The Importance of Group Size

Group Leadership

Social groups vary in the extent to which they designate one or more members as leaders, with responsibility to direct the activities of all members. Some friendship groups grant no one the clear status of leader, while others do. Within families, parents generally share leadership responsibilities, although husband and wife sometimes disagree about who is really in charge. In many secondary groups, such as a business office, leadership is likely to involve an established status with clearly defined roles. There are several different ways in which a person may become recognized as the leader of a social group. In the family, traditional cultural patterns confer leadership on the parents, though more often on the male as head of the household if two spouses are present. In other cases, such as friendship groups, one or more persons may gradually emerge as leaders, although there is no formal process of selection. In larger secondary groups, leaders are usually formally chosen through election or recruitment. Although leaders are often thought to be people with unusual personal ability, decades of research have failed to produce consistent evidence that there is any category of «natural leaders». It seems that there is no set o personal qualities that all leaders have in common; rather, virtually any person may be recognized as a leader-depending on the particular needs of the group. Furthermore, although we commonly think of social groups as having a single leader, research suggests that there are typically two different leaderships that are held. by different individuals. Instrumental leadership is-leadership that emphasizes the completion of tasks by a_social group. Group members look at instrumental leaders to «get things done». Expressive leadership, on the other-hand, is leadership that emphasizes the collective well-being of a social group's members. Expressive leaders are less concerned with the overall goals of the group than providing emotional support to group members and attempting to minimize tension and conflict among them. Group members expect expressive leaders to maintain stable relationships within the group and provide support to individual members.

Being the first person to arrive at a party affords the opportunity to observe a fascinating process in group dynamics. When fewer than about six people interact in one setting, a single conversation is usually maintained by everyone. But with the addition of more people, the discussion typically divides into two or more conversations. This example is a simple way of showing that size has important effects on the operation of social groups.

The basis for this dynamic lies in the mathematical connection between the number of people in a social group and the number of relationships among them. Two people are joined in a single relationship; adding a third person results in three relationships, a fourth person yields six. As additional people are added one at a time - according to what mathematicians call an arithmetic increase the number of relationships increases very rapidly— in what is called a geometric increase. By the time six people have joined one conversation, there are fifteen different relationships among them, which explains why the conversation usually divides by this point.

Дата добавления: 2014-11-29