The Nature of Group Membership and Team Processes

ADLT 675 –Groups and Team Facilitation

Fall 2013

Exploring the Nature of Groups and Teams through your Assignments • Reflective Practice: What and Why the Blogs?

Blog Triads and Quads

• What It Means to Become a Group Facilitator

• Two team facilitation assignments

• Final paper – Individual assessment of the group and team experience

• Peer Assessment – Dee Fink’s contribution of team members

How the Course is Organized• Three segments

• Learning to Observe Group and Team Dynamics (4 sessions)

• Learning to Facilitate Group Dynamics (3 sessions)

• Learning to Intervene in Group and Team Processes (5 sessions, in Learning Studios on the 5th floor)

• Readings

• Three texts: Levi, Schein, Schwarz

Early Struggles in the Life of a Group

Question: Does the individual exist for the group, or does the group exist to support the individual?

• This bi-polar position fades only when members accept themselves as an entity capable of acting on behalf of its members,

AND• When the group accepts the importance of its

individual members

Early Struggles in the Life of a Group

Identifying your Group Memberships

What groups are do you belong to, and how do these shape your identity?

Consider family groups, work groups, social or religious groups, etc.

Our Collective Group Memberships Identify Who We Are as Individuals

To become an effective group, members must integrate individual differences among members

Impact of Group Maturity on Group Member Participation

Research on Group Process

Wilfred Bion (1961) found struggle and conflict at both the conscious and unconscious levels of group life. He describe groups as having three basic emotional states:

Dependency (leader)

Fight-flightPairing

Aspects of Collective Life in a Group

One of the outcomes of the ambivalence that individuals experience

upon joining a new group is reflected in ”holding

back” until the lay of the land is clear

The group can be thought of as a social entity

capable of acting as a whole and expressing

feelings and thoughts over and beyond those of its

members

Psychological Aspects – What’s going on in the group

Smith & Berg,Paradoxes of Group Life, 1987

A Group Effectiveness Model