BAS Group Dynamics and Facilitation 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: During a staff meeting, one team member consistently dominates the conversation while others remain silent. Which facilitation strategy best addresses this imbalance?
- Ask the dominant member to leave the meeting
- Use structured turn-taking or round-robin sharing to ensure equal participation (Correct answer)
- End the meeting early and send a follow-up email
- Ignore the behavior to avoid conflict
Correct answer: Use structured turn-taking or round-robin sharing to ensure equal participation
Structured turn-taking techniques like round-robin ensure all voices are heard and redistribute conversational dominance equitably.
Question 2: A supervisor is facilitating a group supervision session and notices two staff members have formed a coalition that excludes newer team members. This is an example of which group phenomenon?
- Groupthink
- Subgroup formation or clique behavior (Correct answer)
- Social loafing
- Storming stage conflict
Correct answer: Subgroup formation or clique behavior
Subgroup formation occurs when smaller factions within a group develop their own norms and exclude others, undermining group cohesion.
Question 3: According to Tuckman's model of group development, which stage is characterized by conflict over roles and resistance to the group's task?
- Forming
- Norming
- Storming (Correct answer)
- Performing
Correct answer: Storming
The storming stage involves interpersonal conflict, competition, and resistance as members vie for position and challenge group structure.
Question 4: A BAS supervisor wants to increase psychological safety in group supervision so staff feel comfortable reporting errors. Which approach is most effective?
- Publicly praising staff who never make errors
- Modeling vulnerability by sharing a personal professional mistake without penalty (Correct answer)
- Requiring written error reports submitted to administration
- Reducing the frequency of supervision meetings
Correct answer: Modeling vulnerability by sharing a personal professional mistake without penalty
Leaders who model vulnerability and normalize error disclosure without punishment build the psychological safety needed for open reporting.
Question 5: Which of the following best describes the concept of 'social loafing' in a group context relevant to a supervision team?
- Staff members who arrive late to team meetings
- Individual team members reducing their effort because they assume others will compensate (Correct answer)
- A supervisor who delegates all tasks to staff
- Group members who disagree with the majority decision
Correct answer: Individual team members reducing their effort because they assume others will compensate
Social loafing is the tendency for individuals to exert less effort when working collectively than when working individually, reducing group productivity.
Question 6: A supervisor notices that after group decisions are made, the team consistently takes more extreme positions than any individual member would have chosen alone. This is best described as:
- Group polarization (Correct answer)
- Deindividuation
- Conformity pressure
- Nominal group technique failure
Correct answer: Group polarization
Group polarization refers to the tendency for groups to make more extreme decisions than individual members would, amplifying the dominant pre-discussion view.
Question 7: When facilitating a group problem-solving session, a BAS supervisor should use which technique to generate the maximum number of ideas before evaluating them?
- Devil's advocacy
- Brainstorming with deferred judgment (Correct answer)
- Nominal group technique with immediate voting
- Delphi method with anonymous critique
Correct answer: Brainstorming with deferred judgment
Brainstorming with deferred judgment suspends criticism during idea generation, encouraging creative contributions and maximizing the idea pool.
BAS Group Dynamics and Facilitation 2
During a staff meeting, one team member consistently dominates the conversation while others remain silent.
Which facilitation strategy best addresses this imbalance?