A Reflective Analysis of Group Dynamics Using Gibbs' Model

This essay reflects on the dynamics of a group during a class assignment, utilizing Gibbs' reflective cycle to analyze the experience. The author focuses on the communication aspect of group dynamics, highlighting challenges such as lack of trust, respect, cooperation, and commitment among group members. The reflection covers the description of the situation, feelings experienced, evaluation of the group work, analysis of the causes, conclusion drawn from the experience, and an action plan for future improvements in communication skills and teamwork. The essay underscores the importance of effective communication in group settings and the impact of poor communication on group cohesion and performance. The student acknowledges personal growth and the need to develop better communication skills for future collaborative endeavors.

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Reflection on Group Dynamics
Student’s Name
University
Lecturer
Course
Date

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Reflection on Group Dynamics
Group dynamics is a set of behaviours and psychological processes that takes place in a
social group. When members come together to form a group for a given course of action, they
face the differences that exist between members called group dynamics (Bertram 2004, p. 13).
According to Danesi (2009, p. 9) group dynamics is a social approach that can be used to
understand differences between teams and how certain behaviours manifest themselves. This has
been seen in areas like the study of racism, sexism and other forms of social prejudice that exist
in the society. Burgoon, et al. (2010, p. 3) suggests that stages of group formation have been
developed and the circumstances that take place in every stage of group formation identified to
provide justification for the behaviour of the group. From a management context, group
dynamics provides opportunities for managers to learn the differences between group members
and develop strategies that can be used to address such issues for organizational effectiveness
(Ferguson, et al. 2014, p. 464). Groups exhibit different aspects when members work together.
Further, there are different groups within an organization that exhibit different aspects of their
dynamics. One aspect of group dynamics is communications skills.
Communication skills form an integral part of the organization ad group dynamics since
they connect members of the group together. Defined as the ability to convey information to
others effectively, group members require communication skills to facilitate sharing of
information amongst each other and improve organizational processes (Robbins, et al. 2011, p.
23). This aspect plays an important part of the group since it allows members to share
information within the group when handling issues that revolve around them. It allows members
of the group to sort differences that exist between them and form stronger bonds that are critical
for the success of the group (Cheney 2011, p. 29). This essay applies the Gibbs learning cycle to

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analyse the communication aspect of group dynamics to understand how the class group
operated when handling class assignments.
Gibbs’ (1988) Reflective Cycle
The cycle is useful in allowing a learner to reflect on personal experience through the
stages as way of gathering lessons and insights from the activity. Learning requires continuous
personal development that allows the student to reflect on every aspect that they went through to
determine the areas that need to be addressed and adjusted to increase future outcomes
(Jayatilleke & Mackie 2012, p. 310). The cycle allows me to systematically reflect on the group
activities that we worked together using the aspect of communication (kayes 2002, p. 139). This
evaluation will assist in understanding how to address such situations in future. The cycle has
four stages of description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and action plan.
Description
The aspect that the group lacked was communication skills during the group assignment
work. Under normal circumstances communication is used a tool to allow members of the group
to convey messages between each other (Saim, et al. 2015, p. 14). The group members had
difficulties communicating since the members lacked trust, respect, cooperation and commitment
to the activities of the group. Levi (2010, p. 11) suggets that, lack of good communication leads
to lack of focus and creates a state of inequality in members. Lack of focus is where the members
were unable to focus on the overall objective of the group since they failed to understand the
overall objective of the activity. Further, since members have different abilities, some feel like
they know better than others thus they were interjecting or cutting short those whom they felt had
little knowledge about the topic. Such interruptions when others were speaking irritated some
members thus making some belittled while others felt unable to participate in the discussion

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since there was no need of participating when some members behaved like they knew more than
others.
On the other hand, ineffective communication was a problem since there was no group
leader who was in charge of moderating the group activities. Kreitner & Kinicki (2012, p. 22)
suggests that this leads to lack of cohesion within the group since the members did not speak
with one language. The tasks were supposed to be shared between team members to achieve
team work but this did not work. The outcome was inconsideration where the deadline for the
group activity was missed with members giving all sorts of excuses. Therefore, poor
communication led to increased challenges within the group caused by lack of cohesion and
coordination between members.
Feelings
As the small member of the group in terms of body size, I felt belittled by the other group
members since they were behaving in an awkward manner. Domination elements in the group
made some group members like me find a hard time working with the group since I worked on
most part of the assignment alone. Since there was poor communication within the group it was
difficult to optimise group performance since there was limited group member’s engagement and
ineffective interaction between members (Eisenberg 2010, p. 15). The outcome of this challenge
was stress to some memes like me who suffered by working more while the rest of the members
enjoyed our sweat from the group. Then there was a challenge on meeting the group task
expectations since some members either failed to participate or others were difficult and had
challenges working along with the rest of the members.
Further, lack of communication skills limited interaction and bonding within the group.
Bonding forms the baseline for each group since it allows group members to establish contact

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with each other which allows them to work as better team members (Kneen 2011, p. 31). In our
group, this element of the group was missing since every member was on their own. This creates
a culture of distrust among members. Ineffective communication prohibits trust building within
the group since it limits the ability of members to interact with each other at personal levels.
Further, the goals of the group and the role of each member becomes clear thus allowing
members to set attainable goals. In our case the group lacked all the above and members were
operating based on their own assumptions and instincts. This challenge in turn created
uncertainty and confusion within members thus leading to limited engagement within the group.
The outcome was a disorganised group that was unable to meet simple tasks and deadlines that
were required for the assignments that we were working on. Such unmet expectations created
stress in some members like me who were dedicated to finishing the task. The outcome of this
situation was relational breakdown in the group. At this stage, I feel that I need to develop proper
communication skills that can allow me to easily interact well with others and form greater
bonds that can be used to achieve greater teamwork.
Evaluation
The group work was partly good and partly not good. From the good part of the task, I
did most of the work for the group with a few members while the rest partly participated. This
process allowed me to develop greater knowledge of the topic which makes it easy for me to
answer exam tests should they be set on the topics covered. My passion and dedication to
academic writing yielded the best results since I was able to work on the research and create a
final task that met the requirements of the lecturer. This led to good grades for myself and all the
other group members who did not fully participate in the task. For me, the participation of the

