Final Project – Hope in the Heartland

Introduction
Moore is a city in Cleveland County, Oklahoma, United States and is part of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. The population was 55,081 at the 2010 census, making it the seventh largest city in the state of Oklahoma. Oklahoma is the 46th state, located in the West South Central part of the United States. It is the 28th most populous of the 50 United States. The name is derived from the Choctaw words okla and humma meaning “red people” (Baird, & Danney, 1994).

On the afternoon of May 20, 2013 an EF5 tornado that struck Moore, Oklahoma, and adjacent areas on the afternoon of May 20, 2013, with peak winds estimated at 210 miles per hour, killing 23 people and injuring 377 others. The storm first struck near Newcastle, Oklahoma, at 2:56 p.m. CDT Monday, 16 minutes after the first warnings went out, according to the National Weather Service. Moore residents had another 30 to 40 minutes before the massive storm entered the western part of the city. On the east side of Moore, Briarwood Elementary was damaged, but everyone made it out alive. At Plaza Towers Elementary, about 75 students and staff members were hunkered down when the tornado struck. Several died at the school, including a number of children. The building was reduced to just a few walls. Moore Medical Center was also hit. It went from a two-story building to a one story and was not able to be occupied.

Type of Team With any disaster plan there will be different team for different projects. As this area has frequent tornado, team planning would be on ongoing process. There will also be various levels of teams. Every city should have a city wide disaster plan. One of the teams would be a problem solving team. This team would meet several times a year to discuss ways of improving quality, efficiency and issues that may come up in a disaster. This team would be made up of community leaders. In problem-solving teams, members share ideas or offer suggestions on how work process and methods can be improved. Each of the team members will have committees and teams under them. Each would have specific jobs or responsibilities in case of a tornado or any disaster. One of the things to be aware of in any team dynamics is there pay variables the member are not in a one organization, The members could be all governmental workers or a combination of both private business and government. If pay is involved then it is important to use the principles of team-base pay.

Group Socialization Socialization is an important form of temporal change in work groups. Group membership begins with a period of investigation, when the group engages in recruitment, searching for individuals who can contribute to the achievement of group goals, and the individual, as a prospective member, engages in reconnaissance, searching for groups that can contribute to the satisfaction of personal needs. If the commitment levels of both parties rise to their respective entry criteria, then entry occurs and the person becomes a new group member (Thompson, 2004, p. 86).
The member of this group will have different socialization with the members. In making sure that all members are being responsible and able to adapt the plan for a disaster. It is important to communicate their individuals concerned. Find out if there are circumstances that are contributing to the situation, or if there are problems that you can deal with. After all, bad things can happen in people's lives, and this can clearly affect their behavior at work (Thompson, 2004, p. 86).
Designing the Office The office for these team members would be organizing a command center for when the disaster occurs. This room needs to be planned ahead of time. It also needs to have flexibility to be able to be mobile as there is not a guarantee where the tornado will hit. The member of the team should do regular drills in setting up and starting the command center. The command center needs to comply and maintain the national standards.

Group Think Group participation is also important. : Meetings are most productive when you have everyone contributing to the discussion. This results in a group generated consensus to be reached which is free from any sort of bias. An environment needs to be maintained to get everyone to contribute. Meetings provide a forum to reach decisions on issues through a collaborative process. It is essential that key steps are taken to ensure that everyone’s opinion on the topic is heard and a collaborative decision is reached.
The dysfunctional factors are the fact of peoples ego’s and differences in ideas. Dysfunctional behaviors of team members might lead to the destruction of a team. There is a couple of faculty that tends to dominate the group, personally attacking other members, being overly aggressive. The other is refusing to compromise (Thompson, 2004, p. 143).
Abilene Paradox
The Abilene paradox is a paradox in which a group of people collectively decide on a course of action that is counter to the preferences of many of the individuals in the group. It involves a common breakdown of group communication in which each member mistakenly believes that their own preferences are counter to the groups and, therefore, does not raise objections (Thompson, 2004. pp. 144). The committee should look at how others disasters have been done, seeing both good and bad things to incorporate into the planning.

Egocentrically Motivation
Mutual perceptions are subject to type of relationship the pair has. Therefore, in the situation of a change in relationship, old perceptions remain no more valid and the two need to rediscover each other afresh in the new context (Thompson, 2004, pp. 176). Self-interest and opposing motivations do interfere with productively resolving conflict, there are many seemingly benign beliefs and cognitions that also interfere with effective conflict resolution but often go undetected. Unfortunately, these beliefs are not easily corrected during the process of conflict resolution itself because it is difficult for negotiators to monitor them. It may often seem that parties interlocked in conflict at the bargaining table are purposefully attempting to complicate matters. In fact, people tend do the opposite: they dramatically oversimplify situations (Thompson, 2004, pp. 176).
Team members share a common objective when they work together— this is the cooperative aspect. Yet in many teams, individual members have an incentive to further their own interests. Team efforts are often subverted when individual agendas lead to competition between members, and members become preoccupied with what others are getting, relative to what they themselves are getting. Sometimes the way teams are set up can lead to these kinds of conflict.
Effective Communication
Effective communication helps us better understand a person or situation and enables us to resolve differences, build trust and respect, and create environments where creative ideas, problem solving, affection, and caring can flourish. Teamwork also may cause tension and anxiety among employees because of poor communication. Effective communication can eliminate much of the stress and negative feelings sometimes associated with working closely as a team.
Personal Reflection This course has broadened my knowledge in understanding team dynamics. I really enjoyed learning and understanding about using team dynamics. The one thing that I was not aware of was the Abilene paradox. Though I have seen this phenomenon in groups, but did not know that it was a identified.

Reference
Baird, W. & Danney G. (1994). The Story of Oklahoma (2nd ed. 1994), University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma
Thompson, L.. (2004). Making the team: A guide for managers (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.