Week of September 24-30

3). Pick one concept from the assigned reading this week, not already discussed, that you found useful or interesting and discuss it.

I am going to talk about Verbal Interaction and Content Analysis. These are two devices that can be useful for evaluating the group process. Verbal interaction traces the number of times members address one another. In figure 14.2 it gives an example of verbal interaction between a group of 5, with each arrow indicating how many times that person spoke and to whom. This will show who might not be participating and who has emerged as the leader. For example I recently did this while at a company meeting. It was group of 12 and each manager talked to each other about four to five times while only speaking to the employees about once or twice. It was clear who the leader was (my boss Kate) who spoke 11 different times and it was clear who not participating (Dave) who only spoke once and that was to ask when the next paid holiday was.

The next concept is the content analysis. This device is used to keep track of how comments being made and how often. The text states that if you wanted to know who displayed the most leadership behaviors, you would develop a list of desired leadership activities and then keep track of how often group members engage in these activities.