The Group Approach To Leadership-Testing

Henry Harris

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136347528
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

This is Volume IV of seven in a collection on Social Psychology. Originally published in 1939, this book studies officer selection in the Army on changing from an interview only process to a more 'experimental' method of attending a Company Commanders school, and more scientific and psychological methods in the selection of leaders either in the military or the civil service.

PART I: THEORIES

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Can leaders be picked and if so, how? The implications of any technique—sufficiently scientific and reliable—for selecting the potential leaders in a community are obviously tremendous.

The truest wealth of a nation lies in its brains, character and leadership; and the germinating point of its culture resides in such of its brains and leadership as it can transmute from potenti ality into realisation. Leadership and intelligence—like other human functions—are inherited only as potentialities; they must be made as well as born; they must be discovered, cherished, trained and given scope.

Any technique for discovering potential leadership while still trainable is of special import to Britain today, when with her 40 millions she must compete as well as co-operate (full co-operation is the hope of the future) with USA and USSR with 3 to 5 times her population. When she must produce so much to pay for her war and to maintain her standards with a diminished empire that she must perforce use all her leadership and brains and not merely some of it. When the way in which she uses her potential leadership will be not only a test of her democracy and a possible example and lead to the world but a very condition of her survival as a culture. For Britain there would seem to be no choice between quality or quantity, no dilemma: it must be quality if she is to survive significantly.

The British Army developed the basis of such a technique during 1942-1945 and in so doing made what one considers to be the major psychological contribution of the war. The techniques of psychological therapy, propaganda, education etc used, were so far as one knows derivative from the past: techniques and principles of leadership-testing however have had to be thrashed out from their very beginning. Developed in crisis— soon after Dunkirk—their prime purpose was to select junior leaders in a military field. It will be submitted here that with suitable modifications they can be used to select leaders in any field: derivative techniques are, or have been, used in the Civil Service, the National Fire Service, the Palestine Police, the India Office, the RAF, etc.

These psychological techniques resulted from the collective effort of many minds co-operating in War Office Selection Boards (popularly known as “Wosbies” from their initials WOSB) since 1942. First experiments were made with the help of a number of psychiatrists and psychologists i.e. Sutherland, Bion, Wittkower, Rodger, Trist etc. As the number of WOSBs grew, an experimental attitude was encouraged; the framework of testing was elastic, and principles and techniques were continuously being experimented with: there was in some Boards an atmosphere of fermenting creativity; as at the Research and Training Centre where the results of all experiments were integrated, evaluated and validated.

The author was privileged to join this collective effort in late 1943 and was still working on a WOSB when this book was being written in late 1946. He worked on four Boards and paid working visits to another six or seven. Some techniques here described were developed to their fullest at I0 WOSB (Chester) and 5 WOSB (Wormley, Surrey).

It must be made clear that this book is in no sense official though published with the permission and approval of the Direc torate of Army Psychiatry and the War Office. The full official account of WOSB and its statistical validations will no doubt be published in due time. This is an individual reaction to a collective effort; while it derives from a common experience, it includes certain techniques developed locally and not, as yet, adopted as standard basic procedure. The body of techniques here described does however represent what the author considers an optimum pattern of observational field; and he describes only those of which he has intimate knowledge.

Most of these techniques—including those described in Chapter xIx—were in use at Chester about November 1944; what one considered an optimum 3-phase procedure of testing was in use at Wormley by June 1945" The Final Board Profile, described in Chapter xviii, became standard WOSB procedure in late 1945.

The author was required to observe intensively, for a period of three days, somewhere in the neighbourhood of 6,000 potential officers: of these, upward of 2,500 were interviewed. As there were on an average 8 men to each group, he was given the opportunity of observing approximately 750 groups; each in experimental stress tasks of various kinds.

Special acknowledgements are due to: Col. Guy Hesletine, (Deputy President at Chester, and President at Wormley) for active, continuous co-operation and understanding in experi mentation of every kind; to Capt. Ken Murray, Psychological Officer, and Sjts Medcalf and Willet at Chester; to Lt-Col. J. S. Sutherland and the psychological team at the Research and Training Centre at Hampstead and the technical memoranda they produced; to the whole body of WOSB collaborators— controlled by the Directorate of Selection of Personnel on the one hand and the Directorate of Army Psychiatry on the other— too numerous to mention: and especially to Brigadier Torrie— present Director of Army Psychiatry—for every kind of encourage ment and help and the opportunity to complete one’s researches. Very special acknowledgement is due to Major Gavin Reeve, M.Sc. for his chapter on validation—based on work carried out up to the publication of this book—and for later collaboration of a particularly helpful kind.

