Glossary

20 percent rule	When 20 percent or more of a group's membership is of a particular minority, acts of discrimination against the minority decrease.



abdicrat	A person who gives up all power and responsibility.



Abstraction	Process of deriving a general concept from specific details; partial representation of something whole.



Accommodation	Situation in which individuals who are experiencing interpersonal conflict refrain from overt expression of the conflict.



active listening	Process of paraphrasing the other's ideas or statements, including the provision of feedback about nonverbal messages.



affection, need for	The desire to like and be liked by others.



affiliation	Attachment or unity on basis or terms of fellowship.



agenda	Agreed-on arrangement of topics for discussion. Sometimes this term is applied to the private issues or problems that individuals bring to a group meeting.



agenda, hidden	Secret plan that a group member has to achieve goals or objectives that are his or her own, rather than those of the group.



anchoring	Point of decision in the process of reach-testing. The cycle that includes an anchoring point follows the sequence: suggestion of an idea, agreement to the idea by others, presentation of examples to clarify the idea, and finally, affirmation, or confirmation, of the idea.



antecedent condition	Any condition that precedes, and thus influences, an event or decision.



approach-approach conflict	Conflict over mutually exclusive but equally attractive outcomes.



approach-avoidance conflict	Conflict resulting when outcomes from an act or decision are perceived as both desirable and undesirable. The actor is attracted by one of the outcomes but put off by another.



arbitration	Process of hearing and determining the outcome of a dispute between factions or persons; hearing given to disputants by an arbitrator, the aim of which is reaching a settlement.



assembly effect	Ability of a group to be more productive, working together, than the sum total of productivity that individual members can achieve working on their own.



authoritarian leadership	Sometimes called autocratic leadership; leadership style in which the leader directs the behavior of others by resort to power and rules.



autocrat	A person who exerts strong control over others.



autocratic leadership	See authoritarian leadership.



avoidance-avoidance conflict	Conflict that results when avoiding an undesirable outcome will yield a different undesirable outcome.



barrier (or) breakdown	Interruption in the flow of communication assigned or attributed to some structural defect in the communication process. This idea is controversial among communication scholars, who perceive it as inconsistent with a "process model" of communication.



brainstorming	Group procedure for generating a large and diverse idea base quickly. Members of a group select a "recorder" and then generate as many ideas as may occur. Ground rules prohibit any editorial or judgmental remarks about member contributions. Brainstorming sessions are usually timed, and often a member creates a "group memory" by placing key words or phrases on a chalkboard or flip chart as they are offered by the group.



breakpoint	Transition in the developmental process of a group that is represented by a change in the group activity, topic, or task.



breakpoint, normal	Most common breakpoint by which a group moves from one topic to the next, or from one activity to the next, or moves to plan a task.



buzz groups	To maximize the input of members in a large group meeting, the large group is divided into subgroups of six persons. Each group discusses a designated question for a specific length of time and reports its conclusions back to the large group's leader. The leader collects the results and then displays them for the membership.



causal fallacies	Sometimes a causal relationship is suggested that might be in error. A causal relationship between two events is present when one circumstance provides the basis or impetus for some other happening.



centrality	Term used to refer to the location of an individual in a communication network. Centrality is measured by the number of "linkages" required for a position to communicate, through channels, to every other position in the network.



certainty	In logic, the position that what is being observed could not have occurred by chance; 100 percent level of confidence. Certainty also refers to an attitude that is closed-minded, thus not considerate of alternative positions or points of view. The opposite of certainty, from this perspective, is provisionalism.



channel	Means of transmission; the vehicle through which messages are sent.



channel capacity	Measure of the maximal amount of information that a communication channel can handle at any given moment.



coalition	Alliance or agreement between two (or more) individuals. Coalitions are usually temporary and usually have to do with a controversial position.



code	System of signs and symbols used to transmit messages between people; sometimes used to suggest a system of symbols used to translate messages from one form to another.



