History
In 1947, the National Training Laboratories Institute
began in Bethel, ME. They pioneered the use of T-groups
(Laboratory Training) in which the learners use here and now
experience in the group, feedback among participants and theory
on human behavior to explore group process and gain insights
into themselves and others. The goal is to offer people options
for their behavior in groups. The T-group was a
great training innovation which provided the base for what
we now know about team building. This was a new method that
would help leaders and managers create a more humanistic,
people serving system and allow leaders and managers to see
how their behavior actually affected others. There was a strong
value of concern for people and a desire to create systems
that took people's needs an feelings seriously.
Objectives
of T-Group Learning
The
T-Group is intended to provide you the opportunity to:
- Increase
your understanding of group development and dynamics.
- Gaining
a better understanding
of the underlying social processes at work within a group
(looking under the tip of the iceberg)
- Increase
your skill in facilitating group effectiveness.
- Increase
interpersonal skills
- Experiment
with changes in your behavior
- Increase
your awareness of your own feelings in the moment; and offer
you the opportunity to accept responsibility for your feelings.
- Increase
your understanding of the impact of your behavior on others.
- Increase
your sensitivity to others' feelings.
- Increase
your ability to give and receive feedback.
- Increase
your ability to learn from your own and a group's experience.
- Increase
your ability to manage and utilize conflict.
Success
in these goals depends, to a large extent, on the implied
contract that each participant is willing to disclose feelings
that she or he may have, in the moment, about others in the
group, and to solicit feedback from the others about herself
or himself. The focus
is upon individual learning; some participants may learn a
great deal in most of the above areas, others learn relatively
little.
Method
One way of describing
what may happen for a participant is --
- Unfreezing
habitual responses to situations -- this is facilitated
by the participant's own desire to explore new ways of behaving
and the trainer staying non directive silent and providing
little structure or task agenda
- Self
generated and chosen change by
the participant - Experiment with new behaviors
-Practice description not evaluation of
- Reinforce
new behavior by positive feedback, participants own assessment
of whether what is happening is closer to what she/he intents,
supportive environment, trust development
Sources
of Change in Groups
- Self-observation
- participants give more attention to their own intentions,
feelings, etc.
- Feedback - participants
receive information on the impact they have on others
- Insight - participants
expand self-knowledge
- Self-disclosure
- participants exposes more of themselves to others
- Universality
- participants experience that others share their difficulties,
concerns or hopes
- Group Cohesion
- participants experience trust, acceptance & understanding)
- Hope - participant
see others learn, achieve their goals, improve, and
cope more effectively
- Vicarious Learning
- participants pick up skills and attitudes from others
- Catharsis -
participants experience a sense of release or breakthrough
A
Description
The
T-group provides participants with an opportunity to learn
about themselves, their impact on others and how to
function more effectively in group and interpersonal situations.
It facilitates this learning by bringing together a small
group of people for the express purpose of studying their
own behavior when they interact within a small group.
A
T-Group is not a group discussion or a problem solving group.
The
group's work is primarily process rather than content oriented.
The focus tends to be on the feelings and the communication
of feelings, rather than on the communication of information,
opinions, or concepts. This is accomplished by focusing on
the 'here and now' behavior in the group. Attention is
paid to particular behaviors of participants not on the "whole
person", feedback is non-evaluative and reports on the impact
of the behavior on others. The participant has the opportunity
to become a more authentic self in relation to others through
self disclosure and receiving feedback from others. The Johari Window is a model that looks at
that process.
The
training is not structured in the manner you might experience
in an academic program or a meeting with an agenda or a team
with a task to accomplish. The lack of structure and limited
involvement of the trainers provides space for the participants
to decide what they want to talk about. No one tells them
what they ought to talk about. The lack of direction results
in certain characteristic responses; participants are silent
or aggressive or struggle to start discussions or attempt
to structure the group.
In
the beginning of a T-Group participants are usually focused
on what they experience as a need for structure, individual
emotional safety, predictability, and something to do in common.
These needs are what amount to the tip of the iceberg in most
groups in their back home situation. By not filling the group's
time with answers to these needs, the T-Group eventually begins
to notice what is under the tip of the iceberg. It is what
is always there in any group but often unseen and not responsibly
engaged . So, participants experience anxiety about authority
and power, being include and accepted in the group, and intimacy.
