Theoretical Framework

Group relations theory is the central framework that guides our work in group relations conferences—temporary organizations created to study conscious and unconscious group and organizational dynamics as they occur. In group relations contexts, this study occurs in the here and now, and it provides members with opportunities to collectively experience and study group dynamics: leadership, followership, roles, task, boundaries, collusion, and, most importantly, authority.

Key contributors to this theory include Bion (1961), Klein (1946), and Wells (1985). Collectively, their work forms the basis for a systems and psychoanalytic approach to groups that is focused on the interrelatedness of and influence between individuals and groups and groups as systems. Complexities such as tensions around authority relations, belonging, anxiety, roles, and leadership abound.

Bion (1961) contributed to the development of group relations theory by arguing that groups function in two contrasting ways: engaging in behaviors and activities focused on rational work tasks and those that are associated with emotions, such as anxiety and fear. At once, the group consciously engages in its task (work group behavior) and unconsciously avoids its task (basic assumption behavior) in order to manage its anxiety. Klein (1946) focuses on infant life, the experience with the mother, and the connectedness of the two in the development of the infant. Using as its model an infant’s positive and negative instinctive responses when he or she receives comfort or has unmet needs (food, warmth, etc.), Klein’s work connects the push-pull of group membership with negative and positive experiences of group life, with our quest for belonging, comfort, and identity from groups.

Another central component of group relations theory is Wells’s group-as-a-whole theoretical perspective (1985, 1995), which conceptualizes groups as having a different life from, but related to, the dynamics of the individual co-actors; group behavior is understood as a social system. The group emerges from an open systems framework (group-level phenomena) and makes available the study of the group gestalt—unconscious systemic dynamics that provide information about what the group’s “voice” or “identity” may be in a given moment. The gestalt has also been framed as the group or unconscious mind, wherein the collective mind shapes individual activities and meaning emerges from a socially structured or constructed field (Weick & Roberts, 1993).

Bion, the father of British group relations, and A. Kenneth Rice and Margaret Rioch, its American parents, developed the conference model in the mid-twentieth century. These two white men and one white woman led the way for this work through the Tavistock Institute (London) and the A. K. Rice Institute (Washington, DC). This background has both historical and racial implications for the development and evaluation of the model. Conferences uphold particular critical principles:

1. The study of authority and the unconscious is paramount.
2. The staff endeavors at all times to operate within strict boundaries when consulting with a group. Being on time, staying on task, and scrupulously adhering to one’s role supports a clear focus on studying the group’s behavior.
3. The staff takes a neutral stance intended to invite members to reflect on their experience, which might reflect projections of their internalized experience of authority.
4. Staff members carefully examine their own unconscious dynamics.
5. The staff endeavors to make meaning of whatever occurs because, in group relations, everything is available for study.

Identity Gains a Foothold

Initially, the conferences did not explicitly attend to racial, cultural, gender, or other identity dynamics. More recent scholarship expanded the systems approach to group relations to consider demographic variables in the study of authority. For example, membership in cultural, ethnic, age, racial, sexual identity, and orientation groups may be complicated when negative stereotypes, societal scripts, identities, and group dynamics intersect. These stereotypes may serve as catalysts for conflict around group inclusion and exclusion. Group members’ perceptions of their own and other groups’ power and privilege often affect their attitudes and behaviors in the group, their perceptions of self, and the group as a whole. A systems analysis contributes to a more complex and nuanced understanding of these dynamics as they intersect with racial-cultural factors and systemic factors such as authority, roles, leadership, power, and interpersonal relations (McRae & Short, 2005, 2009; Green & Molenkamp, 2005, 2015). The BART framework specifically advances group and organizational systems study through the lenses of boundaries, authority, roles, and tasks. Focusing on learning from group relations conferences, the authors point to the intersections among the elements of BART, group dynamics, and the influence of identity and demographic factors (Green & Molenkamp, 2005, 2015).

Group Relations, Black Authority, and Leadership

Early group relations theory and practice focused primarily on authority relations and hierarchies that were identity neutral and somewhat limited. In this section, we discuss and build on the theoretical foundations of group relations and the complexity of Black authority through an analysis of our experiences in the “On the Matter of Black Lives” conference.

