The Group Realm

Group dynamics have also been subjected to an exceptional amount of analysis and theorizing by academics and consultants (Bion, 1961 and Colman and Bexton, 1975). The group realm introduces yet another level of complexity that transcends the individual and interpersonal worlds. We are once again reminded by Mary Parker Follett (Metcalf and Urwick, 1941) that the importance of understanding group dynamics in the workplace is nothing new; only an ongoing and hard to master challenge. She writes: “The leader in scientifically managed plants tends not to persuade men to follow his will. He shows them what it is necessary for them to do in order to meet their responsibility, a responsibility that has been explicitly defined to them” (p. 282). She continues: “If the best leader takes all the means in his power to develop leadership among his subordinates and gives them opportunity to exercise it, he has then, his supreme task, to unite all the different degrees and different types of leadership that come to the surface in the ramifications of a modern business. Since power is now beginning to be thought of by many not as inhering in one person but as the combined capacities of a group, we are beginning to think of the leader not as the man who is able to assert his individual will and get others to follow him, but as the one who knows how to relate the different wills in a group so that they will have driving force” (p. 282).

The workplace, while filled with individuals, is composed of groups where one individual may be a member of more than one group and most often is. Group leaders are faced with the challenge of not commanding group members but rather drawing them into a mutually acceptable context where leadership and followership occur. It is equally important to appreciate that groups are periodically filled with many hard to understand individual, interpersonal and subgroup interactions that often confound the efforts of the best managers and consultants to understand, much less manage. Also to be considered is that groups interact with each other, which directs our attention to the organizational realm.