Download Group Relations Theory and the Tavistock Experience

Group Relations Theory
and the Tavistock
Experience
North Orlando District
Church School Convention
June 11 – 13, 2017
Possible Learning Possibilities
 Learn about group dynamics from participation in the group.
 Learn how our personal autonomy and ability to act is
impacted by the group.
 Observe the impact of individual characteristics such as race,
ethnicity, nationality, gender, and age on authority and power.
 Recognize personal and collective reactions to well defined
and ambiguous authority.
 Become more aware of how I authorize and de-authorize
others and how they authorize and de-authorize me.
 Understand the difference between the stated task of a group
and the task it actually appears to be pursuing.
Questions We Hope to Address
 What groups do to stay functional, healthy & successful
 How to identify barriers and how to overcome them
 How to facilitate and utilize the creativity of each member of the
group
 The role of leadership in the group in accomplishing all of the
above
Two States of Existence
 Within every group, two distinct States exist and operate at
the same time, they are:
 Working Group: the manifest level of group performance
 Basic Assumption Group: unconscious defenses against
anxiety or unpleasantness
The Working Group
 Is marked by freedom
 Members respect and accept one another
 Responsibility is collective, with members aware of their
roles and responsibilities
 Members use dialogue and reflection to transfer knowledge
and enhance learning
 Work is structured and organized
Basic Assumption Group
 Time boundaries vanish ‘as if” time was unlimited
 Critical dialogue & reflection is avoided / discouraged
 Result is a “breakdown” of group effectiveness
 4 Kinds of BA Groups:
a) Dependency
b) Fight/Flight
c) Pairing
d) Oneness
BA Groups: Dependence
 Feelings, thoughts and actions directed toward making
someone the sole leader of the group
 Members look to leader for all solutions, structure, etc.
 Insistence on simplistic solutions
 Members sabotage leader by providing partial or inadequate
information
 Members demonstrate disappointment and hostility toward
leader
 Leader may be expelled from group or demoted
 Group seeks out new leader
BA Groups: Fight / Flight
 Group behaves ‘as if’ its purpose is to fight or flee a real or
imaginary enemy
 Member refuse to critically evaluate themselves
 Members are singled out and “scapegoated”
 Weaknesses (as perceived by the group) are not tolerated
BA Groups: Pairing
 Members rely on a pair within the group for all creative effort
 Great interest in creative process
 Hopeful expressions of anticipation / use of clichés
 Solutions or leaders generated by the pair are sabotaged or
destroyed by the group
BA Groups: Oneness
 “Members seek to join in a powerful union with an omnipotent
force, unobtainably high, to surrender self for passive
participation, and thereby feel existence, well-being, and
wholeness.” (Turquet)
BA Groups: Leadership
 Leadership is personified
 Leadership is “mythical” in nature
 BA Groups are self-contained
 BA Groups appear spontaneously
BA Groups: The Individual
 Little skill assessment; tasks and social roles of individuals
defined by the group (this leads to a “de-skilling” of
members)
 Individuals exist solely for the group
 Leaving can be dreadful
 Consolation comes from the undoubting nature of “rightness”
of the group
BA Groups: Observable Behaviors
 Long silence in which something is expected from a leader or
other group member
 Hypothesis offered by one member and contradicted or shot
down by another
 Search for something believed to be hidden and waiting to be
discovered
 Members seeking approval of leader or alliances with other
members
 Strong feelings of love, hate, comradeship
 Projection of strong feelings, beliefs or behaviors on other
group members
 Scapegoating
 Member expelled or voluntary leaving of group
Working Group
Only a WG can constructively use the
elements of BA Group behavior. How?
 by recognizing that the BA state is always present in a group &
functions as a defense against anxiety, individual group members
identify and make explicit the group’s BA to guard against BA
group behaviour
 group performance depends on each member’s awareness of
his/her BA preference and a willingness to direct energy toward
maintaining a SWG stance
Working Group
A WG is “Sophisticated” by:
a) the way it uses leadership
b) the way it protects the skills of the group
c) its use of predictions
d) the way it makes use of (that is, mobilizes) the relevant
 BA Group(s) for the implementation of their Primary Task
Confidentiality
 In order to support members’ freedom to experiment in
whatever ways they believe will best facilitate their learning,
consultants will not report the behavior of any individual
member to anyone outside the conference without the
member’s authorization. Members are mandated to maintain
the same degree of confidentiality.
The Primary Task
 The primary task of the conference is to learn by studying the
exercise of authority and leadership in the temporary system
we create together.
