Small Group Communication

Josh Emington

emington@msu.edu

Agenda

Planning The Issue Structure Information Listening

Selecting Participants

Invitation decisions often create a dilemma What criteria should we consider?

Expertise Motivation Politics Time Differences Potential disagreements Diversity Expense Resources

Issue identification:Three Types of Discussion Questions

Fact Value Policy

Fact

Definition Cause

Value

Policy

“Everybody lies, search the house.” – House M.D.

Structure

How much order? How much time? How many people? Emotion involvment? Nature of the task?

Order

Know your members. How detailed and organized do

instructions need to be for them to thrive?

How much autonomy do they need?

Recommendation: Book for understanding and implementing organizational tactics for freedom

Time

Use a calendar. Use doodle. Contact participants.

Find a length that gets the job done. Find a length that helps people

remember.

Size

Emotional Involvment

When its high: Longer Painful More conflict Need for references to policy

Task Dimensions Difficulty Solution multiplicity Intrinsic group interest Cooperation requirements Population interest

(Hirokawa, 1990)

Nature of the Task

Matching Leadership to Context*Solution multiplicity With fewer potential solutions a directive leader is best.

With many possible solutions a nondirective leader thrives. The less interesting the task the more control members ‘want.’

Finding Information

Primary Research Interviews Surveys Direct Observation

Secondary Research Library Electronic Search

Secondary Research

Where to begin?Literature Review

Question(s)DomainScope

Resources ex. Articles, film, text, sites.

Secondary Research Tools

Primary Research

Interviews Surveys Direct Observation Experiments

Fallacies Correlation does not imply causation.

Do Ice-cream Sales cause Pirate Attacks?

HARKing

Hypothesizing after the results are known.

“Texas Sharp Shooter Fallacy”

Overgeneralization

“Angry birds fly; therefore, all birds fly.” The darkest side of stereotyping.

=

Ooops…

Don’t Trust your Memory

Availability Bias Listen to this list and try to

remember everything you hear.

Electric Force Field Fence of Doom

Electric Force Field Fence of Doom

Group Competition: Get to the other side without touch or going under the fence.

If you touch the whole team goes back. (You must also recite the alphabet allowed in unison before starting again.)

First team to have all members on the ground on the greener side wins. Please shout ‘donzo.’

Group listening will be very important here.

"When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen."

— Ernest Hemingway

Listening

Components of Listening Listening Problems Tips and Tricks

Components of the Listening Process

Sensing Attending Understanding Remembering

Listening Problems

Problems with Sensing Problems with Attending Selective Perception and Attending Poor Attending Habits Interference by Attitudes Low Intensity Messages Poor Length Difficulty Understanding Inability to Empathize Lack of feedback Mental Sets Poor Memory

Here are a few demonstrated.

Forgetting

(Adapted from Tony Buzan, 1983)

Listening Skills

Paraphrase Double-check Empathize Practice

Extra Credit Opportunity 1pt

Create a MS Word document of an agenda (red) for one of your group meetings and include notes on what actually happened (blue).

Identify the type of meeting (1) and the parent format (2) of the agenda you used.

▪ When complete, save your document to your Gmail account and mark the document as public or viewable by link.

▪ Paste this link in the Facebook group to achieve your point.

"No man ever listened himself out of a job."

— Calvin Coolidge

What did we learn from the exercises?

Thank you

Don’t forget to read for next class and complete your online assignment for points.

Also send any questions you or your

group have and I will focus on answering them.