Solving Problems/Improving Leadership – Week 4

Throughout the past week, my policy group has been working on a team policy statement where we define the public policy issue, the scope and historical, social and economic contours of the problem. Our group is specifically focused on Virginia’s budget allocations of mental health services and suggests that Virginia redistribute funds from rehabilitative mental health services to more preventative care, as well as redistribute funding from state facilities to more community based services. Our group consists of 3 individuals, 2 of which have a background in the field of public health. Despite the group’s background and familiarity with the field, we have experienced significant struggles early on which can be attributable to poor group dynamics, communication, and cooperation.

This week, one of our group members expressed that she had felt underutilized in completing our team problem statement. Since the group consists of only students, we all occupy various roles and there is an informal leadership structure rather than a formal structure. One of our group members tends to occupy the more dominant role and is generally the one to guide the group by articulating her thoughts more than my other group member and I. She expressed discontent with our other group member’s contribution to our statement, and as a result, the other group member completely revised her work only to receive even more push back on the second attempt. This group member felt challenged to the point where she returned home for the day, leaving my group member and I to finish the team problem statement on our own. There appears to be a clear disconnect between the group in terms of the quality of work we expect as well as the direction in which we want to go. Moving forward, there needs to be much clearer communication among the entire group about our expectations, as well as our individual strengths and weaknesses which can allow every member to contribute in an effective manner. Unfortunately, this situation most likely diminished some of the psychological safety within group members to be vulnerable and share ideas fluidly. In order to restore and improve upon this, we will need to make a conscious effort to value everyone’s ideas and to only challenge one another in a constructive and respectful manner.