Dynamics of groups at work

The face-to-face group working on a problem is the meeting ground of individual personality and society. It is in the group that personality is modified and socialized; and it is through the workings of groups that society is changed and adapted to its times. These two processes are not separate; they are merely two aspects of the same phenomenon. Moreover, they are necessary to each other: without social purposes shared with others there would be no basis for the give-and-take through which the indi vidual develops his capabilities, and without the differences among individual personalities there would be no basis for the creation of new and better solutions to the problems of living.

Both the relationships between these two processes and the slant ing of group experience toward personal growth or social purposes differ from group to group and are determined by leadership. Effective leadership depends on understanding these two proc esses, and it facilitates both. It recognizes that every group has purposes to be achieved, that it has problems of organizing itself and utilizing the resources of its members to achieve these pur poses, and that its members have problems of assimilating their experiences in the group within their own private worlds. The goal of effective leadership is to encourage behaviors that contrib ute simultaneously to the solution of these fundamental problems. These, then, are the matters with which this book is concerned, and two kinds of approach are used. The first is "practical." It assumes that basic principles and understandings can be found from the analysis of successful practice in such areas as citizen participation, classroom teaching, in-service professional training, administration and management, hu han relations training, and public meetings. Part I devotes one chapter to each of these technologies. Each chapter pays particular attention to the things that "stand out" most. Thus, the distinctive feature of citizen programs is that participation is voluntary; of classroom teaching, that it demands so many roles of the teacher and is con cerned with so wide an array of student needs; of in-service train ing, that it changes the character of an institution through indi vidual growth; of administration and management, that it in volves the exercise of power; of human relations training, that it is based on the continual diagnosis of emotion; of public meet ings, that they represent a patterning of activities in a sequence to achieve carefully defined and limited goals.