Communication is a mutual exchange of understanding. Business communication is more formal than ordinary interpersonal interaction, which is regulated by certain norm and oriented by goals (Schoop, Kohne, & Ostertag, 2010). Through learning the Business Communication course, I had understood various communication concepts and theories. Additionally, I have further developed my understanding of interpersonal and intrapersonal dynamics through applying concepts into practical group work.
On one hand, interpersonal communication can involve individuals interacting with public or personal conversation and provides possibility of exploration of people’s behaviour and communication (Sigmar & Cooper, 2011). On the other hand, intrapersonal communication, as “a special case of interpersonal communication”, includes writing, thinking while making gestures and talking to oneself (Schoop et al. , 2010, p. 202).
This reflective essay will go through details of my personal experience in the group work.In particular, the successfulness for group performance will be assessed and motivations for certain behaviour will be diagnosed. This essay will argue that conflict management style affects the group performance and suitable communication channel facilities interpersonal communication. This essay will be structured into three pillars: describing and analysing interpersonal dynamics with a focus on suitable communication tools; describing and analysing the impact of conflict management strategies on group performance; providing suggestions for future improvement in terms of interpersonal effectiveness.Interpersonal dynamics can be facilitated though adapting suitable communication tools. International students usually bear with heavy studying load and may have part-time jobs commitments.
It was difficult to arrange a group meeting and even we had agreed a particular time for meeting, we still had people missing or being late. Therefore, it became necessary for us to find a better way to interact.Computer-mediated communication, such as instant message and Emails are proved to be effective on many different aspects of interactions (Lee, Leung, Xiong & Wu, 2011). Therefore, Email became our available option at hand for organising and processing group tasks.
In fact, there are a number of advantages for using Email. According to Mayer (2010), Email is the most widely used Internet application which provides time proof of interactions, convenience of archiving recall, convenience of recording correspondence and low risk of making embarrassing comments on other’s work.In reality, Email provides us flexibilities in determining when to communicate and what to discuss. Also, I realised that conducting group work virtually would allows me to be more focused on the task, rather than socialisation, which can be often seem from traditional interactions.
The process of Email-based group communication worked out smoothly: the group leader reviewed members’ work and edited it into a combined version. Adaption of Email communication improved the group performance. Just like Lee et al.(2011) claimed, E-communication allows team players use various materials such as sound, video, pictorial aids to support their arguments. This leads a more interactive and meaningful transmission of message tailored with the nature of audience (Gerpott, 2010).
However, Fawkes and Gregory (2010) argue that Email creates misunderstanding that is due to improper construction of message. In traditional face-to-face discussion, when audience do not understand the message, speakers can make additional explanation or seeking aids from non-verbal language (Mayer, 2010).In fact, it was the case since our group members are not English native speakers and misunderstanding were unavoidable. This led to a situation that we need to spend more time on explaining the messages.
Practical experience of interpersonal dynamics is linked to literature. Low level of interpersonal trust and negative interaction are considered to be the attributes of Internet communication (Fawkes & Gregory, 2010; Lee et al. , 2011). According to Gerpott (2010), Internet communication is not only separates people from physical distance, but also psychological connections.Mayer (2010) adds that confrontational expression and disagreement can be often seen from Internet communication.
However, this does not fully apply to our circumstance. Although there are some negative impacts of purely relying on Internet communication, by meeting pace-to-pace purposefully, the negative influence can be mitigated (Forrester & Tashchian, 2010). In the group work, the Internet communication was only the alternative to us and we started to form the group as classmates who meet each other daily.Group work is defined by Judeh (2011), a number of people have their motives mixed and work collaboratively to achieve common goals.