cognition	Act, power, or faculty of apprehending, knowing, or perceiving.



cohesiveness	Group's sense of unity, or "togetherness"; characterized by mutual attractiveness and willingness to work together; a measure of an individual's commitment to the group.



collection	A gathering of individuals.



collective evaluation	Belief shared by members of a group about how members ought or ought not to act.



collective expectation	A standard applied to behavior to discover if it classifies as a norm.



colloquium	Public group meeting format designed to inform an audience through the use of planned questions that produce unprepared responses from a panel of experts.



compromise	Negotiated conflict settlement in which each party gives up part of what is wanted in order to get the other part. From a game theory perspective, compromise is a lose-lose solution.



conflict, affective	Conflict among people that is generated from differences in emotions or from relational frictions.



conflict, interpersonal	Competitive situation in which one person's behaviors are designed to interfere with or harm another individual (expressed); disagreement or opposition of ideas or opinions (unexpressed).



conflict, intrapersonal	Condition or status of emotional tension. See also approach-approach, approach-avoidance, and avoidance-avoidance conflict.



conflict, substantive	Conflict over ideas and issues. In group communication theory, conflict in the task dimension rather than in the social, or relationship, dimension of communication.



conformity	Behaviors produced by an individual that are uniform, or consistent with the expectations of a social system, and least likely to produce negative consequences or influences from the other members of the social system.



confrontation	Conflict management technique in which participants talk directly about the conflict and relationship issues; sometimes called confrontation-problem-solving method.



connotation	Affective value or meaning of a word; emotional associations an individual user brings to a word.



consensus	Measure of the extent of agreement or commitment that members feel toward the decisions of a group. Generally, consensus means that the members agree with a decision.



content and relationship dimensions	Notion that language refers both to the world external to a speaker-the objects, phenomena, and events outside of the individual (content dimension)-and to the relationship existing between the speaker and another individual (relationship dimension).



context of communication	Physical, social, psychological, and temporal environment in which a communication event occurs.



contingency model	Both Fiedler's and Poole's model of group leadership that predicts leader and group effectiveness.



control	The exercise of power and authority over self and others.



cooperation	Process of working together toward a common goal; sharing effort, expertise, and resources to achieve some mutually desirable outcome.



credibility	Degree to which a receiver believes a source; believability of an individual.



credibility gap	Tendency of people to disbelieve one another; difference between the image of integrity an individual attempts to project and the perception of integrity that another holds of that individual.



criteria	Standards of judgment based upon what is valued.



critical advisor	A person who suggests disadvantages to proposals, questions assumptions, sees errors in reasoning, and offers constructive criticism.



culture (group)	History, traditions, and rules concerning appropriate and inappropriate behaviors of a group.



decision	Choice among available or imagined alternatives. A group decision is a decision reached by the process of consensus or by some other decision-making procedure validated by the group.



decision making	Process of choosing among alternatives; process of arriving at a decision.



decision-making meeting	Group that interacts among its members for the purpose of considering action related to some concern.



decode	Process of taking message value from a code.



defective decision making	Victims of groupthink do not adequately survey their alternatives; they do not survey their objectives or examine the risks of what they are doing. They usually do not reappraise anything they have once rejected.



defensive behavior	Acts designed to ward off what is perceived to be an attack by another.



delay	Breakpoint that happens when a group moves back to repeat an analysis or activity.



delegating approach	An approach to leadership in which the leader turns over responsibility for decisions and their implementation to a group.



