Team roles and dynamics in a breast cancer fundraising walk

Team Membership

The last team experience that I had was not in a work capacity, but in a volunteer capacity. I worked as a volunteer on a breast cancer funding multi-day walk. Many people believe the walk is the heart of the fundraiser, but I discovered that the walk itself is only a small part of the experience. The real work for the team begins months before the actual walk, as the team comes together, raises funds, and makes plans for their walk.

Group Task Role

The initiator of the group was our friend Lola, whose mother was undergoing treatment for breast cancer. While out with our friends one night, she asked if we would be willing to walk with her to support her mother. She started the group, and she continued to provide direction for the group. She helped suggest the name of the group, Barb's Boobies' Buddies; she kept team members motivated, and reminded people why we were involved in the group. She has also suggested that it be an annual group function, sustaining her role as initiator even though the "project" has ended.

Leadership

Lola was the leader of the group. She initiated it, brought us the information for it, and found members for the group. She did a good job organizing the group and the walk was a success. However, Lola is not the best natural leader and there are many ways that the group could have interacted more effectively. For example, as a group of friends, we regularly hang out at a few different locations. Lola arranged a fundraiser at one of the bars we frequent and had us invite people outside of our social circle to join us. However, we could have had multiple fundraisers at different locations. In addition, the bar owner said that he would have shared that evening's receipts with us that night if we had approached him about it. She missed several opportunities to make the group function better. The positive news about that is that leadership skills can be developed over a lifetime (Mind Tools, 2012).

The best leadership quality that Lola exhibited was her inclusiveness. When her ex-boyfriend found out that Lola was forming a group for the walk, he approached her about joining the group. He also asked about whether his new girlfriend could join the group. Lola welcomed them into the group. She was also very good at making sure that different group members that had a high need for control had specific roles to play within the group. Finally, Lola is one of the most naturally affectionate people, and she made sure that people in the group felt appreciated and loved.

Despite her strengths as a leader, Lola showed some weaknesses as a leader. She was horrible at managing any difficulties that arose between group members. When people disagree she would shut down and have a problem helping solve those disagreements. Sometimes those shut downs would make it appear that she was supporting one of the people in the disagreement. This was particularly problematic because meaningless disputes escalated in this lack of leadership.

Group management

Like many groups, our group had some difficult team members. We had some group members that would talk all the time and be very aggressive. However, those team members were not actually the ones to cause the most problems. Instead, it was our passive group members that caused some difficulty for the team, because it was difficult to ascertain their wants and needs. When people would fail to provide any insight our group would try to fill the void by providing words for them. Instead, what we needed to do was stop talking. One of the best ways to encourage participation is to stop talking so that hesitant people have an opportunity to speak. After the walk, I discovered that one of our most hesitant group members actually had some very good ideas about the camping experience, which was very subpar.

Another problem that our group encountered was that two of the members of the group were compulsive talkers. "A compulsive talker can frustrate group members who never get a chance to express or respond to ideas during a discussion" (Engleberg & Wynn, 2010). Two compulsive talkers resulted in heated discussions between the two of them that isolated other group members so extensively that we would plan meetings without them to hammer out details, which left many of us feeling dishonest. The textbook provides interesting solutions for dealing with compulsive talkers, such as utilizing time limits or simply politely interrupting them (Engleberg & Wynn, 2010). I feel that interrupting them would not have been an effective strategy since two of the members were talkers; interrupting would have simply provided the other one with a chance to begin talking. However, I do think that using time limits would have made sure that other people had a chance to speak.