Group vs. Team Exercise Reflection

This past Thursday in class, we did an activity that required us to rearrange the furniture in the room, the chairs on one side, the desks on the other.  Then after we finished rearranging the furniture, we were told to put it back into its original spot, except this time a certain person was elected as the "leader" of the project. (Unfortunately I can't remember her name ... it will probably take me a few weeks to figure out everyone's name unless they are in several of my classes.)  Here is what I thought about the exercise:

Was it a group experience or a team experience?  Honestly, I think it was kind of both, we were a group with it at the beginning because we didn't know how we meshed as a group and no one really tried to take complete charge.  We had a couple people try, like the guy with the baseball cap (Can't remember his name either...) and Cabana (I remember him because I have had him in quite a few of my classes.  But overall people we kind of just going with the flow, we figured out we wanted to put the chairs in the front and the desks in the back and people kind of just gravitated to one job or the other depending on where they were standing at the time. (The people in front moved the chairs, people in back the desks.)  After that it just kind of turned into a bureaucracy, people would suggest a certain way to organize and then the others would either agree or disagree until everyone agreed. (Or didn't care either way as the case normally was.)

However when we were told to put the furniture back, I think it was a team.  We already had the dynamics down, we each knew what job we had, and we were given a distinct person to be a leader.  Although I'm not entirely sure if the leader really helped or not, I know that taking things down went a lot faster and worked out a lot better.

What was my contribution to the group?  My contribution was dealing with the chairs, I dragged a good deal of them up front and began stacking them.  I was also the one who counted out how many chairs we had and tried to figure out a way to make the stacks of them even. (Which was difficult due to the fact that 34 doesn't have very many ways that it can be divided.)  I also held the chairs to make sure they didn't fall over when they got stacked too high.  At the end of class I took the stacks down and dragged the chairs back to their original spots.

How effective was the exercise?  I think it was relatively effective showing us how a group could morph into a team if they were together long enough and if everyone knew their respective jobs.  So overall I think it was a good exercise, it was also quite fun.

What would I have changed in the exercise?  Honestly I really don't know, I thought that it was an effective exercise and a welcome break from the traditional stuff we have to do in classes (Note taking and lectures).  Overall I really enjoyed it.