I would like to take a moment to thank my classmates and Professor Shepherd for your input during the past eight weeks. I always learn something new when I read your posts each week because of the different perspectives and experiences that you share. As we prepare to break off into our respective emphasis studies, I may not have the opportunity to interact with all of you in future classes; I will miss those of you who will not be in the Adult Studies program. Good luck as you prepare to move forward toward your goals.

     This week’s topic surrounds communication which is necessary for groups. There are five stages in group development: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning (O’Hair & Weimann, 2015). The names forming, performing, and adjourning are self-explanatory as to what happens in these stages. The term storming refers to stage in which team members begin to disagree and experience conflict. The term norming refers to the stage in which the participants have moved past their conflicts and established a pattern of usual, or normal, behavior. The stage this blog will address is the adjourning stage, the point at which the project has come to an end and the team disassembles.

     I think that the groups that are the most difficult to adjourn are those that combine a fairly long period of time with a successful achievement of stated goals. This type of group typically has reached a level of intimacy that makes it harder to say goodbye once the goal has been achieved. I believe that, in groups like this, it is important to have some sort of termination process in order for them to be able to fully commit to the next group project.

     In my own experience, I have participated in a couple of different termination processes. One of them employed a survey of all of the participants about the various aspects of the process and what each deemed as positives and negatives. Another termination ritual involved a social gathering of all the participants. Each of these rituals served different purposes; the first allowed the participants to learn from their problems and successes, while the second process allowed the participants a chance to interact on a purely social level – without any discussion of the actual project that had been completed. The self-evaluation process allows the participants to revisit the process of the project and think about what lessons learned will be useful in their next group endeavor. The social gathering, on the other hand, allows participants to just enjoy each other’s company without the pressure of a looming goal. I believe that when a group has developed a bond throughout the process, this ritual has more closure.

O'Hair, D., Wiemann, M., Mullin, D. I., & Teven, J.  (2015). Real communication (3rd. ed). New York: Bedford/St. Martin's.

            Recently I was involved in a conflict in which the other party was defensive. In my opinion, the other party was justifiably defensive – to an extent – but seemed to be overly so. This defensiveness manifested itself as anger; but as I listened to her voice her outrage, I realized that there was much more going on besides anger and defensiveness. She was fearful that the situation at hand would morph into all sorts of bad things for her family. She was overwhelmed and depressed about several things that had transpired over the past several months, including the loss of a job that she had held most of her adult life. As an empathetic and people-oriented listener, I did not take her anger personally; I really wanted to reassure her and be a comfort. I understood that these other feelings were feeding into her anger, and that her anger would dissipate in proportion to the dissipation of those other feelings.

Unfortunately, this interaction did not go as well as I had hoped. Even though I feel as though I took the steps indicated in the text for communicating in a defensive climate, the conversation ended without anything being resolved and it has left a strain on our relationship.