Group Effectiveness in TV Shows

Lets Begin
Group effectiveness can be analyzed towards any type of group. Today Ill be analyzing the TV show
Suits regarding group processes, which involves group cohesion and norms, and conflict. Ill then be analyzing
the TV show Lost regarding group inputs, which involves group size, organizational setting, nature of group
tasks and membership characteristics.
Suits
Once upon a time, there was a man named Mike Ross, an intelligent college dropout, to happened to
find himself into a job interview with Harvey Specter, who is known as the best legal closer in New York and
works for the senior partner of the firm, Jessica Pearson. Harvey decided to hire Mike, after he realized the
skills that he possessed and his knowledge on Law. Harvey and Mike made a fantastic team, because of Mikes
intelligence and Harveys tricks. Together they worked with the best paralegal Rachel Zane, and Donna who is
Harveys assistant. Due to the fact that Harvey hired Mike against the Law (Mike did not go to law school), they
struggled to keep the secret from Jessica, the senior partner of the firm, and Louis the junior partner who tried to
make Mikes life miserable.
Within the survivors throughout the series group cohesion and norms, the group has a lot of positive and
negative norms that are seen through ought the show. A negative norm that is formed within this group is the
fact that every member tries to cover up their mistake by hiding it (sometimes illegally) and eventually resulting
in conflict for the whole firm. Donna realized that she had made a mistake and filed the wrong form. She
decided to fix it by hiding the evidence in another file. When the police came and found the sheet, she was faced
with charges and had let her team down. This has been a reoccurrence through ought the show, starting with
Mikes Fraud. They think that it is okay to cover something up, if it is never found. It is also a norm to walk into
anyones office without any notice. I believe that this is a good thing, because it allows the team to have open
and easy communication with one another and shows that they are comfortable with each other. I think that the
group is highly cohesive. Firstly, they all share the same values and are striving for a common goal. They have
similar skills and characteristics as well. For example, Donna knows everything about everyone and is very
good at predicting it, just like Harvey. Mike is very intelligent and when he and Harvey work together, they are
the most efficient. They have great interactions with one another both inside the workplace, and outside. Jessica
takes Harvey out to drinks sometimes to discuss his relationships and what he is doing with his life, as well as
talking to him about the importance of staying on track in the office. After Rachel got to know Mike better, she
was willing to help him often once she realized his abilities and skills. Louis looks up to Harvey, and wants to
be accepted by him and thinks of him as his best friend. A positive norm that is developed in the show is the
groups ability to have easy communication. They are not afraid to say what they think once they get to know
each other better. There was external competition between Harvey and Louis at the beginning where Louis
believed that he deserved to be name partner, but instead Jessica picked Harvey Specter. At the beginning Louis

was not able to speak up to Jessica to tell her that he deserved to be promoted to senior partner, and made
himself believe that he was not good enough. He finally became comfortable enough with Harvey and Jessica to
tell them exactly what he thought. Overall, the group has Moderate productivity, because they have high
cohesion but unfortunately some of the negative norms, such as constant lying and covering up, causing them to
fall behind and cause more conflict over all. However, the team wins mostly all of their cases due the
participation of team members.
There is mostly substantive conflict within the firm, since the members each have different perceptions
and ideas as to how to get things done around the office. For example, Jessica always thinks that what she says
is right and Harvey should listen, and Harvey thinks otherwise. Harvey is too stubborn to come to a
compromise, and so is Jessica, causing substantive conflict between them. Emotional conflict also exists,
because team sometimes lets personal factors get in the way of their productivity at work. Rachel and Mike
were in a relationship, and working together and Rachel cheated on Mike. The entire team knew about it, and
this caused Mike not to want to work with Rachel as often as he was required to. The substantive conflict in the
office was actually good for the team, because it started making them closer as a team, and changed a few
things like Harveys relationship with Louis. However, the bad conflict between Mike and Rachel resulted in
poor communication and an uncomfortable work environment.
Lost
Once upon a time, there was a series of 48 plane crash survivors from Oceanic Flight 815 that got
stranded onto a mysterious tropical island somewhere in the South Pacific. Hoping to be found and rescued, the
survivors decided to work as a team in order to cope with the set of challenges that comes along their way.
The group size of the survivors, being 48 plane crash passengers at the beginning and decrease as the
show progresses and people in the group die, reveals that people in the group have fewer opportunities to
participate. The majority of the time in the series, ideas are given by a few people like Jack, Kate, Sawyer and
Sayid. Other characters in the group of survivors, or known as supporting characters, never tend to share ideas
or have a say in what to do; they often just follow. This results in certain members such as previously
mentioned, to dominating the group. Also, since there are a large number of people within the survivor group
and the island is so large where there are many things that need to be accomplished in order to survive and leave
the island, the group has the tendency to split into sub-groups. For example, adventurous people like Jack, Kate
and Sawyer would have the tendency to be a sub-group to go into the jungle and explore for necessities and
finding out about the island, people like Jin and Locke who know how to capture food for the survivors to eat,
and people like Bernard and Rose who keep the camp area livable for the survivors, making sure there is
enough food, etc.
The organizational setting in this television series is hugely impacted since they are trying to survive on
an island where many mysteries are upheld, taking the survivors to work together to get to their destination of
leaving the island. The bonds and relationships they have made after crashing on the island has provided them