The development of WOSB owes much to the inspiration of Dr. J. R. Rees, CBE (lately Brigadier and Consultant in Psychiatry to the Army) who was the catalytic agent in the creative ferment of British Army Psychiatry; it owes also to the constructive and prophetic foresight of Sir Ronald Adam, Bart, GCB, DSO, OBE, lately Adjutant-General, who was responsible for the initiation and fostering of the War Office Selection Board as a psychological and scientific procedure for selecting leaders in the military field.

This book is addressed primarily to those likely to be concerned with selection on leadership or managerial level who have some psychological background. It should have some interest for those who work in the fringing social sciences, for educationalists and for socially-minded people interested in the scientific approach to the study of human relations. It is written as simply as the content permits but even with a psychological background it is doubtful if its full connotations can be appreciated by those who have not witnessed at least one 3?day Board of the type herein described. It must be obvious that psychological techniques cannot be circumscribed in a book but merely adumbrated. The contents of Part I on “Theories”, Part III on “Trends’’ and Chapter xiv are entirely the author’s responsibility; they indicate the motives for writing the rest of it.

CHAPTER II

THE FIELD OR GROUP APPROACH IN PSYCHOLOGY

Until 50 years ago, psychology was—as its etymology indicates —the study of the psyche: what the psyche was, no one professed to know and one could only beg that question. But the emphasis was on its cognitive aspect, on thinking and on the intellectual faculties. This approach was comparatively static and sterile and contributed little to human understanding and effort.

With Freud, came a new approach in which the emphasis moved decisively from thinking to feeling; from the processes of thought to the dynamics of emotion; from the conscious content of mind to its total content which included the all-important subconscious realm. It moved from the consideration of static patterns to the analysis and interpretation of dynamic interrelationships: it began to consider not merely man’s conscious appreciation of a situation but his total adjustment to it. This approach was far from sterile and in half a century has fertilised and revolutionised the study of man.

For some years, a new and natural developmental trend in psychology has aimed at relating it to the rest of human ecology. It has aimed at widening the field of enquiry by studying man not as a solitary organism, a unit in vacuo, but as member of a group or community: man in a social field, interacting continuously with the group or groups in which he finds himself: influencing them and being influenced by them.

At this point, where sociology and a psychology—become more social—fringe and fertilise each other, one must distinguish carefully between them: though they cover much the same field, their functions are different. Whereas sociology studies how men behave in group situations and what they do in these situations, psychology studies why man interacts socially as he does and why the reactions of the group influence him as they do.

CO-ORDINATING STUDY IN AREA WITH STUDY IN DEPTH

With this widening concept, psychology now seeks to include the dynamics of interpersonal relationships: the why as distinct from the how of human relations. True, the internal dynamics of Freud—which did consider the social factor especially in the object-relationships of earlier life—still require further development and clarification. But this further development in depth cannot fail to be vastly enriched and helped by the more recent emphasis on man as participating member of a social field. With Freudian study in depth is coordinated the study in social area: psychology becomes neither exclusively individual nor social but a total field which circumscribes and includes and attempts to relate both the field within the individual and the social field i.e. man and his group. It follows the threads of interpersonal and intrapersonal dynamics not only vertically into the depths but also laterally into the community. This approach promises to become infinitely more fertile.

The concepts of this “field psychology” have slowly crystallised in the contributions of K. Lewin, J. F Brown and others: they derive largely from Gestalt psychology and may prove to be critically important and unifying concepts in the history of the human sciences. They may even help towards providing a common discipline for the physical and biological sciences.

The term “field” derives originally from the physics of relativity and connotes a field of related energies as distinct from a structure or pattern which is merely a summation of its parts. It can be illustrated most simply in terms of the Newtonian apple. When this falls from its bough to the ground it does so, not because of any quality residing exclusively in the apple: but —as every student of elementary physics knows—by virtue of a field of forces exerted on the apple: a field of gravitational forces exerted by the earth, the apple and theoretically by every other body in the cosmos. It is the pattern of this gravitational field that determines the apple’s motion; and not the qualities of the apple per se.

In short, a fundamental axiom of the field approach is that the pattern?—or function—of the whole determines the functions of its parts. In Chapter iv—as further extension of this approximation—it will be suggested that the relationship of whole to part is a reciprocal circular dynamic relationship, a simultaneous polarisation of whole and part functions.