Delphi method	Group decision-making technique in which individuals respond to questionnaires until a final composite list is obtained that represents the opinions of the group. This is not a group discussion technique, since the group members do not typically or necessarily meet to talk about their responses to the questionnaires.



democrat	A person who can either take charge or allow others to take charge, depending on the situation and the needs of the group.



democratic leader	Group leader who stimulates the involvement of group members and encourages them to arrive at decisions through the process of consensus.



denotation	Associations usually called up by a word among members of a speech community; the "dictionary definition" of a word; the features of meaning of a word that are usually accepted by native speakers of a language.



designated leader	Any individual who is appointed to a position of leadership, as opposed to an individual who emerges as the result of his or her perceived leadership potential.



deviance	Behavior of a group member that does not conform to the norms or expectations of the group.



disruption	Breakpoint that is represented by either a major disagreement or a conflict.



dyadic communication	Communication between two people. A dyad is not a group, since the minimum number that can be called a group is three.



dysfunctional conflict	Conflict that does not contribute to the group's progress toward its goals, or that is not productive. Not all conflict is dysfunctional, since conflict is inherent in change and in relationship management.



emergence	Gradual process in which groups develop the roles individual members will play, the norms that govern group behavior, and the decisions the group will validate by consensus.



emergence phase	Period in a decision-making discussion in which dissent dissipates as a group comes to agreement on a decision.



emergent leader	Individual who rises to a position of leadership as a result of the group's perception of his or her leadership potential.



empathy	Experiencing what another person experiences; feeling what another person feels.



encode	To translate thoughts into words and behavior.



encoder	Component of the communication process in which information is translated from one form into another. In speech, to encode is to translate ideas into spoken words. A telephone mouthpiece serves as an encoder as it translates spoken sounds into electrical impulses.



equality	The attitude, reflected in communication choices, that each individual is inherently of worth. Equality encourages supportiveness. The behavioral opposite is superiority.



equifinality	The many means by which a group might achieve a goal (its task).



ethics	Branch of philosophy that studies moral value, rightness or wrongness.



ethnic diversity	Group membership made up of two or more cultures or subcultures.



ethos	Perception of an individual's character, as, for example, an audience's perception that a speaker is honest, knowledgeable, and of goodwill and intention.



evaluation	Process of making a value judgment about some person, object, or event.



evolution	History of an object, idea, or event; enduring changes.



exigency	A need, demand, or requirement that is a result of some particular circumstance that motivates the desire to communicate.



expert power	The influence a person has based on what the person knows and/or the person's abilities.



fact	Statement about an observation that can be demonstrated to be true.



fantasy chain	Series of statements by members in which they jointly create a story.



feedback	Messages sent from a receiver to a source that have the effect of correcting or controlling error. Feedback can take the form of talk, applause, yawning, puzzled looks, questions, letters, increases or decreases in subscription rates, etc. In groups, feedback sometimes is used by members to teach an individual his or her role, or to extinguish the behavior of a deviant member.



field of experience	Image of the world that an individual holds as a result of interacting and communicating with it. The field of experience is dependent on language (how you talk about the world-the things you say to yourself and others) and on such things as memory and forgetting. Thus an individual field of experience is unique.



finality	Task accomplishment in system terms.



FIRO	Fundamental interpersonal relationship orientation; analytical system developed by William Schutz for examining and understanding human relationships based upon need for inclusion, control, and affection.



focus group	Group with relatively unstructured interaction whose members meet to share their ideas about and experiences with a particular idea, product, or problem.



forcing	Method of managing conflict in which the person attempts to gain compliance by applying some sort of pressure.



forgetting curve	Model that traces the amount of material retained or forgotten over time.



forum	Large group meeting designed to encourage audience participation on issues surrounding a topic. Typically, a moderator introduces a speaker and a topic. The speaker presents a brief statement and then interacts with the audience. The moderator encourages audience participation and involvement.



function	Appropriate activity or action of a person or thing; purpose for which something is designed or exists; role.



functional perspective	In group communication theory, the study of the group processes in terms of the functions of a group or its individual members. When applied to leadership of groups, an examination of what the individual does-as opposed, for example, to a trait perspective, which would study individual features of the leader's character.



