Introduction

This paper will concentrate on a critical analysis of my personal competencies and how they relate to different concepts with regards to communication and performance in the group. In the analysis I will specifically refer to Cognitive Complexity, Communicative Attitudes, Personality Characteristics, Gender, and Self Monitoring.

Cognitive Complexity Concept
The Cognitive Complexity concept focuses on how members act in discussion of complex problems and their ability to interpret multiple signals simultaneously (Harris & Sherblom, 2005). According to this concept I would rate myself as relatively high on cognitive complexity as I am always looking for connections between different elements and enjoy working in complex environments with a lot of diversity. The real life experience that proved to me that this characteristic is my strength came from a corporate external event organized by Microsoft in Prague in February 2005. At the beginning, I was only responsible for logistics and the agenda for Bill Gates. Later through the preparation process, however, I received the responsibility for communication with all attending embassies from the whole Europe, cooperation with the Czech Prime Minister's office, and for the complete travel agenda of all VIP guests and speakers. Further to that, I became the main contact person for the corporate event team from the U.S. and the event agency also from the U.S. Once the event was launched, I was the central information point for all: the organizers, the event agency, the Microsoft speakers, the European Prime Ministers and their embassy representatives, the Czech President's office, and the rest of my colleagues, who attended the event. Despite the great challenge that this event brought and the work under time pressure that it required, I felt very motivated and enjoyed being in the centre of all of it, being able to connect people with needs for information with those with the knowledge or helping them directly. The corporate event team which has done the same event in other parts of the world as well as Bill Gates evaluated this event as the best in its 3-years' history.

My obsession with complexity, however, brings certain drawbacks which can affect my contribution to the group if not managed properly. In order to use my strength effectively, I need to adopt more assertive communication and pay more attention to my work and personal priorities when contemplating an involvement in new activities or projects. The reason being that in my pursuit of connections and more information I could become overloaded, which, of course, would be very frustrating for me as I would feel guilty because I would not be able to deliver on my commitments and let my colleagues down.

Strong Sense of Responsibility for the Group's Success
Based on the definition provided by Harris & Sherblom (2005), who state that sense of responsibility for the group success is probably the most important attitude of ideal small group members, I consider myself to be a strong contributor and co-operator when in a group environment. If I commit myself to do something, the group can count on me and I will do the outmost to accomplish my tasks well and on time. I usually take on the role of a coordinator who plans the meetings, consolidates the outputs and all necessary materials, and so on, ensuring that the plan the group has set is met. Because of my strong intuition (Myers), I do not like long unproductive discussions about topics that are not relevant to the overall goal of the group. I am a big picture person, consistent with an intuitive processing style. In such cases, I take on the role of an initiator, which is a task-oriented role that focuses on how to start a project (Harris & Sherblom, 2005), and try to bring the attention of the group back to the right objective.

Personality Characteristics and Gender
Being brought up among boys, I consider myself as having a more masculine gender than feminine. Generally, I feel more comfortable in a man-dominated work environment as I find it easier to speak and associate with men than women. For example, if my female colleague comes to work with a new hairstyle, I am usually the last one in the office to notice unless the change is really radical. This may be due to the fact that I am strong on intuition (Myers-Briggs) and, therefore, find it difficult to pay attention to the details, such as new hairstyle. Although Microsoft with its male-dominance is a perfect work environment from the gender perspective, I was put in charge of the community of all assistants in Microsoft in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Obviously, with my masculine way of acting and communicating, I did not realize that I was being very dominant during the first meeting with my team. I did not do any investigation prior to the meeting to decide how I was going to approach the group and made a quick decision in my mind that the standard way was just fine. Of course, it did not take long for me to realize that by exercising the masculine dominance, which has been always useful in male-dominated groups, would not take our admin group very far. I was determined to make the project of developing the admin community a success, but to do so I had to change certain aspects of my behaviour. First of all, I started to pay a closer attention to what women like to hear, the tone they use among themselves to praise their clothes, hairstyles, weight loss, and so on. Secondly, I looked for something that all the assistants had in common. Two years later, we have a working administrative community which is highly co-operative, develops itself in variety of soft skills and technical trainings and considers establishing an extended external community with the assistants from the partnering or customer organisations.

Self-Monitoring and Communication Apprehension
From the point of self-monitoring, I tend to pay a lot of attention to the way people in the group react verbally as well as non-verbally when I speak. In combination with my introverted preference (Myers-Briggs), speaking to more than one person makes me very cautious of what I say and how people respond to my words. In case I record messages from the audience that I interpret as negative, I tend to become nervous and self-conscious and begin saying the same thing in a different way or fall into endless process of explaining what I have said. Logically, by doing so, I drift off the subject and my arguments or speech loses clarity and strength. According to Harris & Sherblom (2005) this attitude is called a communication apprehension.
To overcome this problem, I have learnt to prepare my presentations or speeches carefully in advance and highlight the points that are important to the decision-makers or key opinion makers in the group. Planning my speech or a presentation allows me to be more relaxed and pay more attention to the intonation and body language, and thus become more effective and confident in expressing my thoughts.

Conclusion
Speaking about my performance in groups, I feel I am a strong team player, who is fully committed to the group and its objective. Despite my introverted preference, I usually tend to adopt the group maintenance roles (Harris & Sherblom, 2005), which are important for good social relations in the group and building the feeling of trust and reliability among the members. With my strong focus on execution and ability to address complex issues, I am able to discover and connect information, knowledge, and people in order to achieve the goal. If, however, I wish to be successful and make a valuable contribution to the team, I need to pay attention to the areas, which may negatively influence my group performance. On the other hand, I believe, that the first step to the success is to know one's strengths as well as weaknesses and plan the actions in a way that the strengths are enhanced and the weaknesses avoided.

References:
Myers Test, Human Metrics
Harris, T.E., & Sherblom, J.C. (2005), Small group and team communication (3rd ed.)