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What is Small
Group Interaction?
Stewart L. Tubbs
McGraw-Hill
© 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 2
What is Small Group Interaction?
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•
•
•
•
•
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Glossary
Case Study
A Definition
Empowerment
A Conceptual Orientation for Small Groups
The Systems Approach
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Slide 3
Glossary
• Cycles—characterized by the results of group interaction
being fed back to the group and becoming input for future
interactions. For example, a team’s success adds strength to
the group’s cohesion in future activities.
• Differentiation—the specialization that occurs among
people in small group communication.
• Dynamic Equilibrium—reached at a point at which
the forces to change and the forces to resist change are
equal.
• Empowerment—a leadership style that enables group
members to utilize their talents, abilities, and knowledge
more effectively.
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Slide 4
Glossary
• Equifinality—the potential for adaptation that groups
possess. This allows for various possible approaches to
achieve a goal.
• Feedback—information groups receive and use to
modify themselves.
• Input—the raw material of small group interaction. It
includes the six relevant background factors: personality,
gender, age, health, attitudes, and values. It also includes
information the group receives from outside the group.
• Integration—in small group communication, integration
is synonymous with organization. It is the coordination of
the various parts of the group.
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Slide 5
Glossary
• Negative Entropy—entropy is characterized by all
systems moving toward disorganization or death. Negative
entropies are the forces that maintain the organization of a
system.
• Output—includes solutions, interpersonal relations,
improved information flow, risk taking, intrapersonal
growth, and organization change. It is sometimes called the
end result of group interaction.
• Throughput—refers to all the actual verbal and
nonverbal behaviors that occur in the course of a group
discussion.
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Slide 6
Glossary
• Virtual Teams—teams in which members
communicate with each other through computers and may
or may not be located near one another.
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Slide 7
Case Study
“Let’s Roll”
1. What does this case study tell you about the potential
influence that groups can have on individual behavior?
2. Identify and discuss as many examples as you can that
you have observed of group influence on college
students’ behaviors.
3. From your own experience, how do you think that
groups can be used to have positive influences on
college students? What about people in other age
groups?
4. What would you most like to learn from this course?
5. What expectations or concerns do you have?
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Slide 8
A Definition
• Small group interaction
– The process by which three or more members
of a group exchange verbal and nonverbal
messages in an attempt to influence one another.
• Team
– “A high performance task group whose
members are actively interdependent and share
common performance objectives” (Francis and
Young, 1992, p. 9).
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Slide 9
A Definition
• Why Study Small Groups?
– Modern organizations are undergoing a radical
transformation designed to better utilize human
potential, primarily through the increased use of
small groups.
• Small groups can help you in college.
• Learning to work effectively in small groups can
save you time and money.
• Few leaders in today’s complex society can succeed
on their own without the help of competent and
committed team members.
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Slide 10
Empowerment
• Modern organizations are basing
multibillion-dollar decisions, in part, on the
use of teams.
– Empowerment
• A leadership style that enables the leader to utilize
more effectively the talents, abilities, and knowledge
of others and, at the same time, to increase his or her
available time to work on more strategic activities.
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Slide 11
Empowerment
• Empowerment has certain inherent
advantages:
– Greater productivity
– Quicker response to problems
– Improved quality of communication between
groups
– Increased individual motivation
– Improved overall organizational effectiveness
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Slide 12
Empowerment
• Kirkman and Rosen (1999) found evidence
that empowerment has four very closely
related dimensions:
–
–
–
–
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Potency
Meaningfulness
Autonomy
Impact
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Slide 13
Empowerment—Practical Tips
Ten of the most common mistakes to avoid when
trying to create teams.
1. Starting team training without first assessing team
needs.
2. Confusing team building with team work.
3. Failing to have a plan for developing the team.
4. Assuming that teams are basically all alike.
5. Sending team members to team training individually
rather than collectively.
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Slide 14
Empowerment—Practical Tips
Ten of the most common . . . (continued)
6. Failing to hold teams accountable for their
accomplishments.
7. Treating team building as a program rather than as a
process.
8. Relying on training alone to develop effective teams.
9. Not getting the ground rules straight at the beginning.
10. Having an outside facilitator/consultant lead the team
(Huszczo, 1996, pp. 50-58).
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Slide 15
A Conceptual Orientation
for Small Groups
• Small group interaction is very complicated
and involves a large number of factors that
act and interact simultaneously.
– These factors are in continual state of flux.
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Slide 16
A Conceptual Orientation
for Small Groups
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Slide 17
The Systems Approach
• An open system such as a group is defined
as an organized set of interrelated and
interacting parts that attempts to maintain its
own balance amid the influences of its
surrounding environment.
– The consequences, or outputs, of the group are
fed back into the system through the feedback
loop.
– Systems analysis has become a particularly
popular way of analyzing human behavior in
organizations.
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Slide 18
The Systems Approach
• Gross (1995, p. 113) identifies four
phenomena characteristic of open systems:
1. Entries and exits, which transform outsiders
into members and members into outsiders.
2. Multiple membership, which results in
members’ loyalties to outside groups.
3. Resource exchange, which involves the
absorption of inputs in the production process
and in the delivery of output produced.
4. Mutual or reciprocal influence on the part of
both members and outsiders.
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Slide 19
General Systems Concepts
• A system that has inputs from outside is
called an open system.
• Throughput includes the process of creating
and modifying ideas in the course of a
discussion.
• Groups often have an ongoing life history,
during which outputs, or consequences, are
continually being modified on the basis of
continuing interaction.
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Slide 20
The Systems Approach
• The feedback loop represents the cyclical
and ongoing nature of group processes.
– The process does not begin and end anew with
each group meeting, but rather builds on all the
past experiences of each group member.
• All systems eventually move toward
disorganization or death.
– To combat this, a system must employ negative
entropy.
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Slide 21
The Systems Approach
• All systems must receive feedback to
modify themselves.
• In groups, we each decide whether or not
membership is worth what we are putting
into it.
• In groups, different people gravitate toward
certain roles.
– It is a rare group in which all members’ attitudes
are the same toward any topic.
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Slide 22
The Systems Approach
• As groups and organizations become more
complex and differentiated, the need for
integration and coordination of the various
parts increases.
– Without integration, the group or organization
becomes chaotic.
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Slide 23
The Systems Approach
Synthesis of Group Models
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Slide 24
The Systems Approach:
The Tubbs Model
• The Tubbs Model of Small Group
Interaction:
– Helps students grasp the conceptual overview.
– Shows the dynamic interactive nature of all the
variables in the model and avoids the causeand-effect thinking of earlier models.
– Explicitly shows how consequences, or outputs,
of one small group experience can become
background factors or inputs for the next group
experience.
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Slide 25
The Systems Approach:
The Tubbs Model
• Relevant Background Factors
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–
–
–
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Personalities
Age
Health
Values
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Slide 26
The Systems Approach:
The Tubbs Model
• Internal Influences
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–
–
–
–
–
–
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Physical environment
Type of group
Status and power
Leadership
Group norms
Decision making
Conflict
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Slide 27
The Systems Approach:
The Tubbs Model
• Consequences
– Solutions to problems.
– Improvements in interpersonal relations.
– Improvements in the flow of information
between and among people.
– Organizational change.
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Slide 28
The Systems Approach:
The Tubbs Model—Practical Tips
Peter Senge at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology offers the following applications of the
systems approach.
1. Think in systems.
2. See interrelationships, not things, and processes, not
snapshots.
3. Move beyond blame.
4. Focus on area of high leverage.
5. Avoid symptomatic solutions (Senge, in Costin, 1996,
pp. 45-46).
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