Towards a Group Analytic Praxis for Working with Teams in Organizations

Abstract

Several aspects of group analysis render it a useful discipline for consulting to organizations and working with teams in complex post-modern environments. These include attention to the individual in the group, sophisticated grasp of the nuances of interpersonal communication, attention to context, tolerance and the value of multiple perspectives, creative incorporation of difference and a flexible developmental approach to managing anxiety and leadership projections. The importance assigned to context, and the value placed on multiple perspectives as holding elements of reality, mesh with systems and complexity theories so that group analysis offers a coherent intellectual framework for understanding interplaying processes in the system, from individual, through team, departmental and organizational, to societal and global levels. While several writers have demonstrated the value of group analytic thinking in understanding organizations, to date none have attempted to contextualize their perspective with those of others working in the field. This article opens with a literature review, articulates some core contextual differences between clinical and organizational work, and identifies the characteristics of group analysis that make it a valuable discipline in organizational work. A second companion article elaborates, setting out further differences in praxis in organizational rather than therapeutic work and discussing contracting for organizational work.