game	Simulation, with rules governing the behaviors of the participants. In game theory, games may be played in three forms: win-win, win-lose, and lose-lose.



gatekeeping	Act or process of filtering messages sent. Some messages are allowed to pass intact, others are distorted, and still others may be eliminated altogether.



goal conflict	Conflict among group members about what they want to accomplish.



goals	Anticipated outcomes of a group's interaction.



group	Three or more people who perceive themselves as a unit, who are mutually interdependent, and who interact about some common goal.



group failure	Disruption-type breakpoint that is a result of a group's realizing that its effort is not going to be sufficient to meet the task goals.



group identification	State when members see themselves more as part of a group than as individual people working in a group.



group mind	Idea that a group's way of thinking and feeling can exist apart from its individual members. The notion is out of date.



groupthink	Phenomenon that occurs in highly cohesive groups when the members ignore evidence and opinion contrary to their own views and disregard alternative choices in order to preserve their feeling of unity. Groupthink often leads to a faulty decision.



hierarchy	A set of system objects or people, related to each other in terms of rank or size.



hitchhiking	A member uses an idea of another member to stimulate his or her imagination, thereby creating an idea that is a variation of the original.



hypothesis, motivational-hierarchy	Thesis that Fred Fiedler presented to explain some of his findings about leadership style. It suggests that people are motivated to attain more than one goal at a particular time and these goals are ranked.



ideal solution sequence	This plan asks the group to take into account the various ideal solutions the involved parties (groups) might favor.



ideational conflict	Disagreements among group members about conceptualizations.



inclusion, need for	The desire to be accepted, to feel wanted, and to be a part of a group.



inference	A guess; a judgment, based upon observational data, about the meaning of those data.



informal role	A set of behaviors taken on by an individual and regulated very subtly between the group and person. This contrasts with a formal role.



information	In information theory, available data. The more the available data, the more the information, and the greater the uncertainty. More commonly used to mean anything that reduces uncertainty.



information overload	Condition in which the amount of information is too great to be processed; typically, in groups, occurs when the number and complexity of messages are too great to be dealt with.



information processing	Using perceptions to transform data into information, usually followed by action on those perceptions. Can be either an individual or a group process.



information-sharing meeting	Group that interacts for the purpose of enlightenment of members.



input	In group communication, the contributions of individual members; what the members bring to a group decision-making situation.



interaction	Two acts by group members that occur in sequence and are related to each other.



interaction diagrams	Diagrams used to record the flow and number of messages sent in a group.



interaction process analysis (IPA)	Method of content analysis developed by Robert F. Bales that classifies messages into four categories: social-emotional positive, social-emotional negative, questions, and attempted answers.



interdependence	Relationship between elements or people such that each is influenced by the other.



interpersonal communication	Communication between or among people, characterized by give-and-take; distinguished from public communication by its more personal nature (as opposed to the impersonal nature of public communication).



interpersonal needs	Motives that produce affiliation; reasons for establishing a relationship; in William Schutz's system, inclusion, control, and affection.



intrapersonal communication	Communication within oneself.



intrinsic interest	Level of concern and involvement generated by a particular issue or idea.



IPA	See interaction process analysis.



issue	Question that is central, or critical, to an argument. Issues may be of fact (something is), value (something is good), or policy (something should be).



jargon	Technical language evolved by specialists so that they can communicate more accurately and efficiently about their interests or concerns.



laissez-faire leadership	Behavioral style employed by some designated leaders in which the leader withdraws from the group process, leaving the group members to their own devices.



leader	One who directs and influences a group to move toward group goal achievement. A leader may be designated, or a leader may emerge.



leader, designated	Person appointed by someone in authority to direct the activities of a group.



leader, emergent	Group member, not appointed to lead by someone in authority, who directs the activities of a group because the majority of group members accept this person's willingness to do so.



leader as medium	The leader is the mechanism through which an organizing scheme of rules and procedures for problem solving is created.



