Instrumental Group Dynamics

Last week we had a visitor come in to talk about group dynamics. He took a very interesting approach to teaching this topic by bringing in instruments for are class to make up a song with. He started out by telling us to take a moment of silence before we start to play. After a couple seconds he quietly started to tap his two sticks together but did not tell us it was time to play. I thought that this was a great way to go about starting the music because it let us know that some one should take charge and start to play but made sure that he wasn’t the one to do it. Even though I noticed this I still did not immediately start to play because I was still not sure how to go about it. Then after an extended period of time when no one was playing anything I took charge and played one note on the xylophone. It was very interesting because by just playing this one note it gave people the confidence to play a note themselves. Then eventually everyone got involved and we started to play together. This made me think about how in groups that sometimes the hardest part of accomplishing a goal is starting it. Once someone takes the initiative of starting the goal then everyone else will join in and you will be able to accomplish it. That is the most important thing that I took out of this group dynamics exercise.