation versus Assertiveness
• Hidden Agendas- personal goals of group
members that are not revealed openly and that
can interfere with group accomplishment- can
create a defensive atmosphere.
• When you suspect that a team member is
complimenting your performance merely to gain
an ally against other members in a dispute, this
hidden agenda will likely ignite defensiveness.
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Indifference versus Empathy
• Failure to acknowledge another person’s
communication effort either verbally or
nonverbally is called an impervious
response.
• Empathy requires that we try to see from
the perspective of the other person,
perceiving the needs, desires, and feelings
of a group member because that is what
we would want others to do for us.
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Superiority versus Equality
• Communicating superiority sends the message
that one is me-deep in self-importance. It can be
a tremendous turnoff for most people.
• Equality does not mean we all have the same
abilities. Equality from the standpoint of group
climate means that we give everyone an equal
opportunity to succeed.
• We accord all group members respect unless
they earn our disrespect.
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Certainty versus Provisionalism
• There are a few things in life that are
certain, death, taxes, etc.
• Provisionalism means you qualify
statements, avoiding absolutes.
Provisionalism is reflected in the use of
qualifying terms such as possibly,
probably, perhaps, occasionally, maybe,
might, and sometimes.
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Reciprocal Patterns:
Like Begets Like
• One famous tit-for-tat exchange occurred
between Lady Astor, the first female member of
the British Parliament, and Winston Churchill.
Exasperated by Churchill’s opposition to several
of the causes she espoused, Lady Astor
acerbically remarked, “Winston, if I were married
to you, I’d put poison in your coffee.”
• Churchill replied, “And if you were my wife,
I’d drink it.”
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Competitive and Noncompetitive
Listening: Shifting and Supporting
• Active listening is focused listening. We
make a conscious effort to focus our
attention of the speaker and his or
message.
• Too often when sitting in groups we do not
make the effort to listen actively.
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Shift Response versus
Support Response
• When we vie for attention during a group discussion our
listening becomes competitive. An attention-getting
initiative by a listener, called the shift response, is a key
competitive listening strategy.
• The support response, in contrast, is an attention-giving
cooperative effort by the listener to focus attention on the
other person, not on oneself.
• Supportive assertion and a supportive question are the
types of supportive responses that encourage
cooperative discussion, not competitive struggles for
attention.
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Competitive Interrupting:
Seizing the Floor
• Listeners who use the shift response usually
observe the “one speaker at a time” rule of
conversation. Competitive interrupters do not.
• Competitive interruption is the focus on
individual needs, not group needs.
• Completive interrupting creates antagonism,
rivalry, hostility, and in some cases withdrawal
from group discussion by frustrate members.
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Ambushing: Preparing Rebuttals
• When we are ready to pounce on a point
made by a speaker, we are listening with a
bias.
• The biases to attack the speaker verbally,
not try to understand the speaker’s point of
view is called ambushing.
• Preparing a rebuttal while a speaker is still
explaining his or her point show little
interest in comprehending a message.
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Ambushing: Preparing Rebuttals
• Probing and paraphrasing can short-circuit
ambushing. Probing means seeking
additional information from a speaker by
asking questions.
• Paraphrasing “is a concise response to the
speaker which states the essence of the
other’s content in the listeners world.”
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