Group Development

A Theory of Group Development held for me some surprising revelations about my behavior. How I am orientated towards authority and how that may impact the way I relate to others offered me more than a few things to consider. Enumerating those revelations and where they influenced my behavior in the group during each of the phases is the focus of this paper.

Obstacles to the development of valid communication is something that members bring into the group. How I see myself in relation to authority and the intimacy I need from others is something that can affect my ability to communicate effectively with those in my group. My first revelation was that I am a “dependent” and that I need and want rules, procedures, an agenda, a goal and a leader

Denise and I share that need for positive reinforcement from someone outside of ourselves and she expressed that need well when she pointed out that at times she was listening for the comment “the group is working” as a validation that our group was performing well. This clearly lays in the domain of phase I and dependence. Some in our group were looking to establish what the “rules” were and to “win” whatever competition we were in with the other group. “Rewards” came to be positive comments from the facilitator. Even my own behavior of setting of goals and tasks was in some ways a way to gain approval from him and a response to a perceived expectation. The more I pushed for some structure to what we were doing, the more push back I got from others in our group. Many times I heard others say that we didn’t need to be so formal about how we were operating in our group and to let things happen “organically.” There were even dialogues on how the other group was operating well without any perceived leader. All of these things are classic themes to the counterdependence subphase. In classic fashion we saw our group round out Phase I with a catharsis. Truly the turning point in our group came after the major disagreement and debate over what we would be doing during each meeting. Clearly playing games was not palatable to some (mostly me) in the group and having structured discussions reflecting on ourselves and our group was not acceptable to others in the group. Ralph, who had been mostly quiet up to that point took up a leadership role and was able to move the group into the next phase of our development. Ironically, even though I had considered myself a leader in the group, I was not able to move the group forward into the next phase and in part because I was trying to meet my own needs instead of addressing those of the