Group Dynamics
Most people within the organizations belong to some formal work group that establishes temporary or permanent groups to accomplish tasks and achievements. These groups consist of different people within the organization who work together to accomplish objectives of the company (Jex & Britt, 2008). It is important that there is an examination of the behavior of the groups so that a complete understanding of the behavior is obtained. There are many types of groups that people become a part of in their everyday life including family, community, church, and within their profession. Memberships to these groups are important because it plays an important role in their behaviors and attitudes.
This paper will identify an organizational group of which I have been a part of and will give analysis of the group dynamics of my chosen group. As a part of the analysis the group will be described including the purpose, goals, and demographic nature such as gender, education, and so forth. The stages are development experienced by the group is described and the structure and effect of the structure on the effectiveness of the group is written to help readers understand the importance of the group. Explanation of the dynamics of group behavior within the group and analysis of the effect that group has on me concerning group polarization, conformity, and groupthink concepts.
Counseling Department for Georgia Department of Corrections
There are many reasons to why a person joins groups but the main reason is because the group membership helps him or her form a need of satisfaction. When I decided to change my career goals and become a counselor instead of climbing the ladder of success from a security point, I wanted to personally experience how different jobs within the Department of Corrections work together to make the organization work effectively. Some people argue that people join groups to affiliate and develop an adaptive behavior which in some cases are true but there are other reasons why some people join groups.
Counselors in the prison system assess inmates so that they can determine risk of recidivism, how they can control their anger and impulse, if substance or cognitive programs can help with their way of thinking, educational needs, and how to help them to adjust to prison life and prepare for release to society. Counselors not only counsel the inmates they are provided through case management, they have to match the needs with services and treatments that can help them become productive citizens. Counselors maintain and update records for the inmates they counsel so that parole can determine if they are behavior is positive and determine if they deserve a second chance in society. The purpose of this organizational group is to rehabilitate the inmates with effective interventions so that they can see that there is more to life than crime.
Counselors work with offenders so that an effective rehabilitation plan is developed. This organizational group offers the offenders potential and a chance to help themselves and others. Though many think that working within the prison system is dangerous and challenging, the career path gives people the ability to help others in a positive manner. The average income for counselors is about 48,000 annually and requires that potential employees must have at least a bachelor degree in social work, criminal justice, or psychology. They have variety of duties and responsibilities including counseling offenders, coordinating programs with other agencies and developing rehab plans. There are some strict eligibility requirements for counselors in most prison regarding a potential employee’s health, age, and criminal history. They are also required to obtain additional job training and put their lives at risk and work a high-stress job by working with potential dangerous and violent offenders.
Stages of Development Prison Counselors Experience
Membership of groups provides employees with satisfaction and gives them a greater opportunity to achieve goals they could not achieve by themselves. An example is when people join unions because they believe this group can help them achieve favorable work conditions and higher pay than they would if they negotiated with employers individually. The job duties for employees within the prison system are to maintain the safety of the public by helping to rehabilitate offenders before they are released to society. Counselors must work with security to ensure that these goals are taken serious by the offenders. There are different stages of development for prison counselors to experience including developing a relationship with other departments, knowing how to react in emergency situations, knowing how to help the offenders express their concerns or problems, knowing what programs offenders need to help with rehabilitation, deciding what population is the proper population for offenders to live in, and training in identified programs so that they can be taught to the offenders.
As counselors it is important to remember that offenders depend on us to help them better themselves before return to society and to help them become closer to their family members. Developing a relationship with other departments helps the prison system to be consistent, fair, and firm. Security department, care and treatment department, and administrative department have to bond and work together as one team to ensure the safety of the institution. Another development stage is knowledge of how to react in emergency situations. There are incidents when offenders become aggressive or have family issues that cause their behavior to change and put them at risk of causing harm to self or others. Counselors must know how to react in the situations and who to contact to prevent them from hurting others. Counselors also have to know who to get offenders to open up and express their feelings especially when they are participating in programs for rehabilitation. They also have to develop a stage of knowing what is correct when it comes to housing the inmates. Some inmates can not live in certain population because they are risk of becoming victims of crimes. Knowing where to house inmates can help with security and the safety of the inmate.
Structure of Counselors and Effect on Effectiveness of the Group
Organizational effectiveness is important in management because it measures successfulness of organizations as they achieve missions from their core strategies. The structure of organizational groups has effectiveness within the group because of the unique capabilities of the group develops assured success. Structure of corrections agency have effective management of complex that requires implementation of approachable management recognizing complexity of the environment and organization (Houston & Stefanoviæ, 1996). The prison system relies on pyramidal organizational structure with the policies and decisions made which inhibits creativity and can add to dissatisfaction to employees. There has been a stride to improve discipline, sentencing, classification, and programs within the prison system for almost 100 years (Houston & Stefanoviæ, 1996). Structure of counselors is explained in management which includes supportive relationships existence, group methods, decision making, and organizations high performance goals.