leadership	In a group, the functional behaviors of a person, usually of high status, that contribute to the group's movements toward its goals.



leadership-structuring style	In a group, the functional behaviors of a person who directs the activities of a group by helping the group plan and organize its activities and set goals, while encouraging relative equality among its members.



legitimate power	The influence a person has over others because of being elected, appointed, or selected to lead.



leveling	Communication phenomenon in which messages are distorted by reduction of details, intensity, or complexity when they are repeated in a series.



linear model	Model of the communication process that describes or implies a straight-line direction of message flow.



listening	Active process of receiving and processing stimuli.



maintenance	Behaviors by group members that contribute to the cohesiveness of the group.



majority vote	Decision technique sometimes used by a group to resolve conflict; not recommended except when an attempt at consensus has failed.



mediation	Conflict management technique in which disputing parties agree to negotiate with the help of an arbitrator; usually understood to be binding.



mental set	Psychological orientation produced by prior events or perceptions that contributes to bias in perception or comprehension.



message	Any sign or symbol, or any combination of signs or symbols, that functions as stimulus for a receiver.



method of residues	A process in which members are gradually eliminated as potential leaders until one person emerges to lead.



mindguards	Members of a group that take it upon themselves to protect the group from any information or opinion that might cause the group to deviate from its current position.



model	Physical representation of an object or process. Models may be visual or verbal, and may be two- or three-dimensional.



modification, nonverbal	Cue or message sent, nonverbally, to modify the meaning of the verbal message.



motivation-hierarchy hypothesis	See hypothesis, motivation-hierarchy.



network, communication	In a group, the structure of channel linkages between and among members; a description of who communicates with whom, how often, and through what channels.



neutrality	Impersonal communication response pattern that creates defensiveness; opposite of empathy.



NGT (or) NGP	See nominal group technique; sometimes called nominal group process.



noise	Any source of interference or distortion in message exchange. Noise exists in the process to the extent that message fidelity is damaged. Three broad categories are (1) physical, or channel noise; (2) semantic, or psychological noise; and (3) systemic, or system-centered noise.



nominal group technique (NGT)	Group procedure for increasing productivity by asking members to follow a five-step sequence: (1) silent listing of ideas, (2) creation of a master list of ideas, (3) clarification of ideas, (4) straw vote or rank ordering for testing acceptance of ideas, (5) follow-through.



norm	Unspoken rule that evolves out of a group's interactions to control and govern the behavior of group members.



on-line catalog	Database of the library's holdings accessed by a computer.



openness	In language, the phenomenon that allows native speakers to talk about matters that they have not discussed before and to understand talk they have never heard before. In relationships, the willingness of an individual to receive and consider ideas from another.



operational definition	Definition by example.



opinion leader	Person whose opinion molds public opinion; in a group, an individual whose ideas influence the direction or decision of a group.



organization	Human system designed to achieve some set of specific goals; characterized by a recurring sequence of events, such as a calendar year.



orientation phase	Initial period in the decision-making process; characterized by the members' establishing goals and getting to know other members.



output	In group communication, the productivity of a group or its individual members; the yield that derives from communication in the task dimension.



overgeneralization	Conclusion that results when data for some reason are not strong enough to support it.



overpersonal	Behavior of a person who goes to great lengths to be liked by others.



oversocial	Behavior of a person who goes to great lengths to join and be a part of groups.



participant-analyst	Person in a group who observes and evaluates what is going on and takes action to provide whatever the group needs at that moment.



participating approach	A leadership style in which the leader shares ideas and facilitates group decision making.



perception	Process of becoming aware of stimuli that impinge on the five senses.



personal	The balancing of the situation in order to be liked when affection is desired but also maintaining distance when affection is not needed.



persuasion	Process of influence; process of changing attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.



physical noise	See noise.



physiological noise	Disruption in the receiving and/or processing of information due to physical functioning of the body.