 Whether we work with individuals or in groups, we are all part
of a larger system. In this conference, we will have a unique
opportunity to pay attention not only to individual and
interpersonal relations, but also to group-as-a-whole and
system dynamics and how they impact our work.
 Often we see a group as the product of individual perceptions
and actions. During these few hours, we will have the
opportunity to experience and understand the inverse – how
individual perceptions and actions are manifestations of the
group.
Concepts and Methods
 A method of studying group dynamics and social systems.
 Theory developed by applying psychoanalytic methods to
understand how groups can or cannot stay on task during s
 All groups provoke some level of anxiety in individuals since we
both have a hunger to belong to them as well as a fear of being
consumed by them. tressful situations.
 While this may be in part representative of early family
experience this dynamic continues throughout our lives in other
groups.
 The omnipresent anxiety of group membership significantly
impacts the balance between a group’s ability to function
productively on an agreed upon task or defensively – often at
cross purposes to the stated task.
Concepts and Methods
 Groups, like dreams, have both a manifest, overt aspect and
a latent, covert aspect.
 The manifest aspect is the work group where members
consciously pursue agreed-on objectives and work toward
the completion of a task. Although all group members have
hidden parts or particular areas of vulnerability, they rely on
internal and external controls to prevent these hidden (or
more regressive) elements from emerging and interfering
with the announced group task. They manage their irrational
thinking and combine their skills to solve problems and make
decisions.
Concepts and Methods
 Groups do not always function rationally or productively,
however, nor are individual members necessarily aware of
the internal and external controls they rely upon to maintain
the boundary between their announced intentions and their
hidden parts and vulnerabilities.
 The combined hidden parts of group members constitute the
latent aspect of group life, what Bion called the basic
assumption group. In contrast to the more rational work
group, this group consists of its members’ unconscious
wishes, fears, defenses, fantasies, impulses, and
projections.
Concepts and Methods
 Groups do not always function rationally or productively,
however, nor are individual members necessarily aware of
the internal and external controls they rely upon to maintain
the boundary between their announced intentions and their
hidden parts and vulnerabilities.
 The combined hidden parts of group members constitute the
latent aspect of group life, what Bion called the basic
assumption group. In contrast to the more rational work
group, this group consists of its members’ unconscious
wishes, fears, defenses, fantasies, impulses, and
projections.
Concepts and Methods
 The work group is focused away from itself, toward the task;
 The basic assumption group is focused inward, toward fantasy
and a more primitive reality. Tension always exists between the
two; it is balanced by various behavioral and psychological
structures, including individual defense systems, ground rules,
expectations, and group norms. While In congregational life
there may be awareness of vulnerability and powerful
unconscious forces, there may be less attention given to the
multiple systems and various groups that interact, intersect and
impact the task of helping.
 For example, clergy and laity are influenced by present and
absent family members, community partners, and by other
persons who may come and go over time, by complex authority
relationships within the congregation and by institutional
structures, as well as powerful economic forces.
The Role of the Consultants
 Their role is to discern the group forces at play and then to
reflect them back to the members only when such reflection
would be helpful to the learning.
 Staff do not function as facilitators to make things go smoothly
or manage social conventions nor do they, during most
conference events, provide consultation to individuals. This is
done intentionally in order to highlight the full life of the group
and all its visible and hidden parts and to avoid reinforcing the
usual understanding that a group is only a collection of
autonomous individuals. This may at first be off-putting since we
are accustomed to being individualized; however, once we see
this as intentionally shifting an automatic pattern of perception, it
can be revelatory.
 Consultants operate in a “here-and-now” perspective, that is,
maintaining a primary focus on what is happening in the present
rather than the past and future.
Conference Structure
 While we use the use of the term “conference” to describe this
event – the term has its origins in early group relations work –
for most of us the word conjures up ideas of a more traditional
type of learning environment and style than the one we
describe.
 The conference will be a temporary organization created by staff
and participants (referred to as “members”). During our time
together we will have the opportunity to see how we take up
various roles, how we find authority, leadership, connection,
vulnerability, creativity, confusion and clarity.
 While this is a temporary, artificial, creation, members and staff
will find it to be a startlingly real representation of our
congregations and a unique opportunity to experiment and learn
proportionate to our willingness to engage in the process.
Conference Structure
 The conference is designed as an integrated experience. As
a result it requires participants to attend all events from start
to finish.
 10:30 – 12:30
 10:00 – 11:00
Monday
Tuesday