Depending
on forces, such as, the dynamics of the group, the past experience
and competence of participants, and the skill of the trainers
-- the group, to some extent, usually develops a sense of
itself as a group, with feelings of group loyalty. This can
cause groups to resist learning opportunities if they are
seen as threatening to the group's self-image. It also provides
some of the climate of trust, support and permission needed
for individuals to try new behavior.
As
an individual participant begins to experience some degree
of trust (in themselves, the group and the trainers) several
things become possible --
-
The
participant may notice that his/her feelings and judgments
about the behavior of others is not always shared by others.
That what he/she found supportive or threatening was not
experience in that way by others in the group. That how
one responded to authority, acceptance and affection issues
different from that of others (more related to ones family
of origin than to what is happening in the group). Individual
differences emerge in how experiences are understood.
-
The
participant may begin to try on new behavior. For example,
someone who has always felt a need to fill silence with
noise and activity tries being quieter and still.
-
Participants
begin to ask for feedback from the group about how their
behavior is impacting others.
-
Participants
may find that they are really rather independent and have
a relatively low level of anxiety about what is happening
in the group. They will exhibit a broader range of behavior
and emotions during the life of the group. In fact their
leadership is part of what helps the group develop.
The
role of the trainers
-
To
help the group and individuals analyze and learn from
what is happening in the group. The trainer may draw attention
to events and behavior in the group and invite the group
to look at its experience. At times the trainer
may offer tentative interpretations.
-
To
offer theory, a model or research that seems related to
what the group is looking at.
-
To
encourage the group to follow norms that tend to serve
the learning process, e.g., focusing on "here & now"
rather than the "then & there".
-
To
offer training and coaching in skills that tend to help
the learning process, e.g., feedback skills, EIAG, etc.
-
To
not offer structure or an agenda. To remain silent, allowing
the group to experience its anxiety about acceptance,
influence, etc.
-
To
be willing to disclose oneself, to be open with the group.
On occasion being willing to offer feedback and challenge
a participant
-
To
avoid becoming too directive, clinical, or personally
involved.
Possible
Problems
- T-Group methods
usually encourage self-disclosure and openness, which may
be inappropriate or even punished in organizations. This
was an early learning. When managers thought they could
take the T-group method into the back home organization,
they discovered that the methods and the assumptions of
a T-group did not fit. T-groups consisted of participants
who were strangers. They didn't have a history or a future
together and could more easily focus on here and now
behavior. Another issue was that in the organization there
were objectives, deadlines and schedules related to accomplishing
the work of the company or group. Groups with a task to
accomplish could not take the same time that would be used
in a T-Group. These difficulties helped lead to the development
of Organization Development and team building. What had
been learned in T-Groups was combined with other knowledge
and these new disciplines emerged as ways to address the
values raised by the T-Group experience.
- The T-Group
experience can open up a web of questioning in a participant.
Ways of behaving that the person has used for many years
may be called into question by others in the group and oneself.
This has in some cases brought the participant to question
relationships in the family or at work. While this can be
a very constructive process that leads to the renewal of
relationships, it has on occasion lead to the breakdown
of a relationship. While such a breakdown may have, in time,
come to the relationship without participation in a T-Group,
it remains a painful and possibly damaging experience.
- Participants
being forced or pressured to attend, by an employer or other
person with influence, are on the whole less likely to have
a positive learning experience. Employers or others who
want to require the participation of others may enhance
the chance of having a productive outcome if -- they attend
a lab themselves before sending others; they speak with
the lab coordinator before the event to discuss what might
realistically be expected and what the leader could do to
assist in the learning process when the participant returns
home.
- Very rarely
there have been situations in which a participant has a
psychiatric problem. One report said "The possibility of
negative psychiatric effects of ST, and especially its role
in inducing psychiatric symptoms, is yet to be clarified."
This reinforces the value of participation based on intrinsic
motivation; a norm that discourages people in therapy from
attending without the approval of their therapist; and trainers
staying focused on the learning areas suited for T-Group
experiences.
Agencies
that offer T-Group training and other lab training experience:
LTI - Leadership Training Institute |||
NTL -
National Training Laboratories Institute
© Robert
A. Gallagher, 2000
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