CHAPTER 5
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Challenges in Labor-Management Work Groups

Groups . . . set imperceptible limits to their thinking, while sabotaging ideas that do not conform.

—Ken Eisold

Thus far we have provided a socio-technical systems (STS) model for organizational change. As we described earlier, this model grew out of a psychodynamic group relations approach pioneered by Wilfred Bion and refined and practiced since at the Tavistock Institute in London. Eric Trist and Fred Emery adapted that model, incorporating emerging insights from operations research, systems theory, and participative management practices and from the writing of Kurt Lewin, an American social scientist and field theorist. Fred Emery and Einar Thorsrud further developed the approach, which spread rapidly across Western Europe and Scandinavia, and into Australia. The STS model emphasizes facilitating communication within and among multiple levels in hierarchical systems. It aims to merge the social and technical dimensions of work life, and to foster democracy in the workplace.157

We have been convinced of the utility of both the sociotechnical and group psychodynamic perspectives, which we see as complementary.158 The psychodynamic group relations model that evolved at Tavistock offers insight into subjective experiences of group members as they encounter the social forces specific to group life. Knowledge of these forces is useful in mentoring group leaders, internal consultants, and team members about the undercurrents in group mood that can distract members from working on their common task.

Consultants from both socio-technical and group psychoanalytic backgrounds159 tend to agree on the processes and structures that benefit group cohesion and task performance. These include the selection, at least initially, of motivated, socially adept members; training these members in problem-solving and conflict-resolution skills; and adopting a clear working methodology. Consultants from each perspective emphasize that effective leadership, the encouragement of task participation by all group members, and the establishment of clear and achievable goals help working groups to remain task focused. With these safeguards, groups become more than the sum of their parts, with the potential for great creativity.

Without a clear working structure, on the other hand, groups tend to implode into infighting or attacking “outsiders” as a way to maintain their own unity, or into rigid stances that are not based on a realistic appraisal of their circumstances. Group psychodynamic theory and practice offer a window into why groups can be vulnerable to such regressions: that is, why groups are prone at times to retreat into unproductive mindsets, emotionally fraught interactions, or highly unrealistic choices. Kenneth Eisold,160 an experienced group-analytic consultant, notes that upon entering a group, members at the outset will tend to appraise and lump people into categories (e.g., “She is like me,” “He is not like me,” “She is boring,” “He is a pushover,” “She is the popular one,” “He is too aggressive”). They continue to make such appraisals in order to grasp the shifting complexities of the group as it evolves, to find a way to secure a position in the group hierarchy. Individuals sense that others are categorizing them, too, and fear being misunderstood, stereotyped, or left without allies.

The social pressures of finding a way to belong, to be understood and effective within the group, can push members to become judgmental and overly competitive, or passive, guarded, and watchful, depending on their temperaments, personalities, and personal histories. Because of these forces at play within their membership, groups can swing into disruptive emotional states until they begin to trust their leader, the other group members, and their work itself. When groups do become captured by one dominant emotion or another (such as rage, euphoria, or suspiciousness), their members become increasingly insecure, struggle to understand what is happening, and can feel pressed into taking on roles that confuse them, such as participating in bullying.161

“Regressive” Group Functioning

One of the first practitioners to study and identify such confusing and unproductive forces in groups was Wilfred Bion, a British psychiatrist who led and studied groups of soldiers hospitalized with “battle fatigue” during World War II. Bion discovered that when he maintained silence in order to encourage the soldiers’ contributions to group therapy sessions, the group members, experiencing themselves as “leaderless,” reverted to one of three characteristic positions. They began to fight with their leader, with an internal subgroup seen as “to blame” for the group’s difficulties in working on their problems, or with “outsiders” whom they blamed for their own struggles or whose power they feared. (Bion termed these “fight-flight” groups.)

Alternatively, a group could become passively dependent, failing to make their own creative contributions to the joint discussions and essentially leaving the group’s work solely to their leader. Such groups tend to be either hostile toward their task and their leader or overidealize his or her capacities. Bion called this phenomenon “dependency group” functioning.

