FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Ralph Stacey, in his article Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics (1993), describes what happens when a group is brought together to study the experience of being in a group, without any further task and without an appointed leader. Known as a Group Relations Conference and run by the Tavistock Institute in London, this process involves a consultant who forms part of the group to offer views on the group process but otherwise takes no conscious part in the activity. This:
always provokes high levels of anxiety in the participants … which … find expression in all manner of strange behaviours. Group discussions take on a manic form with asinine comments and hysterical laughter … the participants attack the visiting consultant … becoming incredibly rude.…
Members try to replace the non-functioning consultant … but they rarely seem to be successful in this endeavour. They begin to pick on an individual, usually some highly individualistic or minority member of the group, and then treat this person as some kind of scapegoat. They all become very concerned with remaining part of the group, greatly fearing exclusion. They show strong tendencies to conform to rapidly established group norms and suppress their individual differences, perhaps they are afraid of becoming the scapegoat … the one thing they hardly do at all is to examine the behaviour they are indulging in, the task they have actually been given.
The situation described in the box offers a way of exploring some of the unconscious group processes that are at work just below the surface. These are not always visible in more conventional team situations. The work of Bion (1961) and Scott Peck (1990) is useful to illuminate the phases that groups go through and highlight the challenges for leaders.