the opportunity to find the limited resources and technology on the island such as finding the hatch and the
different DHARMA Initiative stations around the island, which are quite helpful and some even needed in order
to accomplish their goal of getting off the island. Since their setting is on an island, there are no walls, no
houses, and no breaks within. All there is surrounding the island is water and the island itself covered with
forests. In terms of spatial arrangements, size and structure, an island is a huge span of land with all open space
where members of the group have the ability to easily interact, especially around the camp. Times where
unfortunately communication is not easy and accessible is when groups break apart or members go towards
foreign areas of the island where other members of the group cannot get into contact with them. Many examples
of this is given in the series, where a sub-group of people go into uncertain areas of the island and survivors lose
contact with them and might not know if theyre safe or if they got into serious danger.
The nature of group tasks on the island, considering the mysteries and expectancies that it holds, are
very crucial and have a great impact on their goal. The island that the survivors are stranded on is not just like
any island, and as a result the tasks that are required for them to survive and hopefully leave one day are very
complex and challenging. These tasks require high productivity from the group, which they do provide at the
island, in order to master the tasks and achieve high performance. Due to the groups complex tasks, the
survivors are seen as effective, always distributing their efforts and co-operating with each other to get the tasks
done. Since task brought upon the survivors always provide them one step closer to leaving the island, when a
task is done successfully, members in the group are dramatically satisficed due to the hard amount of efforts
they put to get to their positive result to getting one step closer. An example of this is when Sawyer, Jin,
Michael and his son Walt finally accomplished building the raft to get off the island. Many obstacles got in their
way like someone setting the raft on fire, but after not giving up, the group of men was highly satisfied as they
felt chance of hope to getting home. Other members were even happy because if they find a way of getting back
home, it means a way of people coming back to rescue them and go back home.
Lastly are the membership characteristics within the people in the group. Since there are a large number
of survivors from the plane crash, it is very difficult to have full on compatibilities within all members of the
team, however at the beginning; everyone from the plane crash wanted the same thing; to be rescued. Later on
in the series however, certain members started forming different needs and goals. The series started to reveal
that not all members of the team like Locke and Sawyer want to leave the island anymore as they feel it is their
destiny to be on the island, leading to withdrawn members. Overall however, with chances of getting off the
island decreased as days went by, survivors had one important need in common, and it was to survive. This
allowed the team to be effective on finding what was necessary in order to create for themselves a lifestyle on
the island. Membership homogeneity is revealed throughout seeing and connecting the survivors pasts together,
as they all were somehow involved part of each others lives. For example, Claire and Jack turned to being half
brother and sister, with Aaron being Jacks nephew. Harmonious relationships are provided through the course
of the survivors living on the island together.

Conclusion
I truly believe that the team in Suits is an effective team. Although, there are some things they need to
work on, and improve in order to increase their productivity. All the members love being a part of the team, and
working at Pearson Spector because they have gotten so close with the people they work with and see them as a
second family. When analyzing the components of the equation of team, although the team has a few losses,
they have great group processes by managing their conflict and providing well-rounded group cohesion and
norms. I also truly believe that the group of survivors in Lost is an effective team. After evaluating the group
inputs gains and loses of the survivors, addressing the four group inputs allowed me to conclude that the team
has resulted in high output through certain survivors finding a way back home, having satisfied members which
is shown as all of them reencounter in the realm to think back to all the good times they spent all together, and
the relationships and bonds they formed allowed them want to spent all their time they had together, performing
daily tasks not only as a team, but like a group of good friends.