Imagine you have together the brightest people in your department to solve the problem. You have high hopes for the group, so you feel frustrated when people can’t come to the decision.
Several factors are holding the group back.
To start with, one person is very critical of a colleague’s ideas. You suspect that fault-finding is discouraging others from speaking up. Another has hardly contributed to the session at all: when asked for his opinion he simply agrees with the more dominant colleague. Finally, one group member made a humorous comment at an unhelpful time, which upsets the momentum of the discussion.
These are the classic examples of poor group dynamics, and they can undermine the success of a project, as well as people’s morale and engagement.
Explain what groups dynamics are and why they matter? And discuss some examples of poor group dynamics and outline some tools that you can use to deal with them.
