Group dynamics 

is the study of groups, and also a general term for group processes. Relevant to the fields of psychology, sociology,
and communication studies, a group is two or more individuals who are connected to each other by social relationships. Because they interact
and influence each other, groups develop a number of dynamic processes that separate them from a random collection of individuals. These
processes include norms, roles, relations, development, need to belong, social influence, and effects on behavior. The field of group dynamics
is primarily concerned with small group behavior. Groups may be classified as aggregate, primary, secondary and category groups.

In organizational development (OD), or group dynamics, the phrase "group process" refers to the understanding of the behavior
of people in groups, such as task groups, that are trying to solve a problem or make a decision. An individual with expertise in
'group process, such as a trained facilitator, can assist a group in accomplishing its objective by diagnosing how well the group is
functioning as a problem-solving or decision-making entity and intervening to alter the group's operating behaviour.
Because people gather in groups for reasons other than task accomplishment, group process occurs in other types of groups
such as personal growth groups (e.g. encounter groups, study groups, prayer groups). In such cases, an individual with expertise
in group process can be helpful in the role of facilitator.
Well researched but rarely mentioned by professional group workers, is the social status of people within the group (i.e., senior
or junior). The group leader (or facilitator) will usually have a strong influence on the group due to his or her role of shaping the
group's outcomes. This influence will also be affected by the leader's sex, race, relative age, income, appearance, and
personality, as well as organizational structures and many other factors.

Feedback refers to messages or information that are sent back to the source from where the message came.
The speaker adjusts messages by strengthening, de-emphasizing or changing the content or form of the messages.
There are certain dimensions along which feedback is appraised and observed with respect to certain attributes.
The positive-negative dimension measures the degree of optimism or pessimism in the contents of the response given by the
receiver to the sender.
The person-focused and message-focused aspect emphasizes the context in which the message is delineated, whether its
cynosure is the person who sent it or the message that was sent.
The immediate-delayed dimension checks the timeliness factor of the message that the sender receives in response from the
receiver.
The low-monitoring, high-monitoring dimension talks about the spontaneity and sincerity with which the message was responded
back to. In effect, the contrasting factor is a tactfully and carefully crafted response to serve a specific purpose in disguise.
The supportive-critical dimension revolves around the magnitude of affirmation or divergence that the message displays in
relative comparison of the original message that he sent.

Organizational effectiveness is the concept of how effective an organization is in achieving the outcomes the organization

intends to produce. The idea of organizational effectiveness is especially important for non-profit organizations as most people
who donate money to non-profit organizations and charities are interested in knowing whether the organization is effective in
accomplishing its goals.
An organization's effectiveness is also dependent on its communicative competence and ethics. The relationship between these
three are simultaneous. Ethics is a foundation found within organizational effectiveness. An organization must exemplify respect,
honesty, integrity and equity to allow communicative competence with the participating members. Along with ethics and
communicative competence, members in that particular group can finally achieve their intended goals.

Authority - in context of a business organization, authority can be defined as the power and right of a person to use and allocate
the resources efficiently, to take decisions and to give orders so as to achieve the organizational objectives. Authority must be
well- defined. All people who have the authority should know what is the scope of their authority is and they shouldn’t misutilize it.
Authority is the right to give commands, orders and get the things done. The top level management has greatest authority.
Authority always flows from top to bottom. It explains how a superior gets work done from his subordinate by clearly explaining
what is expected of him and how he should go about it. Authority should be accompanied with an equal amount of responsibility.
Delegating the authority to someone else doesn’t imply escaping from accountability. Accountability still rest with the person
having the utmost authority.

