12 Angry Men

12 Angry Men Exam

Wenli Tan (101017992)

1. Group Dynamics and Teams: Is the team of jurors a “hot team” as defined in the text? Justify your answer (either yes or no) by using at least three examples from the movie.

According to the definition, “On hot teams work is engaging-and when the day ends, people look forward to tomorrow. On hot teams everyone gets more done without some supervisor breathing down the team’s collective neck. What’s more, hot teams trust their leaders and therefore they adapt quickly to new directions, improvising solutions on the spot and expending the extra effort necessary to follow through under changing conditions” (Osland, Kolb, Rubin & Turner, 2007, p.247). In this case, the team of jurors is definitely not a hot team. There are many details supporting this conclusion.

First, even before the first vote, Juror 3 and Juror 7 suggested the meeting to get started fast because they thought all the jurors had other things to do, which were more important than staying here. In addition, after the second vote, both Juror 10 and Juror 3 became incredibly excitable that they stood up, screamed and even spoke ill of the person who changed his vote. These behaviors proved that the jury was not engaging and the team was not hot.

Second, during the process of discussion, Juror was always showing his impatience. When the foreman was introducing the rule of voting, he looked at his watch again and again; when other jurors were trying to convince Juror 8, he stood up to turn on the fan rather than listening carefully; when Juror 9 was speaking of the reason why he changed his vote, he even left the room. All these examples indicated that Juror 7 hoped all the things could end as soon as possible, not to say looking forward to tomorrow. Thus, the jury was not a hot team.

Third, even though Juror 8, the leader, had proved many testimonies to be not reliable, not every member of the team always trust him. Actually the process of debate was the process of convincing other jurors and winning their trust of him. However, Juror 3 did not show trust to Juror 8 until the end of the discussion when all other jurors were on the side of the leader, which meant that the leader of the jury was not trusted by all the members all the time and thus proving the team of jurors not a hot team.

      Is the team of jurors an “effective” team as defined in the text? Justify your answer (either yes or no) by using at least three examples from the movie.

Though the team of jurors is not a hot team, it is an effective one, which has “output, social processes and learning” (Osland, Kolb, Rubin & Turner, 2007, p.253) as team effectiveness.

First, during the process of discussion, the team successfully found the logic flaws of all the evidence provided by the witnesses. Every time a testimony was proved not trustable, the team became closer to their goal-proving the defendant not guilty. As a result, the team finally managed to do it by convincing every juror of the team and gave the result to the procurator to help him do the final decision. The output of the team “meets or exceeds the standards of quantity, quality, and timeliness of the team’s clients-the people who receive, review, and/or use the output” (Osland, Kolb, Rubin & Turner, 2007, p.253).