From Mediocrity to Greatness: Components of Great Groups - Essay Example

As we grow old and as our consciousness matures, we gradually learn skills on how to make and accomplish things on our own. From being small children who are totally gradually breaking free from our dependence to our parents, we have reached the point when we can now use our unique talents and skills to become productive in our own pursuits and earn a living. Now, as adults, independence becomes a matter of great importance. Having already acquiring sufficient knowledge to live and to think on our own, we now have the power to assert and insist our own opinions and preferences to others.

We now have our own interests, reasoning methods and set of values unique from others. Our personal interests and preferences often dictate the type of persons that we are to socialize. Most of the time our differences in personality, attitudes, and behavior create interpersonal frictions that hampers our wellbeing and productivity. With our inclination to socialize, we tend to become picky on persons that we want to mingle with. We choose those who are nearly identical to our own interests and personality for us to become more effective and successful individuals.

We are, in the process, finding a group, which is according to McMillan, a collection of "several individuals who come together to accomplish a particular task or goal," where we can interact with smoothly (n.d.). Being a collection of different persons exhibi. It is for this reason, that group dynamics is of great importance in any organization today particularly in the fields of business and education.WordReference.com defines group dynamics as "the branch of social psychology that studies the dynamics of interaction in social groups" (2006).

It studies the structure and changes that happen within the group and how it will improve towards greatness. Classification of GroupsThere are diverse ways to classify a group. A usual way is to divide them into formal and informal groups. Organizations create formal work groups to easily achieve their goals. Informal ones are usually created to satisfy the interests of its members. Formal work groups can further be subdivided into command groups, task groups, and functional groups (McMillan, 2006).

Command groups follow the traditional hierarchical organizational chart. It has a supervisor that acts as the leader of the group. Other members play the role of subordinates directly reporting to the supervisor. A faculty department of a university is a good example of this.Task groups are particularly created to achieve a specific task or project. Its members have to accomplish a small set of tasks that only runs within a short period of time. Good example of this is the product development team.

Functional groups on the other hand are formed to accomplish particular goals within an indefinite period of time. Its existence may extend even though it has already accomplished its current tasks. Departments of corporations are good examples of this.Informal groups can also be classified into interest groups, friendship groups and reference groups.