Finally, groups might alleviate their discomfort by engaging in gossipy, distracting conversations about famous personalities, often with sexual innuendos, or even speculate about romantic attachments or alliances within pairs in their group.

Bion intuited that the common theme behind such conversations was the hope that by thus distracting themselves, the group members might magically escape the burden of their work, of internal group conflicts, or of the pressure to belong. (He called these “pairing groups.”) Some group members utilize such gossipy interchanges to connect, or pair, with other members.

The term “regressions,” used by Bion for such dominant group moods and modes of functioning, is a psychoanalytic one. It refers to the fact that people, when faced with difficulties that remind them even obliquely of previous times when they felt helpless, full of conflict, and alone, may begin to behave in a manner that is not tied to their current reality. Instead, they “regress” to thoughts and feelings that are determined more by those prior difficulties than by their present situation. For example, they may feel more angry or depressed or frozen than their current experience seems to merit. Bion observed that similar regressions occur in groups, too, stimulated by the difficulties inherent in group membership but also by matters such as the particular context of the group (that is, the group’s role and relationship within a larger organization), by their particular task (e.g., how difficult or controversial it might be), and by their group’s history.

To Bion’s descriptions of these common regressive modes of functioning, social scientist Earl Hopper162 added another type—“massification,” or the group’s adoption of a rigid “party line,” expressed largely in jargon or cliché. Such groups tend to extrude members immediately when they do not adhere to the party line, which only aggravates a sense of danger, both external and internal to the group.

Roger Shapiro, commenting on the tendency for groups to regress, noted that these tendencies to compete, to fight, to flee, or to search for a sense of connection can actually be motivating factors in group life as long as they do not completely distract the group from their task.163 For Shapiro, a skillful leader can sense the direction of the group’s energies and can influence them or in turn be influenced by the group’s mood to change course.

Strengthening Leadership: Speaking to the Mood of the Group

Effective leaders often intuitively sense the mood of their group and articulate or in some way respond to their underlying fears or wishes. The constructive use of a group’s regressive energies can powerfully motivate members toward a cooperative, enthusiastic tackling of their task. For example, a leader responding to her group’s functioning in a “dependency” mode might speak empathically to a group’s desires for the “answers” they expect “higher-ups” to provide them while saying something like, “I get it. Management is being paid to come up with solutions to this; we are not.” The leader might at the same time remind the group, however, “The administration knows about costs and regulations, but we know about actual clinical practice. We can come up with solutions they don’t really have the experience to figure out. It will make our lives easier, and the patients will get better care if we can do this.” In this way, the leader may gently shift the group from a dependent to a more competitive stance.

Further examples of responding to a group’s mood to promote a task-focus include:164

1. Employing a stance of active listening to every member’s input can allay group members’ fears of being unheard or steamrolled by the group or by its leader. In chapter 4, we provided an example of this when we described the decision made by Maimonides Cardiology team leaders to meet privately with physicians and physician assistants on their team in order to better understand and address their concerns, while also explaining the importance of the group’s meeting the strongly expressed needs of the nursing staff.

2. In addition to active listening, the leader also needs to defuse any emerging discontent about her capacity to reconcile opposing viewpoints once they are voiced and heard. The action mentioned previously by the Cardiology team leaders led to a workable compromise that satisfied all factions of their work group and enabled the team to move forward.

3. Demonstrating a grounded sense of excitement, expectation and a realistic hopefulness about the group’s work may counter unrealistic flights of group fancy, while still encouraging their optimism. A leader might thus say, “Hey, I think we are onto something here! But how can we take this idea and make it actually work in practice?”

4. The leader’s attitude can also help to counter any tendency toward clichéd groupthink. When a leader recognizes that her group is starting to speak in jargon and has stopped thinking creatively about potential solutions, she may interject a question such as, “I’m not sure that we are getting to the bottom of things here. I think we need to unpack these assumptions a bit more.”