Figure 15-1 illustrates the complex, multilayered, and simultaneous analyses that inform and constitute organizations. The work of Wells holds important theoretical, intellectual, and experiential implications for group relations tradition and practice, in part, because of its keen focus on systems-level analyses and their application in multicultural contexts, particularly in the study of Black authority. Wells’s scholarship also centered the socio- and psychodynamics of predominantly Black organizations and race relations in complex organizational systems. The group-as-a-whole concept deepened our understanding of the complex and nuanced dynamics of projection, scapegoating, and role suction that are uniquely experienced by those “othered” in organizations.

The existing Black authority frameworks did not, however, attend explicitly to gendered discourses, intersectionality, and leadership dynamics with Black women in authority. Forbes (2002, 2017) and Moffitt, Harris, and Forbes (2012) offered an intersectional approach to leadership that integrates gender, class, nationality, culture, and other social identities. Race and gender are approached not as separate systems but as mutually constituted systems of relationships that affect Black women’s organizational experiences in and of leadership and authority. This intersectional framework aptly informs the conference experience, as demonstrated by the complex interplay of gender, race, age, and other identities that we encountered there. In sum, the study of Black authority has extended beyond a Black, male, middle-class, and middle-aged perspective.

The Conference

For years, elders in group relations work spoke of offering an all-Black staff conference. This became a reality in 1995 when “Authority and Identity: An African American Perspective” was held at the American University in Washington, DC. It became one of the largest group relations conferences in a decade, signaling a deeper need to understand the unconscious processes influencing the exercise of Black authority. In 1995, some playfully touted Bill Clinton as the “first Black president,” and to many, Barack Obama’s and Donald J. Trump’s presidencies seemed unimaginable. This first conference, like the United States, was far more “Black and white” in membership, that is, with members who identified as African American or White; whereas, the 2017 “On the Matter of Black Lives” conference was more a part of a larger global, multiethnic network of group relations study with an all-Black staff and a more diverse membership.

In March 2017, we were authorized by Group Relations International and RISE San Diego to design and hold a conference where we studied the authority of Black people and how members both authorized and deauthorized us in that enterprise. “On the Matter of Black Lives” was a three-day, nonresidential conference with the task of exploring the unconscious elements of leadership, authority, and identity in human systems with a particular focus on the matter of Black lives. Whereas the previous conference was held during the O. J. Simpson trial, the Clinton presidency, and a period of economic prosperity, the “On the Matter of Black Lives” conference was conceived during a contentious election season and conducted during the post-Obama, early Trump era in the heat of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The racially and ethnically mixed membership was predominantly composed of women and people of color, and unlike at the previous conference, gender fluidity and a wide range of sexual orientations were evident. Relatedly, generational dynamics were evidenced, with members and staff ranging in age from twenty to eighty-plus years old. Both experienced and first-time members attended.

Generational Complexity

The conference reflected critical voices on race, powerful themes in contemporary discourse, and distinct generational approaches to the study of Black authority. A very public debate between Ta-Nehisi Coates, whom some have touted as the Baldwin of this age, and Cornel West, a leading voice on race matters, took place at the conference. Coates represented those voices most aligned with the Black Lives Matter movement, and his writings directly critique a politic in which Black bodies are subject to routine annihilation through white supremacist practices.

West, in contrast, lamented that Coates “fetishizes” white supremacy and promotes the diminution rather than advancement of Black political power. He called for a broader coalition of identity groups, consistent with intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991). This Coates-West tension was also present in the conference among the staff—some of whom subscribed to a post–civil rights era ethos in which Black identity and nationalist sentiments dominate—and members of the younger generation who rejected “one drop” notions of racial identity and placed other social identities, such as sexual orientation, on par with race. This split appeared in “On the Matter of Black Lives” in the Community Event, soon to be described in detail.

We learned more about millennials’ (born between 1985 and 2004) approaches to Black authority and activism. Millennial activism has been more fluid, with Black authority viewed as more nuanced and intersectional than, for example, during the civil rights era. Research shows that most Americans in their fifties and sixties are removed from the concerns and interests of millennials and Generation Xers. They tend to favor lower taxes and a smaller government that provides resources for health, education, and social mobility, and the generational divide persists across racial groups in their core values and approaches to activism (Frey, 2015). The data reveals a lack of investment in the future of younger generations, and in the absence of economic and academic investments, leadership, and mentorship, millennials have emerged with a more independent approach to life.

