ALHT106 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Time Management, Groupthink, Social Loafing
ALHT week 8 Group Dynamics and Processes Application to Allied Health Care Practice
Benefits of Understanding Groups:
- Enhanced team work in group assessments
- Becoming a street smart reflective health professional
- Become an effective leader of allied health therapeutic groups. Therapeutic groups
work well when the group leaders have a good grasp of the group processes and
dynamics
- Successful work in teams as an allied health professional
Definition of a group
- “a group is a collection of persons whose actions influence other group members”
Remember Ken
- 45-year-old male who had a stroke 5 months ago
- Left sided weakness (upper limb and lower limb)
- Slurred speech (dysarthria)
- Decreased mobility
- Senior executive of car manufacturing business
- Husband and a father to 3 kids
- He has returned to work. Has just returned from excellent family holiday in Bali.
Outpatient rehab appointment: Marci (physiotherapist), Ben (OT) and Cameron
(Speech Pathologist). They are discussing at team meeting now:
- What place do groups have in his recovery and treatment plan?
Ken’s groups
- Blokes with Strokes
- Aphasia Group
- Champions Class
Group Characteristics – Reference Groups
- Reference groups are the groups who’s norms matter to an individual and hence
have an impact on the individuals behaviour
- It is the group an individual refers to when taking action
- Positive – if trying to emulate its members actions
- Allied Health – positive peer influence
Blokes with Strokes group acted as a reference group and members provided role models
Norms
- Norms are standards of expected behaviour
- All groups develop norms
- Norms can be explicit or implicit
Roles
- The norms that operate in groups determine, in part, the roles that individual group
members play
- Roles are essentially norms that are specific to particular people
- Roles reflect shared expectations about how particular members of a group are
supported to behave
Group Social Behaviour: Social Influence
- Social facilitation the presence of other people can either help (well learned tasks)
or hurt (unfamiliar tasks) individual performance
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
- In the Aphasia group, the allied health team ensured that Ken had practiced the
tasks individually first and then progressed to group rehab to enhance motivation to
continue with rehab once task learned
Leadership
- Leaders are people who exercise greater influence than the average member of the
group
- Task leaders or Instrumental leaders – take responsibility for seeing that the group
completes its tasks
- Social emotional leaders – try to keep the group working cohesively and with
minimal conflict
- Leadership style and effectiveness differs across cultures as well as across individuals
Allied Health Group Leadership
- Leadership styles (degrees of decision making):
oDemocratic (diversity of views included)
oAutocratic
oLaissez faire
- In Aphasia group, the group facilitators let the group members choose topics for
conversations themes
Group Social Influence
- Bystander effect people are less likely to provide needed help when they are in
groups than when they are alone
- Latane and Nide (1981) estimated that subjects who were alone provided help 75%
of the time. In contrast, subjects in the presence of others provide help only 53% of
the time
Group Social Influence and Behaviour
- Importance of leadership: once you have initiated action others likely to follow and
be supportive
- In Aphasia group, the group leaders created a supportive atmosphere where group
members felt comfortable to make mistakes
Group Process
- Is not content
- Is experienced first: here and now
- The process of the experience as a group = emotions with cognitive framework so
the learning from group experience can be applied
Group Social Influence
- Productivity declines in larger groups
- Reduced efficiency resulting from loss of coordination amongst workers
- Reduced effort (social loafing) reduction in effort by individuals when they work in
groups as compared to when they work by themselves
Group Decision Making
- Group polerisation occurs when group discussion strengthens a groups dominant
point of view and produces a shift toward a more extreme decision in that direction.
Importance of diversity and respect for each other’s perspectives
- Group cohesiveness refers to the strength of the relationships linking group
members to each other and to the group itself
- Groupthink occurs when members of a cohesive group emphasis consensus at the
expense of critical thinking = low probability of successful outcome
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Alht week 8 group dynamics and processes application to allied health care practice. Become an effective leader of allied health therapeutic groups. Therapeutic groups work well when the group leaders have a good grasp of the group processes and dynamics. Successful work in teams as an allied health professional. A group is a collection of persons whose actions influence other group members . 45-year-old male who had a stroke 5 months ago. Left sided weakness (upper limb and lower limb) Husband and a father to 3 kids. Has just returned from excellent family holiday in bali. Outpatient rehab appointment: marci (physiotherapist), ben (ot) and cameron (speech pathologist). Reference groups are the groups who"s norms matter to an individual and hence have an impact on the individuals behaviour. It is the group an individual refers to when taking action. Positive if trying to emulate its members actions. Blokes with strokes group acted as a reference group and members provided role models.
