Communicating in Groups: Building Relationships for Group Effectiveness

To communicate effectively within groups and teams, we must understand our relationships with other members and how those relationships influence the tasks and activities that the groups and teams undertake. Communicating in Groups, Third Edition, emphasizes that all groups--decision-making and social--require members to successfully convey both relational and task messages. Author Joann Keyton points to the five key elements that define a group--size, interdependence, identity, goal, and structure--and demonstrates how group processes are facilitated or hindered by them. Using examples from field research on both task and social groups, Keyton depicts group interaction as it emerges through conversation. She provides frameworks for analyzing group interaction, recommendations for effective group practice, and numerous transcripts of authentic group communication that help to underscore the concepts.
Thoroughly revised in this third edition, the book features new material on communication structures, group tasks and activities, communication competence, and decision making. Keyton includes updated literature reflecting recent communication and interdisciplinary group theory and research, and she also places more emphasis on gender and cultural diversity, stressing the need for students to consider the multiple ways in which diversity influences group interaction. Highlighting the important connection between task and relational messages in both task and social groups, Communicating in Groups, Third Edition, is ideal for undergraduate courses in group and team communication, as well as for management and business communication courses in group behavior and teamwork.

Joann Keyton is at University of Kansas.