Group Analysis: Working with Staff, Teams and Organizations

Aleksandra Novakovic, David Vincent, Aleksandra Novakovic, David Vincent

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429655630
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Featuring contributions from a range of organizational contexts, Group Analysis: Working with Staff, Teams and Organizations identifies the key features to group analytic practice as well as how different theoretical orientations, such as Systemic and Tavistock Consultancy approaches, can be incorporated into the process.

The book addresses two essential features of group analysis: the exploration of unconscious dynamics in groups, and the shifts of observational attention between the group as a whole, the individual in the group, and the group in the individual. Including perspectives from both organizational consultancy and reflective practice, chapters feature analysis with groups and subgroups in a range of settings, including a forensic psychiatric hospital, a children's hospice, an Anglican religious community and the management team of a global organization.

Group Analysis: Working with Staff, Teams and Organizations is a major contribution to the developing literature on group analysis. It will be of great interest to psychotherapists, organizational consultants, facilitators of reflective practice groups, coaches, trainees in these disciplines, and any professionals who work with staff, teams, and organizations.

Part I

Chapter 1
Tavistock consultancy approaches, systemic practice and the group analytic approach in work with staff, staff teams and organizations

Introduction

Group analysis developed first as a method of psychotherapeutic treatment. The classic model is the small heterogeneous stranger group, meeting once or twice a week for several years, and both theory and technique are well founded. Over time the applications of group analysis have widened and diversified, and there have been many attempts to extend group analysis into consultation with work teams and organizations beyond the scope of the small group.

Group analysts have turned to other theoretical models to help them formulate a new Group Analytic method. Hopper (2011, 2012, 2016), has directed group analysis both into psychoanalysis and sociology and has emphasized Foulkes’ concept of the ‘social unconscious’ and the centrality of trauma in the life of organizations, while Stacey (2003) has emphasized the uses of complexity theory. The other influential theories for group analysts have been those arising from systems theory, particularly through systemic family therapy, and those from the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and the Tavistock Consultancy.

This first chapter lays out three theoretical approaches to organizational consultancy: from a consultant experienced in and working with the Tavistock traditions and approaches, Richard Morgan-Jones; a systemic consultant, Martin Miksits; and a group analyst, Christine Oliver.

Tavistock Approaches to Consulting with Teams and Organizations

Richard Morgan-Jones

Introduction

This chapter begins with key theories in Tavistock consulting approaches, along with a worked example from the author’s consulting practice. Tavistock approaches have attracted a variety of titles for different kinds of contract: organizational/team development consultant, socio-therapist, socio-analyst, group relations consultant, executive coach, human systems analyst, mentor, action researcher, evaluator, or leadership development consultant, while the activity is also described as systems psychoanalysis, socio-analysis, role-analysis, coaching, consultancy, or applied social science. Additionally, the approaches can include a consultancy stance in using consulting skills within other leadership, management, or training roles.

The chapter next outlines the historical development of these approaches and their institutional context, including their vision and scope. Finally, there is a brief overview of some contemporary developments in application.

Central to Tavistock approaches are the links between learning from experience in engaging with conscious and unconscious psychodynamics, and the social and technical aspects of organization tasks.

It would require a book to cover all such resources, so inevitably there will be some omissions favoured by particular consultants in this diverse and well-established community of practice. The range of history, approaches, theoretical concepts and applications through action research, organizational development and consultancy, across what this chapter describes as ‘Tavistock Approaches’, is vast. In consequence, any writer influenced by or having access to such approaches will always have a partial view. This chapter is no exception. It will therefore leave out many aspects of Tavistock approaches that colleagues who have been employed at one of the Tavistock institutions or been shaped by association, training, conferences, or studentships, will carry deeply felt emotional attachments to alternative perspectives. In short, this contribution is partial and for those wishing to pursue wider and deeper applications there is a wealth of history, of which perhaps the two best examples are Sher (2013) and Abraham (2013). A clear time-line history of the Tavistock is to be found on the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust website along with many other invaluable resources.