What is Organizational Culture — and Why Does it Matter? While not always easy to capture or define, culture is an
observable, powerful force in any organization. Made up of its members’ shared values, beliefs, symbols, and behaviors, culture
guides individual decisions and actions at the unconscious level. As a result, it can have a potent effect on a company’s well
being and success.
The Role of Culture and Climate. Some consider culture the glue that holds everyone together. Others compare it to a
compass providing direction.
Operating largely outside of our awareness, culture creates a common ground for team members. It reduces uncertainty by
offering a language for interpreting events and issues. It provides a sense of order so that all team members know what is
expected. It contributes to a sense of continuity and unity. And it offers a vision around which a company can rally.
At the observable level, culture is manifested in an organization’s climate — the behaviors and strategies that can be managed in
support of organizational goals.
Upward Communication
Upward communication refers to the flow of communication from the lower level to the upper level. This type of communication is
normally observed when subordinates, employees communicate about themselves, information related what’s happening in an
organization, about the reaction of certain policies and other thoughts that came across their minds as well as others to their
superiors. 
Now a day leaders are found to encourage upward communications as it helps them to get new ideas which helps them to be
more innovative and foster more, communication becomes more efficient and the work tasks are seen to be get accomplished
more easily.

Reinforcement
Reinforcement is a term in operant conditioning and behavior analysis for the delivery of a stimulus, (immediately or shortly)
after a response, that results in an increase in the future rate or probability of that response. The response strength is assessed
by measuring frequency, duration, latency, accuracy, and/or persistence of the response after reinforcement stops. Experimental
behavior analysts measured the of rate of behaviors as a primary demonstration of learning and performance with non-humans.
For example, rate is measured as the number of times a pigeon pecks a key in a 10 minute session.
A reinforcer is the stimulus, event, or situation whose presentation is dependent upon a response.

What is Stereotyping?
Stereotyping is a thought process that organizes beliefs about one group of people and assigns them to everyone in that group.
An example of stereotyping would be that you believe that Indian people like curry, while it might be a popular spice, I'm
confident that not all Indian people like curry. Often stereotypes cheat us out of ever getting to know a person for who they are as
an individual. At worst stereotyping can turn into such things as racial profiling and other discriminatory things.

Group cohesiveness
Group cohesiveness" is the force bringing group members closer together. Cohesiveness has two dimensions: emotional (or
personal) and task-related. The emotional aspect of cohesiveness, which was studied more often, is derived from the connection
that members feel to other group members and to their group as a whole. That is, how much do members like to spend time with
other group members? Do they look forward to the next group meeting? Task-cohesiveness refers to the degree to which group
members share group goals and work together to meet these goals. That is, is there a feeling that the group works smoothly as
one unit or do different people pull in different directions?

Grapevine
Grapevine is an informal channel of business communication. It is called so because it stretches throughout the organization in
all directions irrespective of the authority levels. Man as we know is a social animal. Despite existence of formal channels in an
organization, the informal channels tend to develop when he interacts with other people in organization. It exists more at lower
levels of organization.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

If motivation is driven by the existence of unsatisfied needs, then it is worthwhile for a manager to understand which needs are
the more important for individual employees. In this regard, Abraham Maslow developed a model in which basic, low-level needs
such as physiological requirements and safety must be satisfied before higher-level needs such as self-fulfillment are pursued. In
this hierarchical model, when a need is mostly satisfied it no longer motivates and the next higher need takes its place.
There are five following needs:
Self-Actualization, Esteem Needs, Social Needs, Safety Needs, Physiological Needs

Implications for Management

If Maslow's theory holds, there are some important implications for management. There are opportunities to motivate employees
through management style, job design, company events, and compensation packages, some examples of which follow:

Physiological needs: Provide lunch breaks, rest breaks, and wages that are sufficient to purchase the essentials of life.
Safety Needs: Provide a safe working environment, retirement benefits, and job security.
Social Needs: Create a sense of community via team-based projects and social events.
Esteem Needs: Recognize achievements to make employees feel appreciated and valued. Offer job titles that convey the
importance of the position.
Self-Actualization: Provide employees a challenge and the opportunity to reach their full career potential.
However, not all people are driven by the same needs - at any time different people may be motivated by entirely different
factors. It is important to understand the needs being pursued by each employee. To motivate an employee, the manager must
be able to recognize the needs level at which the employee is operating, and use those needs as levers of motivation.

