SMALL GROUP KRYPTONITE

THINGS THAT "DISS" OTHER GROUP MEMBERS OFF AND OTHER

BEHAVIORS THAN INHIBIT "INSANELY" GREAT WORK

Developed By The Communication 207 Class Of Fall 1993

We would all agree to meet at a certain place at a certain time and then the next day Would receive a few phone calls from my fellow group members with reasons why they could not make it.

Group members who only work toward the end of the project at self-evaluation time

approaches, hoping to create a favorable impression in the minds of fellow group members.

People like Laura, who would complain whenever we met that she had better things to do,and couldn't we just leave and meet sometime later.

Jim claimed he forgot to attend our meetings. Get serious. What's he going to tell the IRS, that he forgot to pay his taxes? Funny, I forgot to rate him high on Kasch's ladder.

Group members who want to leave as soon as we get the littlest thing done. This is small group poison.

The only thing that really "pissed me off" is that we would finally decide on a time, and some people still would not come, especially Fred.

I would say the behavior of one of our group members added a chip to all the other group members' shoulders. It damaged the spirit of the group at first, at a time when we needed to feel unified. We eventually made him a devil figure, he was the poltergeist.

Mike usually came late to our meetings and often didn't bother to show up at all, and whenever someone tried to talk to him about his slacking off he would blow up. Some people are just so defensive-- they want their egos massaged for even showing up.

The one thing that bugged me about Brady and Mike is that they would say they would get something done and then come to the next meeting unprepared.

Members who complain about the project just get to be unbearable after a while.

I found it difficult to work with someone who contributed no work at first, but insisted on incorporating all of his ideas at the very last moment. It is a good thing everyone in our group was polite or we would of told him where to put his ideas. If you want your ideas integrated into the project, then the time to do that is in the INITIAL phases of the project, not three days before it is due. Sometimes people are just self-centered imbeciles.

One of our members said he couldn't meet outside of class because the course description in the catalog didn't specify this would be a requirement. How are you supposed to deal with that??? Like you say, sometimes people are just "cuckoo for cocoa puffs."

It is not known to me whether she thought she could do nothing, but yet accomplish much, or whether she was just acting like a self-centered freshman from another culture.

He came to our meetings, unprepared, no notes, no research, no articles, no ideas, no nothing. During the meeting, he would try to discuss the topic, but had no knowledge of it, because he hadn't done any work.

She called me at least 10 times to make sure she was up-to-date with the group's progress, but all she did was call. She never came to the meetings and never did any work. After the 10th call I told her I didn't have time to talk to anyone who didn't really care. She acted mad, but that's her problem, not mine.

Excuses like, "I have got a lot of work to do," "I have tests to study for," "I have afraternity meeting," do not resonate well with me. We all had tests and other work to do.

Bernie has lots of input, but its usefulness was often questionable. His comments were often more effective in alienating group members than building a working cohesiveness. His criticisms were very counterproductive to the functioning of the group. I found it ironic that we were making a video on how to use talk to motivate employees, and he was using talk to demotivate group members.

Two members in our group were habitually late and left us standing around waiting, wasting time. They obviously didn't care, but of course it was reflected on their peer -evaluations.

We ended up having to assign her project responsibilities without her being there because of her failure to attend.

Bernie hardly showed up for our meetings and when he did he acted like he kneweverything. That always "screwed" us over because we had to explain everything to him. I think he acted like he knew everything to try to cover the fact that he had not read anything about our project and really didn't know much at all.

Brian was quite difficult to work with. He was fine unless you tried to suggest something that would alter one of his ideas. He didn't give many ideas a chance. It was as though if he didn't like something, we couldn't do it.

She would call me up and ask what she should do, I wanted to just tell her to come to the meetings, that would be a first step.

When she actually did decide to show up to a meeting, she would sit there and doodle, which irked me to say the least.

Dave never came to the meetings until the end. In the meetings he attended, he had little to contribute, and did practically nothing but add an occasional "That's not a good idea."

Of course he never had any better ideas. We didn't trust him to do anything after a while, but finally gave him a chance at the end to do the bibliography. However, he screwed that up too. I feel the rest of us earned what we got and David should not receive the same grade as the rest of us who worked really hard. We would like to talk to you as a group about lowering David's grade, like you said we could do.

Barb didn't show for meetings in the beginning, then when she did show she didn't supply any kind of assistance. The woman doesn't even deserve a grade.

Some people in our group felt that we could get everything done in class and did not think we had to meet outside of class. They came to very few meetings, and then in the last few days we had to make revisions to get them in the project presentation. If it had been up to me at that point, we would have expunged them from the group.

Two people in our group were late to every meeting, and when they did show up they'd make it clear that they could not stay long. How dare they think their time is more valuable than ours?!?!?