A key component and objective of the assigned team presentation and related activities was to ensure effective communication. Kaywortha and Leidnerb (2000) state that effective communication is critical to successful group functioning. To structure this reflective essay in a straightforward way, I will reflect on the rules of the group, the problems experienced and why they occurred, the strengths and weaknesses of the group's communication skills, what I would do differently in retrospect, and my contributions to the group . Group rules or norms are simply social standards of behavior adopted by individuals in order to maintain interactions between group members and establish guidelines for what is considered acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Team norms discussed openly and honestly will be the most effective. This open communication is effective in creating a positive communication climate (CC). Contextually, CC is the essence of personal relationships that exist between group members. According to Buckley (2018) recognition, recognition and approval can lead to a confirming or disconfirming CC. My group did everything right, establishing group norms that reflected confirming CC. According to Lumsden and Lumsden (2004), a group of people has the ability to become a team when there is a common goal, distributed leadership, diverse member contributions, and individuals support each other. We achieved this by clearly understanding that mutual respect, common goals, leadership and shared contributions were crucial and necessary. Reaching consensus on crucial decisions, constructive feedback, and cultivating mutual respect were all implicit norms that I as an individual and the group established as group rules to establish a functioning and confirmatory CC. Generally, these rules were discussed in our first meeting and agreed upon by all members. However, some were implemented through precedent, such as a team member asking for another opinion and presenting questions such as “do we all agree on this video?”. Despite well thought out and established group rules, problems were still encountered that served as barriers to effective communication. Using Tuckman's stages of development, I intend to think about these issues. The training phase, the phase in which the group orients itself and identifies interpersonal and task-related behaviors (Buckley, 2018) was where we encountered our first problem. A key component of this phase is the decision-making process of having clear group goals and setting goals. We struggled to make a decision on when to meet as a group, these meetings were necessary for the group to function and be successful. This struggle was mostly due to our individual schedules. The second problem was encountered during the storming phase, that is, there was resistance from some group members to take on the most difficult parts of the workload related to the group task. During the normalization and execution phases of the project we encountered issues of group members not feeling safe expressing or sharing their opinions. This had an impact on the productivity of the project and I felt that I was making many decisions alone and, at times, without the support of the group. However, this became necessary due to the expiration of the assignment. The last issue involved a language barrier with agroup member. This impacted every stage of the group's development and, at times, made even verbal communication difficult. The group's ability to become a team was met, regardless of the issues mentioned above. To become a team, we first set goals that we all agreed on, one of which was to produce a high-level team presentation, and secondly, to complete the work in a timely manner. Setting these goals inspired group unity. Members' opinions have always been important, respected and valued, which leads to diversity and creativity. This freedom of opinion leads to a fair and pleasant distribution of the workload. Additionally, it was extremely helpful for members to work on components of the assignment that aligned with their strengths. We all agreed that working on things that interested us was much easier and produced a higher standard of work. Group meetings and forming a Facebook group created the platform for our group to grow into a team. This communication tool helped interconnect individual efforts and also allowed feedback channels to operate at any stage of the process and at any stage of our weekly personal schedules. The second strength of this form of communication supported by technology was the ability to overcome the aforementioned language barrier. This inspired interconnected efforts and support for all members, in turn created a sense of shared responsibility. Furthermore, our group met the four components of Satisfying Interpersonal Relationships (IR) and subsequently this only strengthened our CC. Buckley (2018) describes four characteristics for satisfying IR; commitment, investment, self-disclosure and trust. Commitment was demonstrated by responding to posts in the Facebook group and also by attending weekly face-to-face meetings. Investment and trust were demonstrated by each team member completing their weekly workload on time. Self-disclosure was demonstrated by individuals who were honest and open about their strengths and weaknesses regarding academic pursuits, public speaking, and ability to work in teams. Thanks to this self-disclosure, our team found itself in the open domain of the Johari Window model. This position has only strengthened the functioning of our group despite the challenges we have encountered. However, some weaknesses were found. As mentioned above, getting people to share their opinions sometimes proved difficult, and although we managed to minimize negative effects on the group's capabilities, it had a moderately strong negative influence on CC. Since the presentation day was after the mid-semester break, it proved difficult to get everyone in the group together to rehearse. Group members often had assignments due for other courses or exams to prepare for. However, people have often been unclear in explaining this. In terms of relational dialectics, this unclear closure and opening has unfortunately led to interpersonal conflict. This interpersonal conflict meant that we only performed one full rehearsal of the group presentation, and this occurred on the day of the presentation. This will subsequently lead to new trust issues. As mentioned, trust is a crucial element in satisfying IRs. These trust issues in my opinion affected the final outcome of the group presentation and further led to a breakdown of the CC as well as the level.