Page 343 - Effective group discussion theory and practice by Adams, Katherine H. Brilhart, John K. Galanes, Gloria J

326 Chapter 12

templates that can be customized to fit what your group needs. Your group can collect
data via e-mail, Facebook, a Web link, or a survey link embedded on your group’s site.
Assessment of virtual team performance has been an issue since the late 1990s,
1
when virtual teams exploded onto the professional landscape. Since then, systems
such as Promus have been developed to provide ways to assess and give feedback to
virtual team members and managers. Books, including The Handbook of High-
Performance Virtual Teams: A Toolkit for Collaborating Across Boundaries, provide
2
information and tools to enhance virtual team performance.

Internal Assessment: Members Evaluate the Group
Knowledgeable group members can do a lot to make their groups effective. By now,
you have an idea of what needs to improve and how you can contribute. Many
resources are available for assessing yourself, one another, and your group.

Self-Assessment
Do you like learning about yourself? Most people do, and members of groups often
enjoy taking personality and other assessments for that purpose. There are many such
assessments available in textbooks and on the World Wide Web. You can use the
information not just to learn about yourself but also to prompt group discussion about
the effect a particular member characteristic has on the group as a whole how others
perceived their behavior and how their actions influenced the group. Often, self-rating
scales are easily changed to ones that can be used to rate the other participants.
Grouphate was discussed in Chapter 5; Table 12.1 presents a short questionnaire
to help you assess your level of grouphate. Table 12.2 assesses how much you prefer

TABLE 12.1 Grouphate
The following scale provides information about the extent to which you like or dislike working in groups.
Indicate how much you agree or disagree with each statement by circling the appropriate response.
Add the numbers you have circled. The higher the number, the more you experience grouphate.
Strongly Strongly
Statement Agree Agree Neither Disagree Disagree

1. I like working in groups. 1 2 3 4 5
2. I would rather work alone. 5 4 3 2 1
3. Group work is fun. 1 2 3 4 5
4. Groups are terrible. 5 4 3 2 1
5. I would prefer to work in an 1 2 3 4 5
organization in which teams are used.
6. My ideal job is one in which I can be 1 2 3 4 5
interdependent with others.
Total

Source: Adapted from Joann Keyton and Lawrence R. Frey, “The State of Traits: Predispositions and Group Communication,” in
Lawrence R. Frey, ed., New Directions in Group Communication (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002): 109.

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