population familiarity	Feature of a group task having to do with the extent to which a group has had experience with the task.



positive feedback	Feedback that reinforces behaviors for the purpose of increasing the likelihood that the behaviors will recur; for example, nods of agreement, or laughter in response to an anecdote.



positive reinforcement	Increasing the likelihood of a particular response by rewarding it.



power	Perceived influence one person has over another.



primary tension	Experience of tension that individual group members feel during the early stages of group evolution or at the beginning of a meeting.



problem orientation	Focus upon the components of a problem and its possible solutions, as opposed, for example, to imposing one's own idea on another or the group; encourages supportiveness; opposite is control.



procedural leadership	Behavior that contributes to group productivity by focusing upon and providing guidance concerning group tasks.



process	Ongoing activity; continuous changing in the pursuit of a goal.



productivity	Quantity and/or quality of a group's work in the task dimension.



provisionalism	Behavior suggesting an attitude of open-mindedness, tentativeness with respect to a conclusion; opposite is certainty.



psychological noise	Disruption in the receiving and/or processing of information because of thinking that pulls thoughts away from the message.



punctuated equilibrium model	A group development scheme that is characterized by sequences of stable behavior, followed by disruptive behavior, with the process repeated.



punctuation	In group communication, the arbitrary process of creating the meaning of a sequence of messages by selecting the beginning and ending points of the sequence.



punishment power	Exerting influence by withholding benefits or subjecting a person to unpleasant situations.



quality circle (QC)	Volunteer group of employees that meets to identify work-related problems and propose solutions to them.



question of fact	Discussion issue that does not involve value decisions or policies and that can be resolved by collecting information that addresses the issue.



question of policy	Discussion issue that requires a decision about what should be or ought to be done as a general rule in a particular situation and similar situations.



question of value	Discussion issue that requires a decision about goodness, worth, or desirability of something.



reach testing	Introduction of a new idea based upon some anchored position in the spiral model. Group members accept, revise, or reject the idea through group discussion.



readiness level	The group's ability, motivation, and education or experience.



receiver	Person or thing that takes in messages.



reciprocity	Assumption that people will respond to behaviors with similar behaviors.



redundancy	In information theory, a measure of the predictability of a message. The greater the redundancy, the greater the predictability and the less the uncertainty.



referent	Object or event to which a symbol refers.



referent power	The influence a person has because others identify with or are attracted to the person.



reflective thinking	Pattern, or sequence, of logical thought that provides the following convenient agenda for the tasks of a discussion group: (1) identify the problem, (2) define and delimit the problem, (3) develop evaluative criteria against which to test alternative proposals, (4) seek alternative solutions to propose and test, (5) develop a final solution to advocate.



reflexiveness	Feature of all languages that allows the language to refer to itself. Language for talking about language is said to be self-reflexive.



regulation	In groups, substitution of nonverbal messages for words in order to control the behavior of group members.



reinforcement	Increasing or strengthening the likelihood of a response.



reinforcement phase	Final period in decision making in which members congratulate themselves on completing their task effectively.



relational activities	Categories of interaction that focus on the social process.



relationship	Who a person is with respect to others.



reliability	Measure of the extent to which independent observers agree; measure of the extent to which a measuring instrument will measure the same phenomenon in different cases.



reward power	The influence that comes from a person's ability to provide benefits another person values.



risky shift	Tendency of a group to be less conservative in decision making than an individual; tendency of a group to take a greater risk than an individual. A group is more likely to gamble-to "go for" the greater payoff, with less probability of attainment-than is an individual.



role	The part an individual plays in a group; behaviors evidenced by a group member that have been sanctioned by group approval; expectations that a group has of an individual's behavior.



role, self-centered	A role that serves the purpose of personal enhancement of the role player at the expense of progress toward achievement of group goals.



role conflict	Result of a person's attempting to play two or more roles that are contradictory in function.



