What is going on in my team?
I’m a sociatrist. That means I devote myself to assisting groups and teams to improve how they operate together. As a sociatrist, my focus is on the healthy functioning of social systems. One of my “big things”, therefore, is group dynamics. In the workplace, there is some growing awareness of group dynamics as a key influencer of organisational effectiveness. Good thing too.
If the modern workplace is increasingly “social” and more about networks, collaboration and cooperation, then investing ourselves in developing group-life capabilities is essential. Things happen to us humans when we get together in groups and try to achieve something together. Think about it. We are, individually, complex living systems. Put a complex living system together with another complex living system and we have a more complex system. Put several complex living systems together to try to achieve something and it’s even more complex. It can be pretty messy sometimes, but being human is not a tidy business.
Many people are now familiar with Bruce Tuckman’s group development model: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing and Adjourning; and it is good that people who manage teams of people are opening their eyes to the processes that go on when humans gather together, for whatever purpose. There are, of course, many models of group development, Tuckman’s being perhaps the most well-known. Becoming more aware of group dynamics is useful in the modern, more social, workplace, because there is something mystifying that seems to get in the way of team and group effectiveness. Looking “underneath” at the dynamics and unexpressed assumptions out of which we operate can assist us to make meaning of the “mess” and develop approaches to working better together.
Perhaps less well-known in this sphere is the work of Wilfred Bion. Bion trained in medicine and went on to develop an interest in psychoanalysis, eventually immersing himself in the study of groups and group process. He was commissioned into the British Army during World War II, working in military hospitals. Here he devoted himself to finding ways to treat post-traumatic stress and devised ways of working with these patients in a group context. Out of his work in group dynamics, he went on to write “Experiences in Groups” (1961) which became a seminal work in the field of group psychotherapy, providing a basis for the application of group theory in many other fields.
I think it’s important to remember that the various models of group life and group development are more descriptive than prescriptive. What I mean by this is that these models are not stages we “take groups through” but they are phenomena that many groups experience naturally. The various models are simply different lenses through which to observe these group phenomena and once observed, we can begin to make sense of the undercurrents that affect our teams and groups. From here, we can develop some capabilities within ourselves to respond more ably to what goes on in our teams.
All of those models have some validity in my eyes, but for me, the work of Bion seems to have been the one that has most unlocked some of the mystery of what goes on in groups. Anyone who works with teams or groups, whether that be overseeing a project team, coordinating a group of volunteers, running regular meetings or being a Team Leader of some form, will have found that the work of that group sometimes seem to be sabotaged by things seemingly unrelated to its work. This is sometimes put down to “personality clashes”, politicking or competing professional interests. While this sometimes may be the case, there is another lens through which we can see underperformance or ineffectiveness in teams.
To remain in the dark about these undercurrents is not good enough these days. We could put it down to politicking or personality clashes, but there is now enough information about group dynamics available to us that I believe we are required to learn something about this. The way we “do” work is increasingly calling on us to work and learn together.
Transition, change and uncertainty naturally provoke feelings of anxiety. We deal with feelings in the workplace, whether we like it or not. As Louise Altman writes frequently on her excellent blog The Intentional Workplace, emotions are there; it is nonsense to pretend otherwise. Even if we try to hide our heads in the sand and focus purely on work outputs, what goes on underneath will impact on a team or organisation’s ability to be effective. I recommend having a look at Louise’s article, 5 Reasons Business Can’t Afford to Ignore Psychology for Another 100 Years. In it, she suggests that business can no longer afford to dismiss the impact of emotions on our abilities to work well and to be well. To continue treating people as resources and automatons a la Henry Ford (“Why, when I only want to hire a pair of hands, do I get a whole person?”) is very simply, unsustainable.
So if you are willing to peer underneath the functioning of your group or team, you will be treated to a fascinating display of raw human-ness. Above the surface, what we can see is what Bion calls the “work group”. This is the stated and overt reason work groups and teams form. Groups and organisations come together to pursue sensible and realistic goals and this “work group” is what keeps people on task. Below the surface is what he calls the “basic assumption” groups. They are the unspoken assumptions about how the group operates. Bion asserts that teams sometimes fall into what he calls madness; this is the skewed functioning that arises in response to anxiety and uncertainty.
