 Hi, welcome to the lecture for chapter four group formation. Over the next several slides, what we will look at are some of the theories and models that explain how and why people come together to form groups. Let's get started. So before we start off, it's useful to kind of take a moment here to talk about how the process of engaging in communication can actually structure the way small groups come together. Now the best way that we can kind of frame this to the chapter is through the use of structuration theory. Now the basics of structuration is it's the idea that group communication actually creates, maintains, and continually recreates groups' norms and the way that it operates. There are three important assumptions regarding structuration theory as it was originally developed by Poole, Simon, Bolton, McPhee. First is that group members do not come to a group with a clean slate of how to behave, right? That behavior is not predetermined, it actually comes from their life experiences and the things that they have done before entering that group. And why people may understand in the context of a group that there are general rules and principles about working with the group, there are no laws that force people to obey these rules. As we will go on and discuss this semester, these rules then, through communication, become normalized and become the kind of unspoken rules or implicit norms that people follow and engage upon and those things are enforced through communicative interaction inside it. That said that as groups go throughout their development cycle and throughout their life cycle, they tend to be dynamic, meaning that there is a continuous creation and recreation of what the group's norms are and what their expectations are and all of this happens through communication. All right, with that in mind, let's talk a little bit about groups. First off, why do people join groups? There are a variety of reasons why people might join groups. It might stem from interpersonal needs of needing to have connection and affection with other people. It can have to do with individual goals and seeing groups as the means to accomplish these goals. It can be to a connection that individuals have to a specific group or team and the goals of success that go along with that. It might have to be with more of an interpersonal attraction that draws people towards a group, wanting to see themselves as members or have containing the characteristics that go with membership in a group. And with that, it might actually have an attraction with the group itself and wanting to be a part of that or individuals being drawn together and wanting to be a part of that. So when we talk about interpersonal needs kind of in the more specific, one of the useful theories that we talk about is Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Now, Maslow basically said that for human beings to kind of work their way up a hierarchy of needs, there were certain characteristics that has to be met and for one individual to accomplish the next level of need, the criticism need had to be fulfilled. And so at the most basic level of needs that human beings have, Maslow situated physiological needs and these were your needs for air, food, and water. Once an individual had obtained those, there then were needs for safety and this included security and protection from harm. Once those very basic needs were met, human beings then searched for blindness and affiliation with the others, having esteem and self-respect and ultimately once all of those needs were met, there could just need to becoming self-actualized when an individual could kind of achieve their full potential. Groups are one of the most effective constructs in human history to allow people to climb Maslow's hierarchy of needs and kind of reach self-actualization. Individual goals can be a variety of things to different people, seek different things in different situations but it might include things such as looking for prestige or wanting status and power inside their doing. But also wanting some non-immunity, being able to kind of fall back inside the group and allow some safety inside of that. People tend to join groups for recreation purposes and wanting to connect and make friends and do things. Obviously people join groups to help improve themselves through education and contribute to their own personal growths. When we talk about group and team goals, there's an interesting intersection that should take place inside this. For groups to be successful, the goals of the group should coincide with that of individual goals. When we will talk about this later, when any one individual's goals tend to take the forefront over that of the group goals that tends to create tension and conflict inside the group. And so there needs to be a certain amount of transcendence that takes place where the group's goals get put towards the front and the individual goals hopefully become subsumed inside of that. Talking about interpersonal attraction, people seek out other individuals for a variety of reasons, such as seeing similarity and connection between other individuals but also seeking individuals that compliment their skills. Oftentimes in the organizational structure of a self-managed work team, people put these groups together because there's a set of complimentary skills or some people might be good with an engineering and some people might be good with a graphic design perspective. Other people might be good with administration and they come together to form a cohesive unit that can be successful. So people are attracted to groups and to each other just out of the basics of proximity. If you ever lived in a dorm, you know that oftentimes people in the dorms will develop relationships based upon who your neighbors are. When I teach this class to students that lived in dorms, it's not uncommon for students who are dorm mates or live in the same building to decide to be in the same groups to each other because proximity draws them together. But also it can be other things such as physical attraction to one another. One of the useful theoretical constructs that we can use to kind of gain insight to how these initial goals merge into the actual group formation process is Tuckman's model of group development or Tuckman's model of group formation depending on which textbook you're reading. Inside of here, Tuckman originally set forth four basic stages of group development and then eventually added on a fifth to describe what happens when groups end up separating and disbanding at the end. And we call this the process of forming, storming, norming, performing and adjoining. So kind of a nice rhyme thing that goes together but let's briefly talk about each of these stages. When groups initially form, there is this kind of tentative phase that takes place really early on where people are anxious, there's high levels of anxiety, there's cautious behavior, it's not clear what people's backgrounds are or what roles they're going to play and so people tend to kind of be mellow. That said, the stage does not last very long and tends to move on to what we call the storming phase. In the storming phase of group development, here group members tend to compete with one another for position and place inside the group. There tends to be conflict over roles and expectations and issues as group members ultimately figure each other out. Eventually, storming gives way for norming and norming is where groups start to develop those norms that we talked about earlier in this lecture. This is where conflict resolution takes place, people start to get comfortable with their position inside of that. Now, just as a side note, at this point the hopeful direction is that groups move into the performing phase where they're able to get things done. That said, sometimes what will take place inside of here is that a group member will leave or somebody will join and change the group and what can happen is the group can then get reset back into a forming phase and kind of move through this. But hopefully what happens after norming is that the group moves to performing, they actually engage in the development and work through throughput processes to get things done and be productive and this is where groups kind of become self-actualized and make things happen. Then the final stage that Tuckman later added on was this adjoining phase and this means that the tasks or the group's work is completed and they eventually dissolve or disband or break up and become other things separate from what their original group was. So from here it's useful to have a brief concept about socialization inside groups and then eventually how this kind of leads us to assimilation. So when you look at groups and you study groups, you notice that groups tend to form personalities over time. And this is as a result that members tend to share their collective experiences with one another. And so I see this happen a lot in my classes where there is the really positive group that tend to be successful in early assignments. This tends to give way for even more positive experiences. People form good friendships and it tends to be a really happy, excited, outgoing group, right? That's the personality. But I've also seen the opposite take place where groups do not do well at the beginning of group lives and they run into issues and problems and the result of this is that co-rumination takes place and eventually this gives way to frustration and conflict and ultimately that personality is a very grumpy personality. A couple of things to notice about socialization is that when new members come into a group or come into an organization, this changes the dynamic, right? As we talked about in the previous slide, this can actually reset the group development that takes place and can actually change things up a little bit inside of this. And so when that happens, a reformation of the group takes place and this tends to involve kind of anticipation, the encounter phase and then people adjusting and that group changing and re-evolving as it takes place as new members are socialized and become part of that group's personality. And so when we talk about the different stages of group socialization, there's a couple of key stages that from a theoretical perspective fall into there. First is the antecedent phase. And this is the stage in group socialization during which members bring previous experiences, attitudes, beliefs, motives, and communication traits to the group process. This is followed by the anticipatory phase and this stage of group socialization describes individuals and group initial expectations of each other. Ultimately, this gives way to the encounter stage and this is the stage in group socialization in which members' expectations meet with reality as members adjust and ultimately fit with each other. Finally, we hit the assimilation stage and this is the stage in group socialization in which members kind of show full integration and become part of the group. Ultimately, this can also lead to an exit stage and this is the stage in which individuals leave the group or the entire group can disband at the end of like a task completion. All right, well that in a nutshell puts together what we're talking about for this chapter. As always, if you run into questions or concerns, please contact me at one of the methods made available to you.