GPO REFLECTION PAPER
Session 1: (17/01/2014)
After an interesting and useful course called ‘Individual Dynamics’, we had another course which future managers need to compulsorily undergo. Here comes the course named ‘GROUP PROCESSSES IN ORGANIZATION’ which was handled by Prof. Rupashree Baral. I was excited about the course as I liked the way the previous course was handled. The very first day was interesting where we all were asked to introduce each other. I was a bit confused about what was happening in the class, as in why are we being asked to introduce our neighbors? But after getting introduced by Ravi, who told the class about my dream of providing jobs to trans-genders the whole class appreciated. That was actually an incentive for me to run towards my dream further. I realized the importance of the activity. It had a great impact on me. Similarly, Ravi pointed out my negatives as well. These things helped me in understanding the perception of my peers about me. The purpose of GPO starts from here. After learning about motivation, perception, attitude, emotions etc in Individual Dynamics, we also need to learn how people behave in groups like how people communicate, how people conform to others in groups, conflicts etc. A recap of important concepts from Individual Dynamics is also note worthy.
Session 2: (21/01/2014)
The highlight of this session was THE LEMON ACTIVITY, to name it. I was surprised (as everyone in the class) when ma’am took out some lemon from her bag. A group of students were called to the front of the class and each of them were given a lemon. After sometime they were asked to describe their lemon in their own way. We had awesome responses ranging from describing the lemon as a fun bomb to personalizing it a beautiful girl. Finally, the lemons were mixed together and the team was asked to identify each one’s lemon. Here comes the toughest part. To identify correctly they must have observed it correctly. The learning here is PERCEPTION. How well you perceive others in a group and how well are you being perceived in a group. We need to understand our group members’ character well. We need to know which person is good at doing what? We need to know how the person will react when a particular task is assigned to him/her. We need to analyze the group correctly and have exact information about them so that, the group has synergy and can perform well in an organization.
Session 3: (24/01/2014)
In this session we learnt some important concepts like five stages in group formation and Punctuated equilibrium model. We also learnt about the properties of groups like roles, norms, status, group conformity, cohesiveness in groups etc. A video was also shown which clearly and humorously showed how people conform to other’s opinion in groups. Honestly speaking, I myself have experienced group conformity where my thoughts were not taken into consideration. The video was simple but an eye-opener to many of us in the class. Another important concept which we have already studied in Individual Dynamics was also touched upon – Social Loafing. These two concepts, Group Conformity and Social Loafing happen during most of the times when we work for group assignments. After getting to know these concepts, the behavior of the class as a whole changed, at least in teams which I worked with. I should quote the impact of Social Loafing that happened with one of my team members. One day, when we were working on an assignment of another subject, we got a voluntary email from one of the team members and the email read, ‘Guys, since I was social loafing for the past assignments, I apologize now and I will start putting my full effort from this assignment. Let us meet at the department lab by xx:xx pm’. I realized that the teaching worked. Now, the act of not doing the job and thinking that others will complete it has a name, “Social Loafing” and it has got into the minds of the class in such a way that we had a voluntary apology email.
Session 4 : (28/01/2014)
During this session we had a case (Greg James case) discussion for which we had to come prepared. The case was about a company in which a big problem was caused because of miscommunication. There were also some cross-cultural problems happening inside the company. We analyzed the case by jotting down the positives and negatives of each of the characters in the case. The class was divided into groups and each group was asked to behave like a particular character. Each group debated with each other so that we arrived upon a final solution to the case. We had to take into account all the possible problems in the case and apply the concepts that we learnt and come up with a solution to the case. The class was interesting as I, personally like case analysis as an activity.

Session 5: (31/01/2014)
This session helped me to understand whether I work efficiently in groups or as an individual. An activity was given to us in which we have to pick up the necessary items from a long list that will help us to survive when we got trapped in the middle of the sea. We had to list and rank the items both individually and as a team. We brain stormed and came up with a list. But during the process there were many difference of opinions between the members. Group conformity was also happening. Finally, when the professor gave us the answer and when we calculated scores for both the individual list and the team’s list I found that I work well as an individual than in groups. The result also implied that I must improve the ability to work with the team. It was my mistake that I failed to put my views forward strongly so that everybody would have survived along with me in the game.
Session 6: (4/01/2014)
This session taught me the fact that communication is effective if the message is communicated in a way that will interest the receiver. The same thing happened in the class activity where some of my friends were assigned one person each. Here, one person was the sender and the other was the receiver. The sender should communicate in such a way that the receiver, who at first was uninterested to listen then got interested in the message and started listening to the sender. The exercise was simple but had a potential message that communication should be powerful so that the receiver, even if uninterested got involved and started listening – the power of communication.
Session 7 : (7/02/2014)
This session was also based on communication. We had a group activity in which a group of volunteers were divided into groups of two members each. The two members were asked to sit back to back. One had to act as a sender and the other like a receiver. The sender had to describe a figure to the receiver which the receiver couldn’t see. Only the sender can see the figure. This activity was to understand how encoding and decoding happens. It also explained the process of feedback which is a very important process in communication. We had some weird figures drawn by the receivers. We learnt the concepts of encoding, decoding and feed back in this class.
Session 9: (14/02/2014)
The class stressed on the importance of leadership in a team. We saw videos that described characters of many leaders in different organizations. The class also taught us the importance of the relationship between the leader and the follower. We also discussed that whether each of us fall in the category of leader or follower. The video also clearly showed how leaders attract followers. We also took some situations in hand and analyzed which kind of leadership better suited to those situations. The take away was different types of leadership characters.
Session 11: (21/02/2014)
Negotiation and conflict handling are two important characters for a manager to be efficient. This class stressed on these two characters and helped me to assess my own negotiation and conflict handling behavior. Two class activities were handled. One on negotiation and the other on conflict handling. The first involved a group of members to negotiate with the class by selling stationeries to them. The other involved a confrontation between a taxi driver who played loud music and the passengers. After that we were given a sheet in which we have to enter out responses if we had faced the same situation. I found that I had an accommodating negotiation character.
Session 12: (25/02/2014)
Keeping in mind that students need to learn how to manage stress, ma’am had invited Mr. Raghav Srinivasan to deliver a talk on stress management and work-life balance. He talked about how our body behaves when we get stressed and different ways to keep bad chemicals in our body at a low level and increase good chemicals. He also talked about exercises being a good stress buster. The session was really useful to everyone because of the fact that students at DoMS are very much stressed out.
Session 13: (28/02/2014)
During this session the teaching assistant handled the class in which we learnt about cultures. The class started with a question, What is culture? and then we discussed the cultures of different organizations like IBM, Apple, HP and GE. The inputs from Akanksha were also helpful for the class.
Conclusion:
I strongly recommended Individual Dynamics to every budding manager. This course falls in the same category. This course is like Macroeconomics after learning Individual Dynamics which was like microeconomics. The course showed a bigger picture of how people in organizations behave in groups. I am looking forward for learning another course of this kind which ma’am said that we will have in the next quarter.