Civil rights leaders recall a more nuanced, organized, and nonviolent movement, while millennials, with a more direct and confrontational approach, see them as having joined an establishment they had intended to fight. They see the civil rights movement as having little relevance and having achieved few concrete developments that currently benefit their generation. Black Lives Matter activists stated that civil rights activists interacted with and advised them as parents, not as partners and peers. A strong resistance to being told how to “do” activism emerged. They perceive figures such as John Lewis, Andrew Young, and Coretta Scott King not only as removed from their current reality (Friedersdorf, 2016; Jarvie, 2016) but as having failed them, dropped the baton along the way, and chosen not to partner with millennials because they disapproved of the younger generation’s approach to activism and social justice (Friedersdorf, 2016). This dynamic was evident in the conference.

The conference included an activity called the Community Event. Unlike in other conference events, where the group members, topics, and approach are predetermined, the Community Event offers members the option to choose who and what to work with—typically organized around identity membership (e.g., all people interested in studying race) or a topic (e.g., exploring boundaries). Once settled into groups, members are tasked with studying the groups, including the group they formed and those that others formed. The staff group constitutes one of these and is available to be observed and interacted with to explore hypotheses of what dynamics exist in the system. At the end of four sessions, everyone meets for a plenary session to share their learning. This event stands out as the most emotional and challenging of any of the conference events for the staff. We felt to differing degrees admiring, envious, disrespected, embarrassed, anxious, disillusioned, frustrated, and bewildered. What happened to evoke these powerful emotional responses? We frame the discussion through the lens of generations and generativity, boomer and millennial, Coates and West. We felt pushed and provoked in very uncomfortable ways by those who were our juniors, an age group that most of the members are in, and while we were proud to provide an educational forum with participants ranging from twenty to more than eighty years old, we felt the sting of fending off a coup even as we felt love for the deposers.

In the Community Event, one group leader (a young Black male), whose group explored the role of education in Black communities and whom a Black female member described as a “king,” partly because of his stately African garb, experienced the staff as betraying his group. He asserted that staff denigrated their efforts, excluded them from an initial hypothesis, and sought to silence their contributions, which echoes millennials’ lament about the boomer generation. To let us know their hurt and anger, they had enacted a piece of performance art in the staff room earlier. We felt chastened but also admired their agency and creativity. In the plenary session, that enactment was followed by a few powerful and revealing moments led by the same group. This young Black male member addressed the conference staff as “my staff,” which received support from the same female member who had earlier ascribed to him the royal label; and the young man, who knows Dr. Green outside the conference, offered his own framework (drawn on the whiteboard and accompanied by a lecturette) about Black authority. The member then took the director to task for raising the elder of his sons without a decent “fade” or the “right jeans,” which he had very generously corrected by taking the child out and getting him a “proper” (Black) barber and jeans. In the moment, we felt protective of both Dr. Green and the enterprise. Were these young Black folks staging a coup? We felt trapped between wanting to support this young man’s leadership potential and guarding against his possible effort to tear down Dr. Green in the process. At once, the member seemed to authorize himself and deauthorize Dr. Green. We felt disoriented and somewhat puzzled. From the perch of advanced degrees and a methodology we wanted desperately to share with this generation for their use and benefit, we felt annoyed and embarrassed that the markers of a fade and proper jeans appeared to be most significant to this young man. (Sit down, boy. What are you doing?) We felt put on the spot to maintain and even protect our authority, and we felt admiration that he, with no college degree or previous staff experience, would speak up so publicly. We felt afraid that this perceived rejection of a model to which each of us is devoted signaled a potential ending of the model’s usefulness in teaching generally, and perhaps to Black people in particular, as we worried that our “offspring” might be the ones to dismiss it.

