Personal Reflection: The Five Group Meetings

The five group meetings before the hike were meant to help us prepare to work together to complete the hike. During these meetings all of our group members got along together fine. We were not a cohesive group yet but we did not have any big problems that arose. The activities helped with creating group cohesiveness to prepare us for the hike. Doing the small activities gave us a common goal to work on together to prepare us for the main activity, the hike. Based on how the group activities went I thought that there would be two people who would try to take over, make all of the decisions, and not care about what other people wanted or thought. My perception was different compared to my experience. My group was motivated by the ultimate goal …show more content…
Chi got cramps during our hike over the mountain to the second checkpoint and we had to stop every so often to wait for her. However, our group did not get that frustrated. We all were calm and waited for her, and we even encouraged her to keep coming. This incident did slow us down a bit but we continued to keep a happy environment and were able to keep going without any tempers. On our way to the third checkpoint, Scott asked us what we were all doing after the hike. One member had to go to practice but the rest of us had to no plans and Scott asked if we wanted to go to OIP to eat. While we ended up not all going together, mostly because of how tired everyone was, this goes to show how far we came together as a group. We became close and liked each other enough during the hike to want to continue to do something together after the hike as well. Which is saying a lot compared to other groups that I talked to and they complained lot about some of their members. I would say that the level of my groups cohesiveness, especially compared to other groups, was relatively high and this helped us complete the …show more content…
The goal setting theory played a huge part in our hike experience. The ultimate goal was to finish the hike and we all assumed that everyone agreed with this and was motivated to do so. This was not a commitment that we had explicitly talked about before the hike but we all assumed that we were all committed to the goal of completing the hike. This was a challenging goal for us and it was easy to focus on because that was the only thing we had to do that day. Since I assumed and believed that everyone was just as committed as myself this made me more determined to continue and complete the hike because I did not want to be the weak person in the group. Everyone wanted to complete this goal as fast as we could but the ultimate goal was just to finish it. It was expected that everyone put in the most effort and dedication to the hike and we all did. We all were intent on making the best decisions and reaching the final checkpoint. Throughout the hike we would give each other encouraging comments. People would say, “You’re doing well!” and “keep it up” which helped to get some feedback when I really thought I could not walk another step. This was motivating to hear feedback and get tips from other group members. While a lot of the motivation came from within the extrinsic factors such as the group members also played a huge part as well in motivating