role stability	The point at which a group member performs a particular function in a group and the group reinforces the practice of the function, resulting in general agreement that that member should continue to perform that function.



role strain	Tension that results from a person's trying to perform a role, but being unable to do so.



scapegoating	Blaming others for one's own mistakes.



secondary tension	Discomfort that a group experiences, or that is experienced by individual group members, beyond the tolerance threshold for tension; that is, tension experienced by the group or its members that is so great that the group may no longer ignore it. Produced from sources other than orienting activities.



selective perception	Unconscious process of sorting through available stimuli, and selecting those to be perceived.



self-concept	Image of oneself that has evolved out of interaction with significant others over time.



self-disclosure	Revealing oneself-thinking, feelings, beliefs, and the like-to another.



self-fulfilling prophecy	Process of making a prediction come true; for example, predicting that a group experience will be exciting and then fulfilling the prediction by experiencing the group as exciting.



self-reflexiveness	Ability of something to refer back to itself. Language is self-reflexive. People can be self-reflexive.



self-report rating form	Form used to report self-appraisals of performance in a group context.



selling approach	A leadership style in which the leader explains decisions and tasks and provides an opportunity for clarification.



semantic noise	Error introduced into a communication event because of peculiarities in the use of language; sometimes called psychological noise.



sensing	The act of receiving stimuli through the five senses.



single question sequence	A decision-making sequence formulated to help groups identify issues that flow from a problem.



situation/context	Terms used interchangeably to refer to the immediate surroundings of an event; the environment in which an event takes place; the presence of variables that may influence a communication event.



situational perspective	Perspective that relies on examination of a situation in order to guide decisions about appropriate leadership.



small group	Three or more individuals, up to about eleven individuals, who perceive themselves as joined to achieve some common goal.



smoothing	Conflict-management strategy in which a member attempts to play down or ignore differences in order to keep a disagreement from being addressed by the group.



social dimension	Relationship dimension of group communication, having to do with such relational matters as cohesiveness.



social facilitation	The positive effect that comes from members working in the presence of each other.



social leadership	Behaviors of individual group members that serve to maintain the group's relationships and cohesiveness.



social loafer	A group member who makes minimal or no contributions to the group's effort. He or she does not feel the need to participate because the effort of other group members is accomplishing the task.



social tension	Uneasiness that group members feel when they are uncertain about members' relationships.



solution multiplicity	The number of reasonable alternatives to solve a problem.



source	Location of an idea; originator of a message.



source/encoder	A person who translates an idea or message into language and nonverbal behavior.



special-event meeting	An unusual, not regular, one-of-a-kind meeting, or an occasional and traditional event meeting, such as the annual sales meeting of a company's marketing division.



spiral model	Model of decision development that encompasses backtracking and reach testing until group consensus is achieved.



spontaneity	Characteristic of interaction in which individuals speak freely and straightforwardly without editing or developing strategies of control; encourages supportiveness; opposite is strategy.



stability in perception	Phenomenon of the perceptual process that renders perceptions of people and things relatively constant or consistent with previous conceptualizations of those people and things.



status	Place in a hierarchy; in a group, the social position, either appointed or achieved as the result of interactions.



status, achieved	Position or ranking that a group member gains in a group's hierarchy because of other members' perceptions of the person's contribution and personality.



status, ascribed	Position or ranking that a group member has in a group's hierarchy because of the function that person is assigned to play by the organization of which the group is a part.



status conflict	Conflict over relative, or comparative, status among group members.



status consensus	Agreement among group members that the members' place in the status hierarchy is agreeable and appropriate.



stereotype	Application of a fixed set of characteristics about a group or subgroup to an individual member of that group or subgroup in such a way that the uniqueness of the individual is ignored.



stimulus	Data to be perceived; anything in the experiential field that arouses an individual or impinges upon the perceptual mechanisms of that individual.