Key theories in use developed from Tavistock traditions and influences

1. Mannie Sher (2013) defines the range of Tavistock approaches as follows: “Open socio-technical systems informed by psychoanalytical perspectives that illuminate unconscious processes in individuals, in the organisations with which they work, and in the physical and social environments in which these organisations are located”.
2. The Grubb Institute, led by successive directors Bruce Reed and Bruce Irvine, have worked over decades with many faith-based and community organizations. Their ‘Transforming Experience Framework’ (TEF) develops a set of three overlapping circles of being a person, signified by yearning; within a system, signified by accountability; and being in a context, signified by ‘connectedness’. These three circles overlap in an expression of the forces that impinge upon and underpin Role, signified by ‘vocation’ and ‘leadership vision’. This whole model exists within a deeper framework of connectedness to source values and beliefs (Long, 2016). Their emphasis on purpose is shaped by an ecological perspective that perceives organizations as open systems inter-dependent upon their environment for which they perform delegated tasks, both consciously and unconsciously. Thus, both individuals and organizations each carry part of a larger whole to which humanity belongs.
3. The primary task of an organization is elaborated into:
   • Normative Primary Task, describes what an organization has to do to survive (Miller and Rice, 1967).
   • Existential Primary Task describes the reason to exist.
   • A Phenomenal Primary Task describes task performance as it is experienced (Lawrence, 2003)
   • The Hermeneutic Primary Task (Mathur, 2006) outlines seeking the search for meaning and purpose across a group or organization.
4. Boundaries relate to management tasks, including the supply of both human and technical resources and the demand of services and goods in an economic supply chain, emphasizing open systems theory. Leadership is seen as essentially an activity at the boundary of an organization interfacing with its environment. For the consultant, activity at the boundaries of role, task, group, and organizations are key resources for consultation and enquiry.
5. Role exploration and description include both formal organizational roles as well as informal organizational role psycho-dynamics, involving the squeeze between conscious and unconscious organizational dynamics and the valency (Bion, 1961) of personal emotional issues that attract people to given roles. Valency describes the way an individual or group may be mobilized into taking up a particular role, fulfilling some collectively held and hidden unconscious phantasy (Newton et al., 2006, Long and Sievers, 2006, Brunning, 2006).
6. Authority attracts a range of sources for understanding, from institutional authority to personal and experience-based authority, including the psychodynamics of projected authority. Such dynamics emphasize how authority for leaders needs to be earned and is never static. It can be exploited, gained, or lost and then regained. Bruce Reed (Grubb Institute, 1998) differentiated it from power. Power conveys access to resources. Authority is characterized by a context, where a task is agreed and stakeholders are free to contribute their different resources and roles. This leads to an understanding developed by Ed Shapiro (2016) that the boundary of authority relations is characterized by the mutual reciprocity of inter-dependence and the possibility of recognition of mutual vulnerability. Such dynamics can also explore problematic leader–follower relations, empowerment, delegation, sexual, age, gender, financial means, and racial politics. Sources of authorization include self and other authorization, which are essential elements in leadership.¹ (See Sher, 2013 for contemporary examples of Tavistock approaches.)
7. Resistance is key to understanding the Change Process. Lewin’s Action Research idea (1946) is that the way to understand an organization is to seek to change it, and that here and now events in meetings reveal organizational truths about dynamic functioning that foster both research and change. This also links to his idea of force field analysis as a means to map forces for and against change, still actively used in the Tavistock by Jean Neuman among others. Resistance also relates to Isabel Menzies Lyth’s work ([1959]1988) on ‘The Functioning of Social Systems as a Defence Against Anxiety’, that resulted from a study of why so many nurses left the profession early.
8. Relatedness describes the way an agreed task across different roles shapes the way people in a working context relate emotionally and the quality of collaboration.
9. Systems management maps the range of resources, roles, and technology required to perform a task. The range of tasks competing for given resources shapes the culture of the organization and its balance of job satisfaction with efficiency (Miller and Rice, 1967). However, this does not just require the management of demand. It also involves the management of supply and output of services and goods required in a given market. This is where an organization risks limiting its capacity for innovation in aligning services to the pace of demand or the preferred silos of supply (Boxer, 2017).
10. Systems psychodynamics: Bion’s exploration of group dynamics (1961) focused on the distinction between the effective work group and the emotionality of shared basic assumptions (dependency, fight–flight, pairing) that pattern group belonging. Application of such dynamics and inter-group tensions are seen as central to understanding what goes on beneath the surface in organizational life. (Obholzer and Roberts, 1994, Gould et al., 2004; 2006 Huffington et al., 2004). The Tavistock Institute has also developed contemporary approaches to organizations that incorporate the dynamics of complexity and chaos theories (Stacey, 2003).
11. Analysis of leadership and followership in the organization is shaped by sentience and by the dynamics of sentient groups, meaning, the particular affiliations and emotional bonding and history attached to their morale, collective cooperation, and ethos. Matching sentience to task groups may produce an impassioned work force and yet one too rigid to change from established working practices (Miller and Rice, 1967). Sentience involves the emotional patterning of a work group’s psycho-dynamics, and the desire of valency for a particular work group reveals the need to belong to a work group that makes up for emotional deficits in the life of the individual (Morgan-Jones, 2010a).
12. Social defences as a concept was introduced by Isabel Menzies Lyth ([1959]1988) in her groundbreaking action research project, ‘The Functioning of a Social Systems as a Defence against Anxiety’. This approach has been taken forward in a clear introduction to the Tavistock approach by Larry Hirschorn (1990, 1994) and is reviewed by Armstrong and Rustin (2015) in the light of contemporary experience.
13. Eliot Jaques (1998) pointed to the limitations of the psychodynamic approach in asserting the need for requisite organization and management to “provide both for optimum organizational efficiency and trust” in the design of organizational structures and management. This developed out of his influential focus on organisational culture epitomised by reports on work with the Glacier Metal Company (Abraham, 2013, pp.160–62).
14. Having worked at the Grubb Institute and TCS, David Armstrong (2005) is well placed to develop a key idea (Hutton et al., 2000, Reed 1988, the organisation–in-the-mind, to describe the shared conscious and unconscious aspects of relatedness within organizational systems. This is discoverable in the mental images and patterns of behaviour within systems.