The Consultant’s Role in Assisting Team Leaders

Working with a team that is enthusiastic, well-structured, and motivated is delightful: in these instances, the group becomes truly more than the sum of its parts and the joint work becomes deeply satisfying and exciting. However, groups may also become stuck in one or another regressive mood and mode of functioning, and this may be disorienting to the group leader, who can become unsure about how to proceed. When consulting to the designated leader of such a team, the consultant should first ask the leader to examine whether or not the group has a clear understanding of its task, senses that it can be accomplished within the time provided, and thinks that it is worthwhile. Without this basic grounding, most groups will become stuck and reactive. The work group leader should be encouraged to confer with her team to clarify their understanding of team goals, of whether or not they feel they are relevant and achievable, and of their overall direction. If it emerges that the group concerns are based on factors such as a lack of adequate time or resources, the team leader should speak with a representative of the committee directing Partnership activities about this situation.

If there is an underlying controversy among team members about the group’s purpose or methods, this needs to be addressed directly by the leader with all team members. Burying a disagreement about a central task issue will backfire, as a subgroup of members will inevitably feel unheard and lose trust in their leader’s and group members’ ability to withstand conflict.165

If members’ concerns about their goals seem to result from a misunderstanding of the task itself or from a kind of regression described previously, the leader needs to enlist the alliance of group members who seem to understand the task and to be evaluating it realistically, to draw them out about their thinking. After allowing discussion, the leader, in conjunction with these team members, should propose a potential solution or assign one of these members to seek out factual material about the controversy before the next meeting.

Consultants should sit in on group meetings from time to time to gauge their underlying mood. Specifically: Is the team passively acquiescent? Engaged in in-group or intra-group fighting? Spinning its wheels with gossip or with overly optimistic ideas that seem unlikely to gain traction? The consultant can then help the group leader to identify the underlying mood and to find ways of redirecting it, as described previously.

If the internal consultant finds that the group is working on either a task that lacks importance or on a solution that seems likely to be ineffective, it is important that he or she discuss this with the group leader. In a study166 in which Rudden examined videotapes of work groups at Maimonides, it became obvious that most unit-based groups chose a central problem in clinical care delivery to research and to solve. One group, however, selected an issue that was secondary to other pressing clinical concerns and then approached their study in a superficial manner. This occurred toward the beginning of the Labor-Management Partnership and may have reflected a misunderstanding of the process on the part of this group leader, leaving her team to produce a poster presentation rather than a substantive solution to a clinical issue. Such a choice may have also represented a “protective” measure to avoid encountering a central, but more divisive, clinical care issue. An experienced consultant would want to describe to such a work group leader the kinds of projects other groups were undertaking and to help her to encourage the group to work on a problem with greater potential.

The consultant should also try to discern whether the leader is out of step with, or unaware of, the culture of the group membership. Some academics studying leadership have focused on the match between the group’s and leader’s motivations and culture.167 Without understanding divisive forces already at play in a group (often related to hierarchy, differences in member cultures and ethnicities, or prior experiences in the overall organization), the leader will not be prepared to surmount these preexisting difficulties. Further, because group fears and concerns can limit what the group can achieve, both leader and consultant need to gauge the group’s readiness to perform their task.168

It is important that the work group leader recognize any difficulties imposed by meeting times or by the additional demands of group work over and above members’ scheduled work hours. It is also vital to directly address members’ reservations about cooperating with management or staff. Usually, preliminary training in conflict resolution and problem solving can help prepare group members for the job, but sometimes the leader must work on understanding negative attitudes in the group about their joint work. Historical frictions among representatives of different units, disciplines, or ethnic groups may need to be recognized and addressed. How to work with such frictions will be delineated via an example later in this chapter.

The consultant should further mentor leaders whose group’s work has stalled due to an actively dissenting team subgroup. Such subgroups tend to be led by one or two individuals who strongly express a particular disagreement about the workings of the team. Bion observed that the nominal leader of a group is not always the de facto leader. Roger Shapiro, mentioned earlier, underscored this idea by emphasizing that the group leader can only actually lead after having gained the support of at least some members of the dissenting subgroup.169 If he or she cannot, then the person who best captures the dominant group mood may seize implicit or explicit control of the team.

