Christian Morales - Post 1

 SPC 1017-8:00AM Class

Group 1

Group 1 presented chapter 3 which was about intercultural communication, the differences or perceived differences between people and how that can affect how they interact with each other. The cultural distinctions they mentioned were ideal and real values, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, race, religion, socioeconomic status, disabilities, collectivism vs individualism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, and masculinity vs femininity. They not only compared and contrasted these distinctions but they also showed how they may affect how people with these distinctions could communicate differently as a result of them. One aspect of this which they covered was cultural shock which is when cultural norms or customs are challenged which typically occurs when confronted by distinct cultural norms. They also mentioned chronimics and high context vs low context cultures. Chronimics is the study of how perception of time differs between cultures. This can affect things like meeting times. As for high context vs low context, high context cultures require a lot of context to understand things while low context cultures are more direct and require less context to understand what they say. As for the presentation as a whole, think they did a good job presenting these concepts in a short and concise manner while still exploring them in enough detail to get across the information they needed to get across. They were able to make a good presentation that was colorful and illustrative which showcased the topics that they covered in a good fashion. The diagrams and pictures included not only aided the presentation but helped illustrate what they were talking about such that it elevated the presentation to a new level. I don't feel that any particular part of the presentation was lacking. I believe it was all well put together and did a good for presenting what they were talking about. In their in person presentation, they added life to their google slides presentation by being able to verbally explain all the topics they covered. Overall, I feel that everyone did a good job presenting and worked well as a team to put together this presentation.

Group 2

Group 2 presented chapter 9 which was about communicating in groups. They first covered the nature and types of groups such as families, social groups, support groups, interest groups, service groups, virtual groups, and work groups. Along with this, they also showed what standards to uphold to ensure a healthy group dynamic which include honesty, ethics, accountability, responsibility, and more. They also covered the development stages in groups and what a group might look like in each stage. With this, they covered the stages of forming, storming, norming, and performing. The last stage they covered was adjourning and transforming in which team members are typically prepared to leave which typically leads to a change in the group structure, composition, or even goal. Another aspect they covered was group conflict, an avoidable part of most groups. These are generally thought to be manageable although unresolved conflicts can lead to stalling. Pseudo-conflicts are conflicts in which group  members agree but argue due to poor communication. There's also issue related conflicts which are due to disagreements on certain issues, personality related which arise from a defense mechanism to being attacked, cultural conflicts which arise from cultural differences, as well as virtual conflicts which are harder to resolve due to lack of physical presence. Overall, this presentation gave concise explanations to the topics covered with captivating imagery to help aid the presentation. The presentation felt well put together and was colorful with a unique aesthetic and theme which helped to captivate the attention of those looking at the presentation. The live presentation was also good as all team members contributed and explained the topics well. Although their presentation was shorter than the other 2 groups, they were still able to convey the topic and explain everything in a well put together fashion.

Group 3

Group 3, the group which I presented with, presented chapter 10 which was about leadership and problem solving. The presentation started off talking about the different types of leadership starting off with task leadership and maintenance leadership which then transitioned into talking about the different types of group roles and the forms of leadership they in themselves present. For my slides, I talked about some types of group roles, more specifically, I talked about the types of procedural leaderships which were logistics coordinators, expeditors, gatekeepers, and recorders while the slides that followed talked about shared leadership responsibilities. For this section of the presentation, I took notes on the chapter in order to learn the topic I was tasked with presenting. I then coordinated with Dylan and Andrea who were also tasked with presenting topic 10-1 in order to decide which part each of us should present. Following our part of the presentation, effective meetings were talked about which was a topic that was split to cover before the meetings, during the meetings, and after the meetings as they listed what needed to  be done for these meetings in these 3 stages for both leaders and participants. Next, systematic problem solving was covered where they showed how to identify a problem, analyze the problem, and finally deal with the problem. They offered ways to create solutions, how to evaluate a solution, how to make a decision as a group, and how to implement said solution. Following this, a very important aspect of any group was covered which is communication. The ways they listed to communicate within a group was through written formats, oral formats, and visual formats while listing examples to go along with them. Lastly, group dynamics was covered which explains how groups interact to achieve their goals with ended touching on the effectiveness of group presentations. Overall, I feel like this presentation was very well made and thoroughly explained our topic of leadership and problem solving. I think every member did a good job explaining their subtopics which resulted in an overall, good presentation for the group as a whole. It provided information with good context and pictures to go along with it in order to make the presentation stand out. I feel fortunate to have been part of this group and to have contributed to a well-made presentation such as this.