How was status/power distributed in the group? Which members of the group had status?

What members had power?

Amber Garza Group projects among students and professionals tend to not normally be on the favorite assignments list. This is because a variety of reasons, however one of the main contributing issues during group collaboration is the distribution of power and status throughout the group. In my group for communications, I believe the distribution of status and power was not an issue as it may have been in previous groups I have been apart of. From the first group gathering in class, each member equally participated in suggesting ideas for the topic of our presentation. Every member was also equally involved in the decision making process of selecting a topic to present. From this first meeting it was unanimously decided that no member of the group would have a higher status than any other member and therefore our group would have a democratic style of leader ship and power. As the project progressed it was apparent that the former decision of member equality was not working out as we successfully as we had envisioned. One group member was going to have to lead the organization of the group to insure that the presentation was ready on time. Amber Garza was designated to organize the Power Point for the group and there for it was her task to make sure that all of the other group members submitted their portion of the presentation in time. In this case Amber became a situational leader. Although she has had roughly the same amount of experience with Power Point as other group members, the type of power that most relates to this situation is expert power. I would like to reinforce the fact that although Amber gathered the Power Point presentation, every other group member made a contribution by creating a

portion of the presentation. This ensured that all group members still had status and power. After the Power Point presentation was complete and submitted our group project was still not over. A large part of the group grade was going to be based on the completion and submission of the group paper. Our group conducted another meeting and it was then decided that, like the Power Point, one person was going to need to coordinate the paper so that it would be completed and turned in on time. Stefne volunteered to be the group member that was responsible for the paper portion of our project. She coordinated the group members through email and collected each written portion from the entire group. This form of power would also fit the situational leader category because Stefne rose to the leadership position when it was needed. Over all, the group cooperation was phenomenal and each member of our group did a superb job accomplishing all tasks well. Our group understood form the start, that in order to have a successful project and receive a good grade we would all have to work together. I believe power was divided fairly throughout our group and no member was left powerless. Each member had the same status, despite seniority; each member was of equal status. This was the most impressive level of group coordination, cooperation, and success I have ever been apart of and my entire group agrees that every one was treated equally.