Page 155 - Effective group discussion theory and practice by Adams, Katherine H. Brilhart, John K. Galanes, Gloria J

138 Chapter 6

ix medical school faculty members, three psychiatrists with MDs, a psycholo-
gist, and two social workers, were selected by their deans to develop an instruc-
1
Stional program to teach new methods for identifying psychological disorders.
All six members were outstanding teachers and competent in their respective areas.
They were given the freedom to develop any program they wished as long as it could
be funded by outside grants.
During their first meeting, the members decided to base all group decisions on
sound reasoning. Julian was selected leader, perhaps because of his “take charge”
nature. The members insisted that he was expected to encourage input by all members
and equalize member influence. Julian made solid efforts to meet their expectations
because he strongly believed that their best decisions would be those based on input
from all members. He even went so far as to consult books on small group communi-
cation for ideas about how to equalize participation and influence fairly.
However, the group ran into problems over time. First, group members, strongly
entrenched in the medical culture, afforded the MDs greater clout. As a result, the
three members without medical degrees found that their comments lacked influence.
They talked less and less, did not push for their ideas, and after meetings would com-
plain to each other. Second, the group was under pressure to continue to seek funding
or their project would end. This gave Julian even greater influence because his
contacts helped him secure funding for two more years.
Soon the group formed into a small clique with Julian as its aggressive leader. He
talked more than any other member. When he rephrased others’ remarks, he did so in
a way that mirrored his own ideas. The non-MDs came to rely on his interpretations
and lost influence in the group. Conflicts were not dealt with in a constructive man-
ner and meetings were tense. Despite all their best intentions, Julian found himself
the autocratic leader of a clique. How did this group’s initial democratic spirit get
away from the members? We will look for answers in this chapter and the ones that
follow.
Our central theme has been that members’ verbal and nonverbal communication
is the most important throughput process of small group dynamics. In this chapter,
we describe how communication enables a group to emerge from a collection of indi-
viduals. Small group social systems are created in and through the communicative
behavior of group members to produce outputs such as status hierarchies, norms, and
climates. Small groups can change themselves by changing their interactions and, as
we saw with our medical group, can stray from their original intentions. Note that a
group’s throughput processes produce its outputs, and those feed back into the
group’s interaction, creating a loop of continuous influence. For example, the
“ pecking order” of the medical group emerged out of members’ interaction (through-
put). Rather than focus on individual characteristics, as we did in Chapter 5, we turn
to the effect of member behavior on the group as a whole.

The Interplay Between Communication and Group Culture
In Chapter 4, we discussed culture in general. In this chapter we see that small groups
themselves develop unique cultures, just as societies and other larger groupings do.
When we talk about culture and small groups, we mean three things: Members bring

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