Towards a Group Analytic Praxis for Working with Teams in Organizations

Abstract

Several aspects of group analysis render it a useful discipline for consulting to organizations and working with teams in complex post-modern environments. These include attention to the individual in the group, sophisticated grasp of the nuances of interpersonal communication, attention to context, tolerance and the value of multiple perspectives, creative incorporation of difference and a flexible developmental approach to managing anxiety and leadership projections. The importance assigned to context, and the value placed on multiple perspectives as holding elements of reality, mesh with systems and complexity theories so that group analysis offers a coherent intellectual framework for understanding interplaying processes in the system, from individual, through team, departmental and organizational, to societal and global levels. While several writers have demonstrated the value of group analytic thinking in understanding organizations, to date none have attempted to contextualize their perspective with those of others working in the field. This article opens with a literature review, articulates some core contextual differences between clinical and organizational work, and identifies the characteristics of group analysis that make it a valuable discipline in organizational work. A second companion article elaborates, setting out further differences in praxis in organizational rather than therapeutic work and discussing contracting for organizational work.

The use of a discrete large group in a conference setting as consultation and community building

“…Large groups, defined as those with 30 people or more, have been used in health settings, psychiatric institutions, such as the therapeutic community approach (Jones, 1968;Kreeger,1975), group conferences and group training settings, and in organizational consultancy (Thornton, 2017 and2018;Wilke, 2003 and2014) with, as examples, the Church and business, with differing goals. Those in conference settings allow the whole community to work together and can create a sense of fellowship.…”

Towards a group analytic praxis for working with teams in organizations II

“…In a group setting, it is usually possible to widen the bandwidth of awareness, bringing more into the conscious realm. However, in order to achieve organizational changes with a good prospect of longevity, the group analyst must work effectively with the commissioning organizational leader (Thornton, 2016(Thornton, , 2017b including shared understanding of the aims of the work, periodic review of progress, and collaboration in seeing it through. This requirement is different from and additional to group analysis with patient groups.…”

A Response to ‘Towards a Group Analytic Praxis for Working with Teams in Organizations’ by Christine Thornton, December 2017

“…3. Whereas the patients in a therapeutic group are levelled, in a team there is usually a hierarchy of power which is related to several aspects, such as '… skill, wisdom, experience, popularity, longevity or eloquence' (Thornton, 2017). Furthermore, there is always a 'team leader' who is more powerful than other members because he connects the particular team with the overall organization.…”