Chapter Review 3, 9, and 10

 Communication is necessary for our day to day lives. You communicate with people everyday either verbally or non- verbally. Without it, we would be lost as to what we want from each other. Communication can also help improve your relationships. It is important to share your thoughts, feelings, and emotions. If you do not then you can potentially put your relationships at risk. As I am sure you have heard before “communication is key in your relationships”. 

As I began to learn more about communication I had the opportunity to sit in and listen to three presentations my classmates put together. The first presentation I saw was presented by Group one. They did their presentation based on Chapter 3: Intercultural Communications. They started off by talking about “what is culture?” I found that interesting because there is more than one culture. More things to learn and be informed on. Culture is important in communication because it is shared and learned. With the exchange of goods and traditions. Intercultural communication is also important to communication because it can get modified and better through generations through communicating its flaws. Believe it or not but communication can also involve sex, gender, sexual orientation and religion. Socioeconomic status is separated by low, middle and higher. This can also lead to different generations like Gen Z and Millennials. Different cultures can have different roles for women and men. This is known as masculinity and femininity. Sometimes while communicating we face a barrier. One example of this is anxiety. I know first hand how that affects people. I deal with anxiety every day and I like that it is being acknowledged. Ethnocentrism is when you believe your culture is the best one. I personally have never dealt with this or really heard about this until now. It was interesting to learn about. Another barrier is Stereotyping, this is a big thing I tend to see nowadays. The most common one I hear is that “all men are the same”. Language barriers also play apart. This can happen even when you speak the same language. All in all Group one did a wonderful job in presenting their information. They did it in a neat fashion where it was easy to understand. 

 The next presentation was presented by Group 2. I was in this group. Our presentation was on Chapter 9: Communication in groups. I was the first one to present our presentation. I started off by talking about groups and what they are. Families can be broken into different categories but the two main ones are nuclear families and unrelated families. I then went and talked about protective families and I used a video from the walking dead to demonstrate what exactly a protective family is. Then we have social groups, interest groups, support groups, work groups, and service groups. Each group uses communication in different ways. Interest groups are like after school clubs. Support groups tend to help you out with an issue you have. A good example of that are AA meetings. Social groups are like a group of friends you have. The best example of that is the show friends. Service groups are groups that help out when things get rough like the Red Cross. Work groups are groups of people that work together to accomplish something. I can use my group as an example of this because we all worked together to complete this presentation. The best number for a group is five. With five people more work gets done in an efficient manner. With more people you run the risk of getting more distracted and not getting the work done. To have an effective group make sure all your members are on the same page  and have the same end goal. Sometimes when a group can not meet in person they do it virtually. They can meet through zoom, google meet, Skype and so many others. Having an effective virtual group is the same as having a face to face group. While communicating virtually you can also do it in real time like the news. Healthy groups have ethical goals, are independent, and cohesive. To strengthen a group you can always do group bonding experiences or team building exercises. It's important to set ground rules for your group and hold people accountable when they do something wrong. I would say that group 2 did an amazing job showing visuals. We used a lot of pictures and even videos to show what we were talking about. 

The last and final group that went was Group 3. They did their presentation on Chapter 10: leadership and problem solving. Leadership is when an individual influences a group to reach a common goal. There are three different types of leaders: formal leader, informal emergent leaders, and shared leadership. A formal leader is a leader that is chosen. Informal leader is the one that assigns the tasks that everyone is going to do and lastly the shared leader is when the leadership are charmed among the group. There are task roles that consist of givers, seekers, and analyzers. Then you have maintenance roles with supporters, interpreters, harmonizers, mediator, and tension relievers. Procedural leader roles are people who do it by the book and follow the rules strictly. There are four sub groups of procedural leaders. There is a logistics coordinator, gatekeeper, expediters, and recorder. Shared leadership has five key responsibilities being to communicate to the whole group, keep the discussion on track, complete individual assignments, encourage input from all the members, and to manage all the conflict that happens between the members. Before leaders have a meeting they must prepare and distribute an agenda, decide who should attend the meeting, manage meeting logistics, and speak with each participant to the meeting. During the meeting leaders should review and modify the agenda, monitor member interactions, monitor time, praise in public and reprimand in private, check periodically to see if the group is ready to make a decision, implement the group’s decision rules, summarize decisions and assignments, and set the next meeting. After the meeting leaders should review the meeting outcome, repair damaged relationships, gather and share meeting notes and summary, and conduct frequent progress reports. Before a meeting participants should study the agenda, study the minutes, do your homework, list questions, and plan to play a leadership role. During a meeting they should listen attentively, stay focused, ask questions, take notes, play devil's advocate, and monitor your contributions. After a meeting they should review and summarize notes, evaluate your effectiveness, review decisions, communicate progress, complete your tasks, and review minutes and notes. To solve a problem, you should first identify and define the problem. Step two: analyze the problem. Step three: determine criteria for judging others. Step four: generate a host of solutions. Step five: evaluate solutions and decide. Step six: implement the agreed upon solution and assess it. Overall Group 3 did a phenomenal job going into depth about their topics. 

Listening to all these presentations I now know how to effectively be a more efficient member of society and be a better group member.