Staff must support each other on the job in the element of danger and authority within the prison system. By working in proximity with each other staff being mutual interests. Staff meetings and other formal or informal meetings with staff helps effective managers to nurture relationships between staff from every department. Unit management in prisons is excellent promotion for shared decision making. The counselor helps with inmate classification decisions which is shared with all staff and has an input about offenders and gives insight to their behavior and attitude. Decisions such as program changes and policy matters are shared within staff and promoted to improve staff morale and performance. Organized work groups foster the process of improving quality of programs and service and empowering groups to focus on problems. Staff must take responsibility and accomplish task within their department so that they can automatically promote high performance goals.
The Dynamics of Group Behavior within Counseling
Group dynamics describes how employees interact with one another. Group dynamics are conditioned by tensions between changing and maintaining the status quo (Troyer & Youngreen, 2009). Social psychologist Kurt Lewin believed that people take distinct behavior and roles when working in a group. Group dynamics describes how these behavior and roles effects the behavior and role of other group members and the group entirely. Positive group dynamics trust each other and work towards collective decisions while holding one another accountable for things that happen (Murk, 1994). Within the counseling department there is positive group dynamic because the employees are as creative and other groups or departments within the prison system. In some organizations there is poor dynamics and employees’ behavior disrupts their work area because they can not make decisions, make wrong choices, and can not explore effective options (Phan, Rivera, Volker, & Garrett, 2004). Counselors within the prison system have positive team dynamics because the counselors know the team, tackle problems quickly, know the definition of their roles and responsibilities, pay attention and focus on communication.
Counselors have to learn the phases of the group as it develops and preempt problems before they arise. Counselors tackle problems quickly so that they can adapt a behavior that challenge the group unhelpfully problems and provide feedback that shows that impact of the group actions and encourage them to change their behavior. Counselors must continue to work on reducing lack of focus or direction so that coworkers can understand their role. As counselors we use team-building exercises to help all employees with getting to know one another especially when new members join the department and use open communication to ensure that employees are communication clearly.
Effect on Concepts of Group Polarization, Conformity, and Groupthink
Group polarization is a dominant point of view in a group that tends to strengthen to an extreme position after group discussions. Conformity gives in to imagine or real pressures of the group and increases when one of the employees in incompetent or insecure, admires the group, and the group views how the employee behaves (Troyer & Youngreen, 2009). There are reasons for conforming in groups including wanting to be accepted by the group and fear of rejection. Groupthink emphasize consensus at rational decision-making and critical thinking expense. This occurs when groups have characteristics of high cohesiveness, isolation of influences from the outside, and intent of reaching major decision.
Counselors have effects on my concerning the groupthink concept. In groupthink situation members exert pressure to conform, suppress information from outside, and focus on information that agrees with the point of view of the group. There are characteristics that counselors have that occur within the groupthink concept such as having a strong leader, high cohesiveness which strengthen the commitment to group members toward other group members.
Conclusion
There are many types of groups that people become a part of in their everyday life including family, community, church, and within their profession. There are many reasons to why a person joins groups but the main reason is because the group membership helps him or her form a need of satisfaction. When I decided to change my career goals and become a counselor instead of climbing the ladder of success from a security point, I wanted to personally experience how different jobs within the Department of Corrections work together to make the organization work effectively. The job duties for employees within the prison system are to maintain the safety of the public by helping to rehabilitate offenders before they are released to society. Counselors must work with security to ensure that these goals are taken serious by the offenders.

References
Houston, J., & Stefanoviæ, D. (1996, May). CORRECTIONS IN A NEW LIGHT: DEVELOPING A PRISON SYSTEM FOR A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY. National Institute of Justice, 2(3), 177-183. Retrieved from https://www.ncjrs.gov/policing/corr177.htm
Jex, S., and Britt, T., (2008), Organizational Psychology: A Scientist-Practitioner Approach, 2nd Ed., John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Hoboken, NJ
Murk, P. J. (1994). Effective Group Dynamics: Theories and Practices.
Phan, L. T., Rivera, E., Volker, M. A., & Garrett, M. T. (2004). Measuring Group Dynamics: An Exploratory Trial. Canadian Journal Of Counselling, 38(4), 234-245. Troyer, L., & Youngreen, R. (2009). Conflict and Creativity in Groups. Journal Of Social Issues, 65(2), 409-427. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4560.2009.01606.x