Developing a new venture

Here I am expressing the experience of the “group” I formed and performed with the help of answering following questions. 

The role play task was to create a group of 7 members including me to start a new business by forming a company. For this task I needed multidisciplinary people who will carry out different roles and responsibilities of a business organization. I am good at finance so one role I would play but for rest like marketing, production, human resource, IT, legal advisor and public relation, I needed 6 people. I chose my friends Jack, harry, Jacob, Olivia, Isla and Lily. It was a group of 4 male and 3 female members including me. 

 why did I them?

Jack- He is good at marketing theory and he is helping his father in his family business.
Harry- He is doing specialization course in production management thus he would provide production and operation related idea. 
Jacob- He is doing specialization in HR.
Oliva- She is good at IT support system as she is working as part time IT consultant for an NGO.
Isla- Her father is a Company Secretary and she is learning from her father so I took her as legal advisor.
Lily- She has a better communication and presentation skill in our college which is essential for PRO.
The difference between Group and Team 
Basis of difference    Group    Team 
Leadership     Only one Leader    More than one leader
Member Nature    Independent    Interdependent
Process under Group    Discuss, decide and delegate roles and responsibility    Discuss, decide and do.
Work product    Individual     Collective 
Focus on goal    Individual goal later integrated to single goal    Always collective goal
Accountability    individual    Mostly collectively. 
Knowledge    Complementary      Random 
[Ross, D. B.et.al2017]

The group formation took place as the way Professor and Psychologist Bruce Tuckman gave theory of group formation. In our case also, we had 4 stages which are Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing. 
Forming- I approached each 6 person of the group personally and requested to have a group for this role play task. I planned what would be the role of each in my mind so described each their role which are interested in to say “yes” for the group. This way I brought all together. 
Storming- It is the stage where we needed to accept the roles and responsibilities to carry out the task. At first, we all had to agree the roles I thought previously but between Jacob and Lily the role conflict arose. Lily wanted HR role where as I thought Jacob to carry it. 
Norming- I gave the group presentation initiation and written reporting role to Lily to compromise wither conflicts with Jacobs. She agreed with that and thus we finally sat for developing business plans.
Performing- Finally, we put ideas, knowledge, opinions, skills in front for developing business plans. As per our role, we planned what we are expecting to do in a presentation. I took the charge of all and by tis way we performed the role play task. [Wang, C. J et.al2017]
The phases are necessary for group formation because this group needed mutual understanding and trust, sacrifice, combined effort and dedication and that could be possible with these stages. 

There is a difference in a traditional group forming and virtual group forming. Here are the basic differences we find in both such groups-
Basis of difference    Traditional Group    Virtual Group 
Selection of member    Selection on their functional skill    Due to lack of face to face interaction and social focus, additionally core competency is also checked before forming group. 
Group structure    A flat line of authority and responsibility    No particular line of authority and responsibility.
Day to day monitoring     It is possible to supervise actions of group members    It is not possible to look after group members. 
Knowledge and Information exchange    Limited due to limited member     Wide due to large scope of member in a group 
Scheduling of meeting and decision     Unanimous decisions and scheduling possible.    Not an easy thing if members are from different time zones.
[Webster, J.et.al2008]
Unique characteristics of Virtual team or group
•    It can cover wide area with multiple discipline and large membership in a team or group.
•    The communication mode is electronic in nature.
•    It can work in different time schedule.
•    Mostly carries informal relationship. 

The role and responsibility to carry out the task is normally distributed by the group or team leader like I did in my group. At first, the group leader will be selected who will guide the other group members to take up tasks. In our case, our teacher gave me that role. I decided the functions to be carried out. Each members were given the role to play and they had discussions with group leader to determine the responsibilities. Any conflict is resolved with mutual understanding and compromise. 

The following steps were followed to form norms for this group-
•    These members of the group are co-workers- Each member has equal say in decision making and should respect others.
•    The member will communicate with respect without putting other down.
•    The member will follow the decorum in meeting each time. 
•    The member will carry their work and is accountable for it. They are accountable to group leader. [Miller, H. L. (1953).]
•    Any conflict situation will be resolved by mutual discussion. 
These norms are developed at formation stage where we all sat together before starting our part of work. 

In this group, we all are friends of the same batch and there is no age or seniority or economic or social difference. The only difference among us were the disciplines. We all carry different specialization which helped to form a group without clashing anyone’s status. The multi-disciplinary characteristics helped us to carry out each work successfully without any interference. This resulted successful completion of group task. [Ostmes, T.,et.al2000]

According to Beebe and Masterson 2015, the three interpersonal needs are-
1.    Need of Inclusion
2.    Need for control
3.    Need for affection 
Need of inclusion- It means establishing and maintaining satisfactory relation with people in matter of interaction and association. 
Need of control- The need of establishing and maintaining satisfactory relationship with people to control and power 
Need of affection- The need of one to one and emotional ties and warms with people.
In our case, I wanted to include to form a core team for a business role play. My rest teammates joined in order to show their skills and knowledge though this group act. I was the group leader thus expected coordination of all and for this command of authority was needed. To resolve the conflicts, we used compromise and mutual understanding to fulfil the need of affection. [Beebe, S. A., et.al2014]

The experience that I gained while having in a group are-
•    Being a part of group, it feels existence of support from your group members.
•    In a group, it becomes easy to carry out task as total task is distributed among group members.
•    It feels good to work together which increases the sense of belongingness and sociality. [Forsyth, D. R. (2018).]
•    It teaches the coordination and cooperation need while working together.
•    How conflict and confusions can come across and how it can be resolved, I learnt from this.

Beebe, S. A., & Masterson, J. T. (2014). Communicating in small groups: Principles and practices. Pearson Higher Ed.
Forsyth, D. R. (2018). Group dynamics. Cengage Learning.
Ross, D. B., & Mendez, M. G. (2017). The Dynamics of a Team!.
Wang, C. J., Yen, S. T., Huang, S. F., Hsu, S. C., Ying, J. C., & Shan, Y. S. (2017). Effectiveness of trauma team on medical resource utilization and quality of care for patients with major trauma. BMC health services research, 17(1), 505.
. Webster, J., & Wong, W. K. P. (2008). Comparing traditional and virtual group forms: identity, communication and trust in naturally occurring project teams. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 19(1), 41-62.
Ostmes, T., Spears, R., & Lea, M. (2000). The formation of group norms in computer?mediated communication. Human communication research, 26(3), 341-371.
Miller, H. L. (1953). Formation of group norms.