In applying this axiom to psychology, one may consider not only social fields or groups but also—as already suggested— fields or dynamic patterns within the individual: both are contained in the total field. But where the field approach attempts to observe the forces within the individual, it can only hope as yet to follow in the wake of the psychoanalytic approach—and well behind. It is in the study of social fields that it promises to make its greatest contributions at the moment: and has—in WOSB technique—already stimulated a major contribution to the study of the leadership function in man.

PERSONALITY AND LEADERSHIP IN TERMS OF THE SOCIAL FIELD

Let us attempt to consider personality and leadership in terms of this approach.

Man is an organism in a field of organisms. As the pattern of the whole determines the functions of its parts, so the social field in which a man finds himself determines the man, his personality and total behaviour (which includes thought and feeling) in that field. The field determines his personality and his personality is a reaction to that field: change the field and you change the man, his personality and his potentialities for achievement and leadership.

In short, if we express the above axiom in terms of the social field, the personality of each member of such a field is a function —in the mathematical sense—of that field: and changes continuously in response to its changing dynamics, its needs, demands, commands, stresses etc.

As a second axiom one would suggest that the development and growth of a personality is the result of its passing inevitably and continuously in space-time from simpler and smaller and fewer fields to larger and more complex and more numerous fields: from the family to the school, the neighbourhood and ultimately into the greater community. Some social fields will inhibit a man’s personality in some aspects: others will expand it: all will modify and change it.

As a third axiom one would suggest that in so far as you can choose and control these fields, you may hope to control and influence the personalities in them. Some implications of this axiom for group psychotherapy and sociotherapy, for education and training, will be discussed in Chapters III and xxII.

If man’s personality is a function exercised in a social field, his leadership—a measure of his influence on that field—may be regarded as one aspect of that function.

WOSB AND THE GROUP APPROACH

For the words “social field” substitute “group” and you have the key to the rationale of much of WOSB technique.

If one can control under experimental conditions the stresses to which a small group is submitted, one may hope to provide its members both with opportunities for action and leadership and with conditions that limit these opportunities. From their use of these opportunities and their adjustment to these limiting conditions, one may draw tentative estimates of their effectiveness in the group: and these may be related to estimates from other observations and sources.

WOSB used an experimental group of about 8 individuals as testing ground, “micro-community”, and experimental social field. Within the framework and context of this group, its members could be submitted in a Leaderless Group or Stress Group Task to varying conditions and stresses: their reactions and interactions could be observed, the qualities of their personalities and leadership in that group estimated and a prognosis of likely future development arrived at.

Group techniques of this kind were first formulated—after some experimentation—in May 1942 by the group of psychiatrists and psychologists mentioned in the preface.

From that time, selection in the Army was carried out ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• PART I: THEORIES
• II The Field or Group Approach in Psychology
• III The Group
• IV The Leader
• V The Leaderless Group or Stress Group Task
• PART II: TECHNIQUES
• VII The Reception of Candidates
• VIII Psychological Screening by Written Tests: The Projection Battery: The Personality Pointer
• IX Phase 1: Getting the General Pattern of the Candidates Group-effectiveness: The Basic Series
• X How to Conduct, Interpret, Evaluate and Report the Leaderless Group
• XI The Query Conference or First Interphase Screen
• XII Phase 2: Differentiating Group-effectiveness into its Component Roles: the PSO Battery and Interviews
• XIII Interpersonal Relationships and the Human Problems Session
• XIV The Projective Psychiatric Interview
• XV The Interim Grading Slip or Second Interphase Screen
• XVI Phase 3: Resolution of Discrepancies and Confirmation: The Final Exercise
• XVII A Sociometric Check-up: The Test of Objective Judgement
• XVIII The Final Board as the Last Screen
• XIX The Functions of the Psychological Department
• XX The Validation of Boards, Observers and Selection Procedures. By Major Gavin Reeve, M.Sc
• PART III: TRENDS AND IMPLICATIONS
• XXII Participation in Collective Leadership as a True Social Incentive
• XXIII A Note of Coordination
• Bibliographic Note
• Appendices
• B—A Self-briefing Proforma for the Sociometric Test
• C—The Profile Proforma for the Final Board
• D—The Interim Grading Slip
• E—A Short Interests Questionnaire
• Name Index
• Subject Index