Communication in Action Reaction Assignment

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Communication in Action
Learning about communication and interaction between human beings in both formal and informal settings has been quite interesting. More so, I have been drawn to group communication which has a more dynamic and complex nature than a two-people communication. This is what led me to observe communication that was taking place between a group of workers at a construction site after they had just completed their shift. In this paper, I will discuss small group communication in the above-mentioned setting. I will analyze the communication process, features, and the potential strengths and weaknesses of small groups.
Small group communication is an interpersonal form of communication among five to ten people aimed at serving certain needs such as task completion (DeVito 2). The group of workers I was observing was communicating about the tasks they had completed during their shift. Further, they were discussing the strategies to employ during their next shift to avoid the challenges they had encountered in their just-ended shift. Observing this group communication was quite eye-opening because I was able to actually assess and deeply understand the four aspects of communication described by DeVito (7). The first, termed as the physical aspect, describes the physical environment in which people communicate. In this case, the group of workers was communicating outside the construction site’s check-point. The message they were passing to each other in this physical context was work-related. I also observed the social-psychological aspect of their communication. This aspect covers the roles, status of the group members, and the (in)formality of the situation among others (DeVito 8). The communication between the group members was formal because they discussed their task in the construction site. I could tell their relationship does not extend beyond their work from the lack of friendliness in their discussions. I also noticed that they had a group leader who was taking charge of most communication, mostly by giving orders and asking questions. The third aspect that I assessed was the time aspect, which basically includes the time in history and time of the day. This specific group was having their communications in the evening. I gathered that they preferred to talk about their work at the end of the day rather than at the beginning of the day. This is the time when they discussed their work progress so far, what went wrong, and what to do the following day. Finally, I also assessed the cultural aspect which deals with the beliefs and values that are shared by a group of people (DeVito 7). From their discussion, it became clear that this group valued punctuality and team cohesion. This became evident from how they communicated about task completion deadlines and the emphasis they placed on teamwork. They also had a culture of no-blame because not once did I hear any finger-pointing or blame game. From all these aspects of communication, I could also tell that this group of workers was a task group, which according to Wood (217), is a group of people who share the same goal of solving problems through reasoning and decision-making.
There were also evident group features from this group of workers. The first one w...