Decision-Making and Conflict-Management Processes Reflection Paper

REFLECTION GUIDELINES

Reflect upon your experiential insights gained from your participation in the group processes exercises from last

Wednesday and Monday of this week, then review concepts related to Decision-Making Processes (Ch. 8) and

Conflict-Management Processes (Ch. 9).

Your Reflection should focus on the following topics and any others that are meaningful to you:

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What is your personal preference: work alone or work in a group?

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What constraints and challenges did you experience in completing each of the two tasks?

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What phase model did your group use predominantly? Was that the process you would have used had

you been working toward the goal as an individual?

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Review the symptoms and outcomes of groupthink to see which of these might have emerged in your

interactions with your group. Did you personally feel that you might be prone to any of these? What

specifics of your groups’ or your own processes illustrated certain symptoms?



Describe your groups’ processes in terms of descriptive vs. cognitive D-M models.

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Did you observe any of the “paradoxes”? (Provide details)

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How did these affect your decision-making, if at all?



What is your conflict style according to the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict-Mode Instrument distributed in

class? (Provide your scores for the five categories). How did that style manifest in the exercises? Did you

attempt to move out of that default conflict-management mode and, if so, how?



If you were assigned the “disrupter” roles, how did that affect your participation in group dynamics? How,

if at all, did the “disrupter” affect your own process to accomplish the groups’ goals?



What Ch. 8 and Ch. 9 concepts, theories and applications might be most beneficial to you in future group

projects to which you might be assigned, especially in a career setting? What are your “take-aways”?

Develop your ideas using specific concepts from the chapters (quote, cite to support your most important

conclusions). There is no length requirement for the Reflection, but it is likely to be in the 2-3-page range.

Reflection on the experiences framed in Ch. 8 and Ch. 9 understanding to develop its content is what matters.

Use report format, not essay format. (See posted file “Why Use Report Format” in Support – It presents th