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Week 1: Team Dynamics for Managers

Team Dynamic Questions
Ms. Annie Fongheiser
Week 1
Frederick R. Paige III












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Question 1
The objective of the group in this scenario was to come up with a plan to add
and subtract courses from the college curriculum and to also attract students and deepen
the curriculum. All of the group members had ideas coming into this session about what
was best and ideas on how to proceed with the problem. The conflict in this group setting
was not actively listening to what each member had to contribute. The team members
were so adamant on getting their ideas brought forth that they would cut off speakers and
interrupt who was talking to get their idea brought forth Two listening methods that could
have been used would be discriminative listening and comprehensive listening. Discriminative
listening allows listeners to make a clear distinction between auditory and visual stimuli, it also
involves the aspect of hearing accurately what someone is saying. Comprehensive listening
involves being able to understand group members accurately and the meaning of what they are
saying. If the team members used some active listening they would have realized that the same
ideas that another member stated were also what they were trying to say.

Question 2
In the second video, Planning a Playground the verbal communication amongst the
group was positive, and lots of team talk. Engelberg and Wynn state. Not only does team talk
enable group members to share information and express opinions, but analysis of team talk also
reveals where the team is coming from and where it is headed. The nonverbal communication
amongst the team was cooperative and interacting. The group was positioned in a round like
setting at the table and there seemed to be cooperation among the group members. No ones
personal space was invaded and the group seemed to be vocal in expressing pitch, volume and
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word stress while talking about building the playground. The team members used their hands
while they talked but did not seem over bearing to hinder the verbal communication that was
being expressed. Personal space was not invaded and facial and eye contact were adhered by
whoever was speaking. A suggestion to make to the group would be to have less control. There
was one individual who seemed to be the group leader in a situation where everyone should have
been involved. The male seemed to impose a few decisions that were not a consensus among the
group. This could be avoided by having a voting standard among the group so that everyone
would have the sense of mutual agreement.
Question 3
In the video Helping Annie there were three individuals communicating in a school
setting about a student named Annie who had come forth and stated that she had an eating
disorder. The first person in the group was a white female counselor who Annie had reached out
to. She was approximately 30-35 years old. The second individual was a white female,
approximately 30-35 years old. The third individual was an older white male approximately 55-
65 years old. The diversity that existed would be the heterogeneous, culture and age. These
three factors hindered the communication style by the biased of the older white male who
appeared to have a prejudice and stereotype of adolescents. The doctor seemed to generalize
about young people and the characteristics of eating disorders. The doctor only seemed to have
one solution in mind, which was treating the adolescent with medicine while the other two
females focused on getting some individualized help for the adolescent suffering from an eating
disorder. Two communication methods that could have been used would be to balance the team
diversity in which the doctor should have tried to understand, respect and adapt the to the
suggestions of the other two team members. The other technique that could have been used was
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to have open communication. The doctor was adamant on only having one solution, which was
medicine and did not have any open communication as to why he only suggested medication.
He also was only concerned with his lack of time and seemed to shut off communication by non-
verbal communication by continuously looking at his watch.



















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References
Engleberg, I. N. & Wynn, D. R. (2010). Working in groups. (5
th
ed.). Boston, MA:
Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.