Cooperative and competitive forms are often detected in terms of group work interdependence (Riebe, Roepen, Santarelli & Marchioro, 2010). Improved communication, high productivity and willingness of participating are often observed from cooperative interdependence whereas communicating deadlocks, aggressiveness and competition are often found in competitive interdependence (Forrester & Tashchian, 2010).Noticeably, the cooperativeness was the spirit for the group and we were highly collaborative in working together. Since the mark of assignment would be awarded to everyone equally, there was not necessary to be competitive. This is explained by Maria, Reid, Ross and Schoch (2010), the competitive group working style mostly happens in limited resource working environment such as getting a higher position in a company, or being the champion in a contest; if the same reward can be obtained for every member in the team, there will be less willing of competition inside of the team.Although the collaboration was generally smooth and productive, the equity and imbalance of task assignation and quality could not be ensured.
For example, we had spent a quite long period of time in deciding who should do what, yet still experienced arguments of distribution of work later after assignation. Judeh (2011) claims this is the failure of overused collaboration. Collaboration can be time-consuming and it is often misunderstood with teamwork (Forrester & Tashchian, 2010).According to Maria et al. (2010), a team is created when manager need a particular problem or target to be achieved or solved by arranging a few people working closely. Team players may not like each other but the work can still be accomplished as long as there is an authority which can solve the disputes (Judeh, 2011).
Nevertheless, collaborators may have share goals but the different perspectives of how to achieve goals and expectations about the goal may vary (Forrester & Tashchian, 2010).Riebe et al. (2010) add that collaborators cannot rely on a leader to solve differences as everyone has similar bargaining power in deciding what he or she should do, how to do. The quality of the tasks was the suitable example for prior statement. Members who have less willingness of achieving a high mark produced low level of quality work and they could not be forced to do a better job as others were not capable in terms of authority or bargaining power of doing so.
Group dynamics plays an important role in group performance.Conflict management approaches is one of many variables that can be seen from group work which impacts their performance. A theory called the Dual Concern Model proposed by Pruitt (as cited in Manyak & Katono, 2010) is used to describe different conflicting management styles. According to Yuan (2010) and Asawo (2011), dual concern model have five different conflict management approaches (avoidance, competitive, cooperation, yielding and conciliation) based on assumption of concerning for oneself and concerning for others.Briefly, avoidance conflict approach is characterised by inaction and passivity; yielding conflict style is characterised by accommodating and pro-social passivity; competitive conflict approach is characterised by maximise personal assertiveness; cooperation conflict style refers to active concern for both pro-self and pro-social behaviour; conciliation conflict style is also called compromising in which people possess intermediate level of concern for both oneself and others’ outcome (Asawo, 2011; Manyak & Katono, 2010).
Recognition of personal conflict management style improves the performance of group work. For instance, my conflict management approach is more close to conciliation. This style allows me to think about both other’s needs and my own needs. This was reflected in a situation when a member suggested that visual aids should be minimised on the PowerPoint while I insisted that it was suitable to put them on the presentation so as to increase the creativity of presentation.
After considering his reason of not distracting audience I agreed to reduce some of visual aids.Notwithstanding, the compromising conflict management approach has its negativity. According to Yuan (2010), people may feel stressed when their needs are not fully expressed and fulfilled, which may result lack of confidence and less willing of participating (Asawo, 2011). There are some suggestions can be proposed in addressing weakness of group performance and interpersonal effectiveness. Basically, the group process was successful due to the great willingness of obtaining a good mark from this assignment. However, the imperfectness was still there, yet can be solved accordingly.
For example, in resolving the negative impacts of Email communication, a more interactive software application called as Live Video Chat can be adapted in the future. Through this technology, people can virtually see other group members’ faces and body languages and it is expected to solve the problems caused by psychological distance (Gerpott, 2010). In addition, in addressing undesirable group performance, an in-depth analysis and recognition of conflict management approach tests can be used before group work and the information provided by tests will give group members increased controllability of their behaviour (Yuan, 2010).In other words, group performance can be enhanced because of well-developed conflicts management. In conclusion, this essay has argued that suitable communication channels facilitate the interpersonal process and recognition of conflict management improves group performance. This essay has described and analysed the interpersonal dynamics with regarding to application of E-communication in preparing group presentation.
In addition, conflict management styles have been used to describe and analyse group performance. Finally, several suggestions have been proposed for future improvement
