Obstacles of Group Work
Published: 2020-10-05 14:55:29

While upon focusing on the major obstacles of group work for establishing its fundamentals, the definition of a group is worthwhile to make. A a group is two or more individuals who are connected to one another by social relationships. This sheds light that groups are fundamental integral part of the human interactions, which allow people to come up with large-scale activities and more complex ones. In addition, group work also provides a platform where people are able to seek for support and help for their personal development. Moreover, such process emphasizes on the basis for action and influence as well as reaction and adaption, where it enables individuals and groups to have greater influence and change personal, group, organization and community problems that are mostly experienced.
Over time, group work has been appreciated as a major method of learning in any institution and organizations and greatly encouraged since most of interactions at the group level tend to linger in its members’ memory rather than concentrating on the individual work base. A student’s or employee’s learning satisfaction and achievement of the positive outcome in learning have increased significantly with the participation and full engagement in the group work activities. However, an effective group management should be employed to materialize the benefits of the pointed interaction fully. The basic clear assignment guidelines ought to be drafted and communicated to all group members effectively.
The benefits, which accrue to a group work in the learning institution’s environment or a business environment, have shown that group work directly influence learning since such method provides the platform for clarity and polish up the group members understanding of concepts through discussions earlier learnt and rehearse with their fellow peers. This enables some of the students or employees to develop a greater sense of responsibility and motivation, which they lacked, and other generic skills such as team work, organization and time management, and collaborative skills that are highly valued. Therefore, in a summary, the major aim of group work is to enhance a pool of knowledge and ideas from the talents of the group members, which contributes to presenting a more effective, detailed, and comprehensive report and assignments.
Problems associated with the analyzed approach decision making are similar across the various environment that groups are implemented. Most of these problems if not properly addressed can lead to a well-operating group making flawed decisions, hindering it to reach a comprehensive and precise decisions effectively and, worse of all, result to the group breaking apart due to the lack of cooperation and not meeting the desired objectives. There are several obstacles towards an effective group work, and I will basically focus on four major ones, though some of the serious obstacles may include: a poor devised inter-group relation, having different communication styles, extreme power differences, internal group member conflicts, inconsistent group goals and procedures, unequal group involvement, having long group meeting, and lack of clarity of accountability within the group.
Uneven group work distribution: One of the fundamentals of a group as according to Allan Brown is that group work provides a useful context in which individuals help each other. This brings out collaboration of group members in activities towards reaching out its desired goals; therefore, it is very important that all group parties play an equal – and not a more or less – role in the group activities. This has a direct impact on the sustainability of the group dependent on the equal involvement and commitment among its members. Though it is practically impossible for one as the group leader to determine that all group members evenly share out all tasks of the group, there has to be a consistent check and balance review on the overall group’s workload.
To have equal workload distribution becomes of great importance in the group. Since the members, who become most active in the group activities, are able to begin to have a dominance edge of the group, and their knowledge may intimidate other members while the less involved can tend to resent towards the active members and have an inferiority complex even in formulating the group’s decisions. Motivation among members is affected by uneven work distribution: the less involved members often enjoy the credit that group gets because of the more active ones.
This obstacle for a group work could be addressed by various methods including the imposition of fines to group members, who fail to attend meetings; this will ensure that all the group members purpose to attend the meetings fully. Therefore, participating in one way or another to the decision making process. Another approach would have been having an equal financial contribution of all group parties towards the group financial problems; this eliminates chances of dormant membership and the risk of having some members in full control of the group. In addition, carrying out constant work reviews is important since it ensures that everyone in the group is involved in the work. Group member work rotation should be encouraged to have a feeling they are responsible and equal in carrying out the common deed for all the members. Besides, the group leader should be able to allocate group work according to individual member’s capabilities and skills to achieve quality results of the group work.
Having unclear defined group goals. The major factor that leads to the formation of groups is a certain common, desired to achieve goal. Thus, groups are in existence due to the goals that members have formulated to accomplish in common and together, and if the aims are not achievable, the existence of the group becomes in doubt. Therefore, for proper running of the group where all group members are actively involved there need to have conscience and well defined goals and objectives which will play an important role to enhancing innovation and effectiveness of the group. 
