Chapter 25: Cultivating a Supportive Group Climate

Any time a group of people comes together, new dynamics are put into place that differ from the dynamics present in our typical dyadic interactions. The impressions we form about other people’s likeability and the way we think about a group’s purpose are affected by the climate within a group that is created by all members. In this chapter, we will define group cohesion and climate as well as discuss specific communication behaviors that can contribute to supportive and defensive group climates.

Defining Group Cohesion and Climate

When something is cohesive, it sticks together, and the cohesion within a group helps establish an overall group climate. Group climate refers to the relatively enduring tone and quality of group interaction that is experienced similarly by group members. To better understand cohesion and climate, we can examine two types of cohesion: task and social.

Task cohesion refers to the commitment of group members to the purpose and activities of the group. Social cohesion refers to the attraction and liking among group members. Ideally, groups would have an appropriate balance between these two types of cohesion relative to the group’s purpose, with task-oriented groups having higher task cohesion and relational-oriented groups having higher social cohesion. Even the most task-focused groups need some degree of social cohesion, and vice versa, but the balance will be determined by the purpose of the group and the individual members.

For example, a team of workers from the local car dealership may join a local summer softball league because they’re good friends and love the game. They may end up beating the team of faculty members from the community college who joined the league just to get to know each other better. In this example, the players from the car dealership exhibit high social and task cohesion, while the faculty exhibit high social but low task cohesion

Cohesive groups have an appropriate balance between task and social cohesion.

Cohesion benefits a group in many ways and can be assessed through specific group behaviors and characteristics. Groups with an appropriate level of cohesiveness (Hargie, 2011):

• Set goals easily
• Exhibit a high commitment to achieving the purpose of the group
• Are more productive
• Experience fewer attendance issues
• Have group members who are willing to stick with the group during times of difficulty
• Have satisfied group members who identify with, promote, and defend the group
• Have members who are willing to listen to each other and offer support and constructive criticism
• Experience less anger and tension.

Appropriate levels of group cohesion usually create a positive group climate, since group climate is affected by members’ satisfaction with the group. Climate has also been described as group morale. Click on the following headings to learn more about some qualities that contribute to a positive group climate and morale (Marston & Hecht, 1988):

• Participation
  • Group members feel better when they feel included in discussion and a part of the functioning of the group.
• Messages
  • Confirming messages help build relational dimensions within a group, and clear, organized, and relevant messages help build task dimensions within a group.
• Feedback
  • Positive, constructive, and relevant feedback contribute to group climate.
• Equity
  • Aside from individual participation, group members also like to feel as if participation is managed equally within the group and that appropriate turn taking is used.
• Clear and accepted roles
  • Group members like to know how status and hierarchy operate within a group. Knowing the roles isn’t enough to lead to satisfaction, though—members must also be comfortable with and accept those roles.
• Motivation
  • Member motivation is activated by perceived connection to and relevance of the group’s goals or purpose.

Group cohesion and climate is also demonstrated through symbolic convergence (Bormann, 1985). Symbolic convergence refers to the sense of community or group consciousness that develops in a group through non-task-related communication such as stories and jokes.

Symbolic Convergence

The originator of symbolic convergence theory, Ernest Bormann, claims that the sharing of group fantasies creates symbolic convergence. Fantasy, in this sense, doesn’t refer to fairy tales, or untrue things. In group communication group fantasies are verbalized references to events outside the “here and now” of the group, including references to the group’s past, predictions for the future, or other communication about people or events outside the group (Griffin, 2009).

For example, as a graduate student, I spent a lot of time talking with others in our small group about research, writing, and other things related to our classes and academia in general. Most of this communication wouldn’t lead to symbolic convergence or help establish the strong social bonds that we developed as a group. Instead, it was our grad student “war stories” about excessive reading loads and unreasonable paper requirements we had experienced in earlier years of grad school, horror stories about absent or vindictive thesis advisors, and “you won’t believe this” stories from the classes that we were teaching that brought us together.

As symbolic convergence theory suggests, non-task-related communication such as stories, jokes or shared experiences can actually be valuable for groups.

In any group, you can tell when symbolic convergence is occurring by observing how people share such fantasies and how group members react to them. If group members react positively and agree with or appreciate the teller’s effort or other group members are triggered to tell their own related stories, then convergence is happening and cohesion and climate are being established. Over time, these fantasies build a shared vision of the group and what it means to be a member that creates a shared group consciousness. By reviewing and applying the concepts in this section, you can hopefully identify potential difficulties with group cohesion and work to enhance cohesion when needed to create more positive group climates and enhance your future group interactions.