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group members was not a big hindrance since working on the task with little assistance allowed
me to develop deeper insights for the topic from researching.
On the other hand, poor participation from group members was a result of
communication challenges that the members were facing. Communication is an integral process
of any group work since it allows members to create social bonds with each other that allow
them to easily work on their tasks (Pauley 2010, p. 32). When members do not communicate
well, there is limited interaction with each other since the group lacks cohesiveness that comes
from bonding. Every group goes through stages of group formation that determine the survival of
the group. The storming stage is where our group suffered since each member’s character was
revealed leading to challenges in managing the group. Since there was poor communication
within the group, it was difficult to attain trust of each member that will lead to group loyalty. If
proper communication skills were put in place and used in the group task, greater results will
have been achieved through increased teamwork and individual participation.
Analysis
The situation was made worse by poor communication skills within the group. The
members of the group had never worked together and had challenges establishing rapport with
each other. This situation led to lack of clear goals for the group since members were unable to
develop clear goals for the group due to lack of clear focus on the group task. Most of the group
members did not see the relevance of the group task as an application for group work skills to
solve tasks but rather saw it as a way of finishing the task. Most members felt that they needed to
have decided the group members that they work with rather than working with an imposed team.
The team was therefore characterised with the inability to separate facts from feelings since the
members failed to understand each other and determine how the tasks can be shared equally.

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Further, it was difficult to separate personal feelings from group since most members had their
personal issues that were not supposed to affect the group performance. Further, the team lacked
coordination since the group members did not have good communication skills. As such we
failed to plan for the tasks that were to be done in the group and how the tasks were to be
distributed within the group. Each member was to be assigned a task that was related to the
larger group task. However, communication as a planning tool was not working in our group
making it difficult to coordinate tasks within members.
The experience for this group work made me realise the importance of good
communication skills within a group set up. The challenges that we faces as a group related
directly to what we had covered in class on the importance of communication. We had
challenges working together since members failed to build rapport with each other thus creating
lack of respect and trust in the group. Members did what they felt was good for them and forgot
the notion that the tasks to be done by each individual relates to the overall outcome of the
group.
Conclusion
From the reflection on the group work task, communication plays a major role in the
success of any group tasks. In group situations members come together to accomplish a task y
working together in developing solutions for the problem. In our situation, we were dealing with
a group task which entailed solving the assignment as a group. Here, it means that participation
by every group member was important in ensuring that the task was successfully completed. In
this scenario, communication played the role of coordinating the activities of each group member
to ensure that they were working together. However, this element was missing since there was
poor communication in our group with members trying anything that they felt was important.

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The tasks were not distributed among group members since we failed to share the tasks with each
other thus leading to difficulties in managing the group.
On the other hand, there was lack of rapport and bonding between the members because
when the group members started storming, this is when all the members realised that
communication could have assisted members to establish group bonds that reduce tension
between members and create cohesion that works well for group work (Schmitz 2012, p. 24).
Although the task was later completed, some members did more than others since there was a lot
of distract among members making some of them to withdraw and passively participate in the
group activities.
Action plan
To address these issues in future, I have learnt the importance of communication skills
and the need to apply them in group situations. To improve communication in future, I will work
on improving body language as a way of creating rapport with the group. When talking to group
members, Fujishin (2013)suggests that body language is important in allowing others to
understand what I mean I have to learn to differentiate between different body languages and
where they can be applied. For example, aggressive and assertive body languages have to be
applied in different contexts. Some situations call for the need to be aggressive while others call
for the need to be assertive. Assessment abilities will assist me to understand the context of
communication and determine which body language to use (Franz 2012, p. 18). Further, verbal
and non-verbal communication strategies also work differently in different situations.
Another strategy that I will apply in future is showing interest in the person that I am
speaking with. This process makes the other group members to feel accepted and acknowledged
in the group rather than feel like they are being belittled (Choudhary & Rathore 2013, p. 2085).

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Since groups have different types of people, showing interest in each of the members makes
them feel accommodated and part of the group. It can be strengthened by listening to other group
members to understand their concerns or contributions that they may have to the group. This
strategy works well when building rapport within the group and allowing the group members to
bond with each other and create close links.
The last strategy that I believe can work well is the use of constructive communication
within the group. (Narayanrao 2011, p. 3)This is a way of responding to people in a way that
acknowledges what they have said. Since group work entails shared contributions of members,
these contributions have to be connected and relate to each other since all the members are
covering a single topic. When communicating with the group members, constructive
communication allows members to relate what they say with the rest of the members (Barnlund
2008, p. 49). This strategy will be helpful in improving group relations and creating conditions
that allow easy participation of all members.
Therefore group dynamics presents different challenges that team members face when
working on similar tasks. When people come together that undergo the stages of group formation
which may build cohesiveness in the group or create barriers for group work. Communication is
an integral part of communication that requires members to develop relationships that improve
the outcome of the group task. From the Gibb’s reflective cycle, working on communication
skills can assist me improve group working relations and achieve better results.

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