COMMUNICATION

Group Communication

Group Communication

Introduction

Working in groups has always been a very eventful experience. It has radically helped me in understanding and forming new ideas, out of the box solutions and has always brought a fun element in the work. In this essay, I have discussed the various elements involved in group communication and working. All of these elements play a vital role in ensuring how the entire group operates, its outcome and the productivity of the members working in it. I have always cherished my experiences in working with people who are thoroughly dedicated towards the task at hand, and over the years I have learnt a lot from working with people in groups.

As an only child, I was the centre of my parent's life, my father's princess and mother's best friend, in our modest, pretty suburban home in St. Vincent. Born after fifteen years of marriage, a long period of despair and stress for my parents as they struggled to give meaning to their life, my birth was a great blessing for them. My parents, as I grew up and started school, were quite older than most of my friends' parents and slightly more conventional and old fashioned but ours was a much tighter unit and a much stronger bond than I witnessed in other homes. Communication was an essential element of our family life as we all made it a point to share meals, talk over our days, discuss our problems and issues as well as chat and often argue about various topics of interest. While these were a matter of norm in our close family unit, as I entered teenage years where parents were stigmatized as either dreadful bores and terribly old-fashioned or positive ogres who were there to curtail our freedoms and snatch our joys. I watched my friends become aloof from their parents, shutting them out of their lives and jealously guarding their secrets to be shared only with friends, I always turned to my mother in times of crisis and for advice, seeking her counsel, confiding in her and trusting her with my secrets more than any one of my age mates. This habit was so entrenched in me that my move to the United States after my marriage, once the initial post marriage buzz had subsided, hit me with agonizing intensity. My mother, who had always been there for me, who understood me better than any other person in the world and could read the smallest change in facial expressions to gauge my emotions and thoughts, who would always understand me better than anyone else, was now separated from me. Even as my mother and I alternately wrote letters, sent emails and talked on the phone, I experienced an emotional disconnect despite our frequent communication. I would sometimes struggle to explain something to my mother or store up something important to share or discuss with her but this would not always be possible. Time proved to be a major constraint as a lot of ...