Limitations of Maslow's Hierarchy

While Maslow's hierarchy makes sense from an intuitive standpoint, there is little evidence to support its hierarchical aspect. In
fact, there is evidence that contradicts the order of needs specified by the model. For example, some cultures appear to place
social needs before any others. Maslow's hierarchy also has difficulty explaining cases such as the "starving artist" in which a
person neglects lower needs in pursuit of higher ones. Finally, there is little evidence to suggest that people are motivated to
satisfy only one need level at a time, except in situations where there is a conflict between needs.
Even though Maslow's hierarchy lacks scientific support, it is quite well-known and is the first theory of motivation to which many
people they are exposed. To address some of the issues of Maslow's theory, Clayton Alderfer developed the ERG theory, a
needs-based model that is more consistent with empirical findings.

Life Position
The concept of life positions is another basic idea from transactional analysis theory. Life positions works with the assumption
that we choose very early on in our life, before age 2, a basic stance towards ourselves and other people. It represents the
fundamental stance a person takes about the essential value he or she perceives in him or herself and other people. Once a
child has taken up a favorite position, they're likely to construct the rest of their world view to match that life position. One could
therefore also see a life position as one of the first script decisions a person makes.

Group Norms
Norms are generally the unwritten, unstated rules that govern the behavior of a group. Norms often just evolve and are socially
enforced through social sanctioning. Norms are often passed down through time by a culture or society. Norms are intended to
provide stability to a group and only a few in a group will refuse to abide by the norms. A group may hold onto norms that are no
longer needed, similar to holding on to bad habits just because they have always been part of the group. Some norms are
unhealthy and cause a poor communication among people. Often groups are not aware of the unwritten norms that exist. New
people to the group have to discover these norms on their own over a period of time and may face sanction just because they did
not know a norm existed. At the end of the exercise, I give some actual examples of norms that I have encountered in groups.

Attitudes
An attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's degree of like or dislike for an item. Attitudes are generally
positive or negative views of a person, place, thing, or event-- this is often referred to as the attitude object. People can also be
conflicted or ambivalent toward an object, meaning that they simultaneously possess both positive and negative attitudes toward
the item in question.
Attitudes are judgments. They develop on the ABC model (affect, behavior, and cognition). The affective response is
an emotional response that expresses an individual's degree of preference for an entity. The behavioral intention is a verbal
indication or typical behavioral tendency of an individual. The cognitive response is a cognitive evaluation of the entity that
constitutes an individual's beliefs about the object. Most attitudes are the result of either direct experience or observational
learning from the environment.