A leadership coach or consultant needs to approach such a situation carefully, realizing that a fractious subgroup is usually expressing a part of the group’s experience that needs to be understood and acknowledged. Effective leaders search for what is important in a subgroup’s message, actively listen to it, and address it before trying to redirect the group’s energies. This is crucial to the group’s ability to regain its task focus.

A somewhat different situation occurs when the dissenting subgroup is led by an individual member who herself experiences difficulty with groups and seems to repeatedly place herself at the center of controversy. Such an individual may be convinced that she will never be recognized or allowed to make an impact without aggressive self-assertion. Alternatively, the member may be intensely competitive or convinced, in a grandiose way, that she is “the only one with the answers.” At times, such a member may be unable to absorb other people’s points of view, to think about and learn from them, because of her urgent need for visibility and praise.

If a member is continually disruptive, leading a number of dissenting subgroups, one after another, then the group leader should meet with him or her individually to describe the problem, acknowledging the validity of some points the member raises, but reiterating the values of the group about collaboration and mutual learning. In a Partnership, a fellow labor representative should preferably attend this conversation. If this intervention does not improve the situation, the work group member should be told that his or her input into organizational change would be better expressed in a different venue and be helped to find an alternative situation that is a better fit.

Cultivating Alternate Leaders

Labor-Management Partnerships that practice collaborative leadership are structured to explicitly value each employee’s knowledge and contributions. An effective group leader encourages team members to research aspects of the joint work in which they have particular knowledge. These employees can then serve as “support” leaders within the team for that work area. If the designated leader seems defensive about his or her authority and reluctant to delegate it, the consultant might emphasize the importance of membership buy-in through their active involvement in researching a problem area and suggesting solutions.

When a leader is particularly inflexible, passive, or defensive, the group tends to take a regressive pathway. Occasionally, however, a group member with natural leadership skills170 may quietly become an “alternate leader” whom the group trusts and follows. This individual may guide the group toward productive work despite the nominal leader’s weaknesses or rigidity. Consultants facing such a situation should try when possible to quietly support this development.

In the research study mentioned earlier, co-author Rudden assessed videotapes of 18 work groups at Maimonides both qualitatively and quantitatively and found striking results about group leaders’ effectiveness and the value of alternate leaders in supporting the groups’ work.171

In a quantitative analysis of groups’ performance, it became clear that in groups whose nominal leader struggled to help the team to focus but in which an effective alternate leader emerged, such teams performed successfully: “This may support the idea that when groups are free to influence their leadership, as in more democratic settings, long-range tasks requiring group cooperation may be more likely to be successfully completed. Qualitative observations, too, suggested that in groups in which there were skirmishes witnessed over the leadership with no consistent alternate leader emerging . . . the work did suffer.”172

Katy Steward, an assistant director in Leadership Development at Britain’s King’s Fund, also emphasizes this concept: “It is not simply the number or quality of individual leaders that determine organizational performance, but the ability of formal and informal leaders to pull together in support of the organization’s goals.”173

To reprise, leaders may need a consultant’s help to discern when a group is experiencing a regression because it has encountered obstacles to work, such as unclear goals or a lack of resources, which can then be directly addressed. The consultant can also help a leader to listen to the useful messages that a dissenting subgroup is bearing and to address them, so that the subgroup leaders do not hijack the team’s task focus. We have discussed strategies for directing and reinforcing groups’ regressive energies and have also addressed the value of recognizing and cultivating support leaders for individual tasks. Designated leaders who can welcome the “natural” leaders within their group to work in synchrony with them—usually by delegating important tasks to them—help their group to become optimally effective. Such practices form the underpinning for genuine collaborative leadership.