Brief account of consulting using a Tavistock approach

I am asked by a colleague working in a different modality to take over their role in consulting to the rehabilitation team in a forensic psychiatric hospital. In crossing the boundary of the organization, my first task is to clarify the task of the team within the functioning of the organization as a whole. For this, I must seek authorization, both initially and after a contracting procedure, first, from the line manager and second, in meeting the team themselves. This forms the beginning of an agreement about a shared and agreed task, method of working, and payments, in a written contract, together with review terms. The task of the consultation is initially to explore the dynamics of interactions at different levels of organizational experience with the patients, other units, tribunals and meetings where the future of patients is decided and with the wider local and national context for forensic psychiatry and the community in which the unit is set.

My colleague has provided emotional support and deeper understanding, through emerging group dynamics, of their working relationships with a challenging client group who have attracted diagnoses of borderline, sometimes deluded or psychopathic, personality disorders, and may have criminal records. Additionally, my Tavistock approach brings a focus on the task of the team, namely rehabilitation within a larger unit where they receive referrals from more secure units on a campus of secure and semi-secure ‘ward units’. Beyond keeping patients, staff, and the community safe from further harm, the overall task is hitherto unclear to me. The Tavistock approach insists that it will have to emerge. My focus is not just on using the group meetings to surface hidden emotionally charged themes, but also to explore key social a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Series editor's preface
• Notes on editors and contributors
• Introduction
• PART I
• PART II
• PART III
• Index