Attitude change
Attitudes can be changed through persuasion and we should understand attitude change as a response to communication.
Experimental research into the factors that can affect the persuasiveness of a message include:
1. Target Characteristics: These are characteristics that refer to the person who receives and processes a message. One
such trait is intelligence - it seems that more intelligent people are less easily persuaded by one-sided messages.
Another variable that has been studied in this category is self-esteem. Although it is sometimes thought that those
higher in self-esteem are less easily persuaded, there is some evidence that the relationship between self-esteem and
persuasibility is actually curvilinear, with people of moderate self-esteem being more easily persuaded than both those
of high and low self-esteem levels (Rhodes & Woods, 1992). The mind frame and mood of the target also plays a role in
this process.
2. Source Characteristics: The major source characteristics are expertise, trustworthiness and interpersonal attraction or
attractiveness. The credibility of a perceived message has been found to be a key variable here; if one reads a report
about health and believes it came from a professional medical journal, one may be more easily persuaded than if one
believes it is from a popular newspaper. Some psychologists have debated whether this is a long-lasting effect and
Hovland and Weiss (1951) found the effect of telling people that a message came from a credible source disappeared
after several weeks (the so-called "sleeper effect"). Whether there is a sleeper effect is controversial. Perceived
wisdom is that if people are informed of the source of a message before hearing it, there is less likelihood of a sleeper
effect than if they are told a message and then told its source.
3. Message Characteristics: The nature of the message plays a role in persuasion. Sometimes presenting both sides of a
story is useful to help change attitudes.
Cognitive Routes: A message can appeal to an individual's cognitive evaluation to help change an attitude. In the central route to
persuasion the individual is presented with the data and motivated to evaluate the data and arrive at an attitude changing
conclusion. In the peripheral route to attitude change, the individual is encouraged to not look at the content but at the source.
This is commonly seen in modern advertisements that feature celebrities. In some cases, physician, doctors or experts are used.
In other cases film stars are used for their attractiveness.
THE TEAM BUILDING PROCESS
A step-by-step approach to change can help a team to work methodically and prevent the omission of important stages. Practical
observations suggests six steps that are important in the team building process.
Step 1. Wanting To Feel Better
Change is never energized by complacency and comfort. Effective change begins with the realization that all is not well or that
difficulties lie ahead. At this initial stage, feelings play an important part because the need for change must be felt by those
individuals who will be responsible for implementing the process.
Step 2. Identifying The Problem And Needs
Sometimes problems can be difficult for a supervisor to identify. A supervisor trying to diagnose a problem may find it difficult to
observe symptoms, as a superficial assessment is often made that fails to identify the causes of the problem. A technical
analysis of problems needs to be made.
Step 3. Creating A Vision
Specifying the preferred situation is important. As the supervisor, you need to be as clear as possible about where you wish to
go. If you and your team can visualize the changes you wish to see and the difficulties which may block you, you have a better
chance of persevering and achieving. One way of doing this is by asking yourself the question. "What do I want to see happening
with this team in one year? “Most people respond to this question by restricting their vision with practical difficulties. However at
this stage it helps to ignore the practical limitations. Concentrating on what you wish to see happen will help to build a vision of
the future.
Step 4. Building Strategies For Improvement
After the teams vision has been clarified, it should be worked on until it can be expressed in terms of objectives. once objectives
are stated, strategy and tactics can be developed. There are many tactics for team development, but not all can be
implemented at once. An appropriate treatment is one that is affordable and effective.
Step 5. Reviewing Progress
The team building process needs to be monitored. Progress can be carefully reviewed by using mechanisms such as regular
meetings, clearly defined responsibilities, open discussion, progress reports and etc. These are not special techniques. Team
building can benefit from many of the same tools supervisors use in other areas.

Intrapersonal Conflict
Intrapersonal Conflict occurs when there is incompatibility or inconsistency among an individual’s cognitive elements. It implies
that a new cognitive element is at variance with a prior explanation or expectation.
Causes of Intrapersonal Conflict
Difficulty in making a decision because of uncertainty
Individuals are pushed or pulled in opposite direction i. e. attractive or unattractive alternative
Simultaneous forces of about equal strength
A person is motivated to engage in two or more mutually exclusive situation.
When a person is required to perform a task that does not match her / his expertise, interests goals and values.

Types of Intrapersonal Conflict

Approach-Approach Conflict, Approach-Avoidance Conflict, Avoidance-Avoidance Conflict

Individual Differences
That people differ from each other is obvious. How and why they differ is less clear and is the subject of the study of Individual differences
(IDs). Although to study individual differences seems to be to study variance, how are people different, it is also to study central tendency,
how well can a person be described in terms of an overall within-person average. Indeed, perhaps the most important question of individual
differences is whether people are more similar to themselves over time and across situations than they are to others, and whether the
variation within a single person across time and situation is less than the variation between people. A related question is that of similarity,
for people differ in their similarities to each other. Questions of whether particular groups (e.g., groupings by sex, culture, age, or ethnicity)
are more similar within than between groups are also questions of individual differences.

Leadership Styles
Leadership style is the manner and approach of providing direction, implementing plans, and motivating people. Kurt Lewin
(1939) led a group of researchers to identify different styles of leadership. This early study has been very influential and
established three major leadership styles. The three major styles of leadership are
1. Authoritarian or autocratic
2. Participative or democratic
3. Delegative or Free Reign
Although good leaders use all three styles, with one of them normally dominant, bad leaders tend to stick with one style.

Leadership Grid
Leadership grid, previously known as managerial grid is a simple tool for leaders to assess their own style of
working – what they do and how do they act and behave with their subordinates. Leadership grid was first given
shape by Blake and Mouton in 1960s (then known as Managerial Grid) and has since been revised several times
and extensively used for leadership assessment and development across the world. Leadership grid has its
genesis in style approach to leadership study.