In reaching out to the group goals and objective, the leader should not assume that all group members have the similar share of common goals. Hence, at the first group meeting, it is expected to be dedicated towards all parties discussing the objectives they desire to achieve by joining the group. When the group anonymously reaches out to a number of aims, to eliminate scenarios of conflict of objectives in carrying out group work the need for prioritization of these goals arises as clearly as possible. To strengthen their performance trend over time, groups need to have a way of evaluating their major goals. With a defined goal set, the group will put all the necessary efforts to reaching it out.
Various approaches that supposed to be used to address this obstacle are: calling up for a meeting with all group members to address on the formulation of a common goal for the group; the group leader should preside over the meeting and lead the other members in identifying the main objective of the group and encourage them to list their expectations of joining the group. The member is to have a method to categorize their desired purposes in respect to time of achieving them. This call for prioritizing the aims in terms of short-term goals, which they can achieve within the shortest period – a year, for instance, and long-term goals the group tend to accomplish in a period longer than one or two years. This enables the group to schedule its work appropriately.
Inter-Group conflicts. The process of working with another individual is often confusing, complex, and a demanding both mental and emotional experience to an individual in a group setup. Due to different background and adaptations that people inherit in their growing up they may tend to conflict over time when working in groups not forgetting the personal interests that each individual has. Conflict within the group are of two dimensions: the good ones, which assist the group to understand difficult problems and choose the agreed solution among alternatives, or bad conflicts that cause confusion, anger, bad decisions, and the breakup of the group only.
A bad conflict in the group reduces the cohesion among its members and cooperation in achieving its main objectives, constrains their relationship in the group. It becomes appropriate to ensure that groups should put aside a special time and agreeing a place to talk things out by reflecting and exploring on past issues; this strengthens the relationship of the group members, who have differences as they are able to iron them out amicably. Approaches towards resolving group conflicts can be through having a well-set mode of conflict resolution body to assure cohesion among the group, which will avoid breaking part of it, and enhance full cooperation among the members. As well as having an appropriate mechanism to handle conflict related cases, to prevent conflicts from resulting to damages they may include, the parties should learn on some key skills and behaviors. For example, members’ practicing active listening, being open by expressing issues need to be looked into immediately, restraining issues concerning the group in the group, developing a clear communication medium in addressing the issues of conflict, and demonstrating respect to other members, to correlate with them, and handling a situation with ultimate soberness effectively. Group members should as most try to handle their differences amicably as they arise to prevent uncalled for conflicts and too uphold group cohesiveness to foster productivity of the group.
Ineffective communication: A group work will involve regular meeting fundamentally, in order to brainstorm, discuss on various projects and analysis, and come up with effective solutions to the established existing problems. Therefore, communication becomes an important integral part of the group work in its daily operations, since it is the medium of empowering and informing the group members under a similar vision and goal and greatly influences the motivation and productivity of the members. Group communication is unique: it involves both verbal and non-verbal communication to rely messages to the other group members, and the ones affect the morale of the group members positively if used appropriately, and negatively if not.
Effective communication adopted in the group will create for its parties a free, safe and secure atmosphere, where they feel they have the freedom to air out own opinions during the group meetings. Group communication is significant since it has the ability to either build up the group to excellence or lead to its breakup, when communication in the group is ineffective, the group cohesion will suffer much. As a result, there will be the lack of vision, motivation and the purpose for the existence of the group, whereas in condition of an effective group communication, the group will gear itself towards a common objective under a common spirit and mind among the members.
Ineffective communication is resolved by various approaches, such as: getting to know which form of communication to use appropriately when faced with different situations encountered in the group; members should develop a clear speech, concise in their delivery of information, and also practice active listening that minimizes the chances of misunderstandings, confusion and upsets.
In conclusion, obstacles of group work maybe induced externally or internally; however, they require the group members to find a solution to them efficiently to enhance the underlying reasons as to the formation of the group. This material was provided by  [discussion board post help](https://order-essays.com/discussion-board-post-help/) writer, Cody Harper, he likes to depict his thoughts on paper