Adam Pittser 1
Individual Reflection Paper
Over the past three weeks I have had many good and bad experiences with my F4MS group. As we read through the chapters of the book I have come to notice so many similarities from what is in the book to what is actually happening with our group as we progressed through the semester. The differences between experiences with an ad hoc groups and the intact group were very noticeable with how close nit we became. Our group got a long with each other very well and began to work really well with each other as time went on. Although we did come across primary and secondary tension, after a couple weeks we all developed our own personality/role within our tight nit group. Leadership and conflict are both terms from the book that made us the group we are now.
Primary tension/Secondary tension
As our group first formed nobody new each other within the group besides two of us so there was a lot of primary tension trying to create a good impression on everybody. I believe in all groups, no matter what kind, there is always going to be a little tension when they first form.
For us, I don’t believe it lasted more than a day or two before we felt pretty comfortable with each other. That being said everyday that went by, we were gradually building better chemistry and continued to get more comfortable with each other. I believe this is due to the Dialogue theory that is said to make a group cohesive. Our group naturally told stories, which helped us see things through someone else’s eyes. The stories being told invited other stories. Secondary tension within our group lasted a little bit longer. Some members of our group were a little bit shy or didn’t have much to say making it difficult to give a lot of influence and form a role in the

Adam Pittser 1 group. I noticed that as our group became comfortable with each other right away, we were not all comfortable with contributing and influencing the group with our ideas the way we would have liked. This was our first taste of managing conflict within our group.
Conflict
Conflict is about disagreement, containing four parts: (1) An expressed struggle (2) between at least two individual people (3) who perceive incompatible goals, scarce resources, and interference from others (4) to achieve goals. After our group really got comfortable with each other we only had to deal with one type of conflict; simple conflict. Nobody in our group had a big ego or refused to listen to what each other had to say. Because the only reason our group would face conflict was due to the clashing of ideas or beliefs we believed that the management style of compromise is what worked best. I believe that all the conflict we had in our group was all good and productive. While conflict can be a very negative thing in a group, for our group it was the complete opposite. When conflict appeared in our group, it meant that people were participating and bringing up new ideas. I noticed a difference in conflict between ad hoc groups and the intact group. Conflict can happen between two people and change group opinions on the situation or even the person that originally disagreed with you.
Leadership
In our group I don’t believe there was one individual leader. I noticed more than one person in our group had traits of releasing tension, gatekeeping, encouraging and mediating.
While sometimes one person would take over a specific leadership behavior at the moment, someone else would have a specific process-leadership behavior in a different situation. I noticed that in most ad hoc groups I have been in, someone almost always takes over as the leader right away. I found it to be different in an intact group due to the fact that everybody

Adam Pittser 1 comes to the point where they are comfortable together and aren’t afraid to give their input to the group. Many ad hoc groups seem to have an authoritarian or democratic style of leadership where as an intact group, in my opinion, is either democratic or Laissez-Faire s style of leadership. Our group contained five guys and two girls, which did not have an impact on the group. Some people may have the opinion that the guy’s opinions and styles of leadership would be different or stronger than the girls. This was not the case in our group. Every person in our group had equal say in every decision we made and everything we did. Sometimes in an ad hoc group if there were double the amount of males than females in a group, the males will take over or over power the female’s opinions. It was easy to see in our group that gender did not play a role in the leadership in our group or the roles everyone played to be productive.
Conclusion
I had many good group experiences in the past couple of weeks that surprised me a lot.
From the start I did not expect our group to turn out the way it did, being so close and working so well together. It was very noticeable and easy to relate the material in the book to our group and how it developed and progressed over time. The group was different from any group I have worked with in previous classes due to the fact that we stayed in the same group throughout the whole class and became so cohesive. It shows the differences between ad hoc groups and intact groups and how they can be productive in different ways. Although we did come across primary and secondary tension, after a couple weeks we all developed our own personality/role within our tight nit group. Leadership and conflict are both terms from the book that made us the group we are now.

Adam Pittser 1