Bion observed three kinds of “basic assumption” mentalities: fight-flight, dependency and pairing. The “madness” of which Bion spoke and which he describes with these three “basic assumption” groups, is the anxiety that arises from change, unpredictability and volatility. In response to a VUCA environment, teams and groups will default to one of these basic assumptions, and the ensuing behaviours will interfere with the team’s ability to achieve its work goals effectively.
If a group is operating from a fight-flight assumption, people behave as if the primary need is self-preservation. Threatened by change, people resort to either fighting something (or someone) or running away from something (or someone). A team leader will observe scapegoating, aggressiveness or unreasonable defensiveness amongst the group or alternatively, avoidance behaviours such as tangential conversations, overuse of humour as a distraction from serious issues, lateness to meetings or anything else that circumvents the work at hand.
If the group is operating out of dependency mode, the primary aim is to achieve certainty or safety. In other words, when things are unclear and changeable, the group strives to regain some sense of security. A dependency basic assumption says that protection will come in the form of one person and they become overly dependent on that one person to “fix” it or make it better. They abdicate responsibility and look to the identified leader, who is of course omniscient and omnipotent, to sort things out. A team leader who observes dependency behaviour will be greeted with acquiescent silence in response to a work-related question, a “just tell me what to do and how to do it” attitude or excessive flattery and “people-pleasing” behaviours. Conversely, the group may “rebel” against the leader; counter-dependency is the flip side of the same coin and the leader may feel like he or she is subject to mass mutiny, with their every decision, suggestion or initiative being rejected.
Pairing derives from the underlying assumption that the group will be saved by the pairing of two of its members, who together will metaphorically create a new messiah. Effective team functioning is frozen in the hope that two people will create the kind of leadership to take them to the promised land of “everything is OK”. This may take the form of a number of pairs emerging within a team or the whole team sitting back while one pair comes to their rescue. Team leaders will observe a pair of allies spending lots of time having private conversations which, unbeknownst to him or her, may be characterised by “S/he doesn’t know what s/he’s doing; if only s/he’d do it our way, things would be ticking along nicely.” During team meetings, the team leader will notice these two folks sharing knowing glances with each other, the unspoken message being, “See? S/he’s doing it again.” “There you go, that’s what we were talking about earlier.” “Told you s/he would say that.” It may be that these two do things at work that are outside the remit of the “work group” but they believe they are justified because they actually know best. Something in your gut tells you that these two are undermining the work of the whole in some way, but it’s hard to put your finger on it.
When a group operates out of one of these basic assumption, it is important to remember that it is doing so unconsciously and is often not aware of what is happening. The team becomes subject to the forces of its own dynamics and is immune to the logic and reason of external realities and work expectations.
When we first begin to observe these “basic assumption” behaviours, it can be tempting to resort to labels or look for some kind of formula as a response. There is nothing more frustrating than someone armed with a little psychological knowledge and adopting the mantle of Team Psychologist. Unfortunately there is no stock response to a team behaving out of one of these basic assumptions. There are no top tips or easy-to-apply strategies, but assisting a group to understand itself can be useful. Apply a lens so that you can make more sense of what is happening, and then go on to reflect. Let the team have access to the same lens, so that what has been unconscious may become conscious. Each team has the right to its own character and its own story. When these underlying, unconscious processes take hold and begin to rope the leader in, and I believe they do inevitably, the trick is to learn how to respond with grace and humanity. Learning to keep going while “under fire” takes practice, resilience and lots of personal reflection on the part of whoever is in a position of leadership or guidance. Humans, when gathered together, are subject to deep psychological forces. If we are to keep our heads, we need to become aware of “what is ours” and what is a group phenomenon. Reflection is one of the best practices to help overcome the sense of frustration or overwhelm when we become affected by what goes on in our teams.
Becoming the kind of leader who courageously attempts to learn about the dynamics of groups and teams requires ongoing interest and curiosity, magnanimity and humour. Attending to a team’s dynamics requires us to foster good relationships and open communication, acceptance of difference and collaboration. Sharing this knowledge of a group’s dynamic with them can be an incredibly powerful way of assisting them to make meaning of it, grapple with it and find their way through it. Therein lies some of the work of the 21st century workplace.
This is an updated version of an article I posted on my blog in March 2012.
