We did a skills audit to find out everyone’s skills in each group and use them to our advantage. The benefits of this were that, in principle, it allowed us to take an overview of the group and the individual skills and limitations, so that we could plan tasks and responsibilities relative to the audit.
A limitation of this activity was that we did not have full sight of everyone’s audit and this was a weakness as a group. Also, one person who adopted the role of leader on their own initiative stopped turning up for meetings and therefore their role diminished.
Another person then started to take over without any group agreement but they seemed to find it stressful and from this lacked any leadership traits and left it to the individuals within the group to progress in the way we thought was appropriate.
A factor in this seemed to be poor communication and this made me realise that to be effective as a group good communication throughout is imperative for a group to be cohesive and work towards a successful outcome.