Addressing Hierarchies and Cultural/Ethnic Differences

The first phase of the Labor-Management Partnership at Maimonides Medical Center accomplished a good deal of effective work. However, it was noted that on a few units, seemingly good solutions to clinical care problems were not maintained six months after their implementation. Lazes reviewed the work of these groups and discovered that several of their members who were lowest in the hospital hierarchy, nurses’ aides and licensed practical nurses, had felt inhibited about sharing their ideas. Their experience—accurate or not—was that their contributions, when they struggled to offer them, were neither valued nor incorporated into project results. Their interest in the work waned, and they did not ultimately feel wedded to implementing the group’s solutions.

In approaching the next LMP project, on hospital cleanliness, Lazes and a talented union executive vice president, Bruce Richard, discussed how to prevent such a sense of inhibition, exclusion, and disenfranchisement from recurring, especially since many considered environmental service workers to be at the bottom of the hospital hierarchy: “the guys who clean up our mess.” Lazes and Richard concluded that preparatory work with the Environmental Services staff might create a safe space in which to help them build the self-confidence to assert themselves later with the professional and managerial staff. In addition, because the Environmental Services Department hired entry-level workers, and thus included many new immigrants from a range of ethnic backgrounds, they felt it important to afford the workers “a chance to express and understand some of their ethnic and racial differences about methods of communication, boundaries (for example, in the amount of eye contact or kind of body language they could comfortably employ), and different ways of expressing their work ethic.”174 These meetings began with Richard revealing his own life experiences about power and disenfranchisement and how he learned to move past a deep sense of inferiority. For many workers, “these discussions were quite illuminating, affording them the time to understand some of the similarities and differences in orientation that each person brought to their work.”175

After this preparation, the work group began to cohere and decided to themselves solve central problems impeding hospital cleanliness with only one manager present. This group eventually arrived at a number of successful solutions, which included the following:

•   Creating a process to ensure that supplies and equipment would be available at the beginning of shifts

•   Ensuring that shift-to-shift communications take place to inform workers on the incoming shift about where they need to concentrate

•   Creating self-managing work groups

•   Purchasing new equipment essential to high-quality cleaning of patient rooms and public areas

•   Developing practical methods to monitor hospital cleanliness

Satisfied with their work, they brought their proposals to other co-workers in their department and to senior management. All of their proposals were accepted.

The team was gratified to see the respect with which their work was met and became dedicated to ensuring the success of their plan.

We encourage organizations that contain multiple ethnic groups, who may not always understand each other’s culture and communication styles, to undertake such preparatory work. This carries particular importance when the unit groups contain members from different ends of the organizational hierarchy. In that instance, the group leader should receive training in cultural sensitivity and understand the importance of ensuring that each member is encouraged to participate and is made comfortable doing so.

Summary

In this chapter, we argue for the use of both socio-technical and group psychodynamic models for structuring and supporting teams. Each model endorses processes that benefit group cohesion and task performance: the establishment of clear, workable goals, the provision of support for leaders and the engagement of all members’ participation.

Without these processes, the pressure to find ways to belong, to be heard, and to be effective can intensify among members, disrupting their work in characteristic ways. The group might implode through in-fighting or attacking outsiders, or through relying excessively on their leader for answers. Alternatively, they might flee into an unrealistic optimism about their work, or may adopt rigid, clichéd thinking that limits their creativity.

The chapter suggests methods by which leaders can speak to the “mood” of their groups when they become distracted from their work in one of these characteristic ways. This can be done by acknowledging the current mood, briefly joining with it, and then playfully or directly shifting the group back to a cooperative work focus.

Leaders should also employ a stance of active listening to all contributions, including dissenting ones, and use conflict resolution techniques to discover workable compromises. They can also recognize when their group has descended into using jargon and cliché, suggesting “unpacking” ideas that seem too rigid or concrete.

Internal consultants can assist leaders whose groups have come to an impasse by reviewing their members’ understanding of their central task and of their ability as a team to execute it. This may lead to their helping to restructure the current schedule, or offering more avenues of support. They can also encourage the leader’s active cultivation of project leaders for aspects the overall task.

Finally, this chapter addresses how to overcome obstacles that present when groups contain members who occupy different places in the organizational hierarchy, or when members have limited understanding of each others’ experiences and cultural expectations.

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