strategy	Application of a plan to control another; opposite is spontaneity. In interpersonal communication, strategy fosters defensiveness.



structure	Arrangement of components of a system at any given moment in time.



style	Having to do with leadership. Style is the general approach that an individual takes while providing leadership to a group.



substitution	Using nonverbal messages instead of words to regulate another individual during a communication event.



superiority	Attitude or opinion that another individual is not beneath oneself. Opposite is equality.



supportiveness	Category of behavior identified and described by Jack Gibb that implies or suggests an interpersonal attitude characterized by candor, freedom from fear, and a sense of equality. Behaviors that yield a sense of supportiveness are description, problem orientation, spontaneity, empathy, and equality.



survey interview	Method of collecting data in which a representative group of respondents is asked to answer standardized questions, and the data are tallied and analyzed to make statements about the group, its attitudes, and its opinions.



symbol	Anything that arbitrarily "stands for" something else. Symbols do not usually bear any natural relationship to the things for which they stand. For example, a flag bears no natural relationship to the country for which it stands. A word bears no natural relationship to the thing it represents.



symmetry	In communication, any response that mirrors the antecedent stimulus.



symposium	Form of group meeting used to present a variety of views in the form of short speeches or reports for the benefit of an audience. Moderator introduces a panel, provides a history of the issues, presents each speaker, monitors time, and ends the meeting with a brief charge to the audience or a summary of the ideas and issues presented.



synergy	Group performance that goes beyond what would be yielded from individual efforts.



system	Sum total of all the components of a thing, plus all the relationships among those components, joined to form a single entity, and interdependent in such a way that any change in the system affects the entire system.



systemic noise	A disruption that affects a group and has as its source something that is external to the group's immediate environment.



task	The focus of the group's effort that leads to the achievement of the group's goal.



task difficulty	Amount of effort required to complete a task. As a general rule, complex tasks (those that have multiple causes and multiple solutions) are more difficult than simple tasks (those that have few causes and few solutions).



task dimension	Part of a communication event having to do with objects or ideas, as opposed to relationships.



task experience	The extent to which a group is familiar with the task.



task leadership functions	Efforts to facilitate group processing and thinking about the task, such as generating ideas and information, processing that information, thinking critically about decisions, and clarifying ideas.



task-process activities	Categories of interaction that focus on the group's work.



team	A mature group of three or more individuals who interact on a regular basis about some common problem or interdependent goal (task), provide their own leadership for development and performance, and exert mutual influence over one another.



telling approach	A leadership style in which the leader provides specific instructions and close supervision.



territoriality	The notion of ownership or attitude of possessiveness that individuals develop toward a particular space or to particular objects.



theory	Foundation of an explanation or description of any complex phenomenon; sometimes described as a complete set of "if-then" statements that serve to allow explanation or prediction.



tolerance threshold	Level of tension experienced by an individual or group such that any tension beyond that threshold must be addressed; the maximal tension that will not debilitate an individual or a group.



topic activities	Categories of interaction that depict areas of content.



trait perspective	Attempt to understand leadership by examining the features of personality and behavior that are evidenced by leaders.



transaction	Pattern of interaction between people.



transformational leader	A leader who elevates, motivates, inspires, and develops his or her team or group.



triangle of meaning	Theoretical model that shows the relationship among an object, phenomenon, or event; thinking about that object, phenomenon, or event; and the symbolic representations people generate about their observations.



trust	Confidence in another person; belief that the behavior of another person can be predicted.



underpersonal	Behavior of a person who has a low need for affection.



undersocial	Behavior of a person who isolates him or herself from group involvement.



value	The worth of something; the characteristic or quality of a thing that renders it desirable.



variable	Something that can increase or decrease in some dimension, as in the variable worth of the American dollar overseas; something that can have different values.



withdrawal strategy	Conflict-management strategy in which a disputant leaves the conflict, either physically or psychologically.

2002 McGraw-Hill Higher Education
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