Control and Problem Orientation

Speech that is used to control the listener evokes resistance. In most of our social interactions, someone is trying to do something to someone else—to change an attitude, to influence behavior, or to restrict the field of activity. The degree to which attempts to control produce defensiveness depends upon the openness of the effort, for a suspicion that hidden motives exist heightens resistance. For this reason, attempts of non-directive therapists and progressive educators to refrain from imposing a set of values, a point of view or a problem solution upon the receivers meet with many barriers.

Since the norm is control, non-controllers must earn the perception that their efforts have no hidden motives. A bombardment of persuasive “messages” in the fields of politics, education, special causes, advertising, religion, medicine, industrial relations and guidance has bred cynical and paranoid responses in listeners. Implicit in all attempts to alter another person is the assumption by the change agent that the person to be altered is inadequate. That the speaker secretly views the listener as ignorant, unable to make his or her own decisions, uninformed, immature, unwise, or possessed of wrong or inadequate attitudes is a subconscious perception which gives the latter a valid base for defensive reactions.

Neutrality and Empathy

When neutrality in speech appears to the listener to indicate a lack of concern for his welfare, he becomes defensive. Group members usually desire to be perceived as valued persons, as individuals with special worth, and as objects of concern and affection. The clinical, detached, person-is-an-object-study attitude on the part of many psychologist-trainers is resented by group members. Speech with low affect that communicates little warmth or caring is in such contrast with the affect-laden speech in social situations that it sometimes communicates rejection.

Communication that conveys empathy for the feelings and respect for the worth of the listener, however, is particularly supportive and defense reductive. Reassurance results when a message indicates that the speaker identifies himself or herself with the listener’s problems, shares her feelings, and accepts her emotional reactions at face value. Abortive efforts to deny the legitimacy of the receiver’s emotions by assuring the receiver that she need not feel badly that she should not feel rejected, or that she is overly anxious, although often intended as support giving, may impress the listener as lack of acceptance. The combination of understanding and empathizing with the other person’s emotions with no accompanying effort to change him or her is supportive at a high level.

The importance of gestural behavior cues in communicating empathy should be mentioned. Apparently spontaneous facial and bodily evidence of concern are often interpreted as especially valid evidence of deep-level acceptance.

Superiority and Equality

When a person communicates to another that he or she feels superior in position, power, wealth, intellectual ability, physical characteristics, or other ways, she or he arouses defensiveness. Here, as with other sources of disturbance, whatever arouses feelings of inadequacy causes the listener to center upon the effect loading of the statement rather than upon the cognitive elements.

The receiver then reacts by not hearing the message, by forgetting it, by competing with the sender, or by becoming jealous of him or her. The person who is perceived as feeling superior communicates that he or she is not willing to enter into a shared problem-solving relationship, that he or she probably does not desire feedback, that he or she does not require help, and/or that he or she will be likely to try to reduce the power, the status, or the worth of the receiver.

Conclusion

Group cohesion is a variety of factors that help groups stick together to achieve their goal effectively. The climate of a group sets the tone for how members communicate and make decisions.

Licenses and Attributions

References

Ahuja, M. K., & Galvin, J. E. (2003). Socialization in virtual groups. Journal of Management, 29(2), 161–185.

Bormann, E. G. (1985). Symbolic convergence theory: A communication formulation. Journal of Communication, 35(4), 128–138.

Ellis, D. G., & Fisher, B. A. (1994). Small group decision making: Communication and the group process (4th ed.). McGraw-Hill.

Gibb, J. R. (1961). Defensive communication. Journal of Communication, 11(3), 141–148.

Griffin, E. (2009). A first look at communication theory (7th ed.). McGraw-Hill.

Hargie, O. (2011). Skilled interpersonal interaction: Research, theory, and practice (5th ed.). Routledge.

Marston, P. J., & Hecht, M. L. (1988). Group satisfaction. In R. Cathcart & L. Samovar (Eds.), Small group communication (5th ed.). Brown.

Sinek, S. (2020). What makes the highest performing teams in the world [Video]. YouTube. (Licensed under Standard YouTube License – All Rights Reserved.)

Original Chapter Source

Original chapter source: Adapted from Problem Solving in Teams and Groups by Cameron W. Piercy, PhD.