On yet another level, we also considered that perhaps this member did what the staff would not do. Many of us disagreed with decisions Dr. Green made to guide this enterprise, including hiring many inexperienced staff and at times failing to address indiscipline among the staff. Culturally, it is interesting that no members of the staff humiliated or publicly disowned Dr. Green. Warts and all, he was one of us and we would stand with him, especially in the face of challenge. Here, the African diasporic cultural value of respecting our elders and never publicly challenging them prevailed. Our joint staff work concerning our individual formulations of and insecurities about Blackness and the admission and revocation of “Black cards”—dancing the wobble and sharing actual gifts from our African and African American ancestors in the work—built a foundation of love among the staff and across the staff-member boundary. This bond seemed to come under assault with the various generational struggles, and we felt as if we had been told to take our “gifts” back to where we came from.

We entertain the hypothesis that both the younger people on staff and in the membership and the older ones on staff wished to be seen, respected, and loved; suffered the injury of having felt overlooked and the discomfort of operating in an unfamiliar methodology or generational space; and suffered a deep sense of hurt and disappointment, even if they grew wiser as a result. What we could not see was that generational dynamics were unconsciously operating on a more powerful level than we could consciously grasp. The envy, longing, contempt (“I guess we’ll just have to wait for you to die,” as one member stated to Dr. Mack), and competition were not broached, but they were felt and recognized.

Black Archetypes of Authority

We also learned about the complex representations of and longing for the familiar archetypes of Black authority in the conference. The staff held diverse understandings of Blackness, which caused some consternation when familiar tropes of Blackness were unavailable. So, what do we know about Black authority in American history and culture?

Associations of Black authority evoke images and expectations of militant, outspoken men—civil rights activists and scholars such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Stokely Carmichael, whom many viewed as strong, uncompromising, and bold. Others include “barbershop” community members such as Jesse Jackson and Johnnie Cochran, models that some have critiqued as reductionist and regressive. These activist archetypes have pervaded our consciousness and informed our ideas about leadership. Black male representations are nuanced and diverse—Barack Obama, Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas, Ben Carson, Cornel West, and Jay-Z. Also differentiated and complex are representations of Black females—for example, Michelle Obama, Condoleezza Rice, Kamala Harris, Oprah Winfrey, Maxine Waters, and Angela Davis—all leaders in their own right, with none occupying the category “Black woman leader.”

Research has addressed barriers to Black women’s leadership and controlling images that perpetuate oppressive discourses (Collins, 1990, 2002, 2004; Dumas, 1980). The Mammy, a strong yet subservient figure who is expected to be nurturing and supportive of white family and social structures, possesses little authority and understands and knows “her place.” This figure captures society’s perception of the ideal Black female relationship to elite white male power—an asexual and loyal figure who denies herself and meets the need of those more powerful. The Sapphire, hypersexual, hot-tempered, and devoid of intellectual and psychological prowess, promotes the sexual exploitation of Black women in service of (white) patriarchal structures. In such images, Black women are cast as asexual mothers or hypersexual whores. Jezebel represents a Black woman who serves or seduces white male structures and is sexually aggressive or deviant. This controlling image has been central to the (unconscious) discursive justification of sexual harassment and violence, which Black women experience at higher rates than any other group (Harris-Perry, 2011; Petrosky et al., 2017).

Forbes (2009) addressed dialectical tensions of commodification and sexualized discourses about Black women who had varied responses to hypersexuality through co-modification: “Black women’s bodies are a contested terrain of organizing, which gives rise to complex dynamics of (con)scription (others’ joint definitions), resistance, (re)definition, and accommodation” (p. 580).

Her study reveals that Black women respond in nuanced and complex ways to shift and engage these images, which in more recent studies are conceptualized as dynamic and fluid. Taken together, these stereotypes operate as a system of controlling discourses that seek to subordinate Black women. Opportunities for leadership are greatly reduced because of the active, (un)conscious resistance to Black female authority necessary to reproduce white male structures. In the conference, no one management team member wholly represented any of these images. In the absence of familiar scripts of Black authority, rage and confusion emerged: What kind of conference is this? What kind of Black man/woman are you? One instance that we thought represented some of this skepticism and doubt was when a white male with a position of authority in the A. K. Rice Institute for the Study of Social Systems, stated that he attended the conference to make sure that the staff did not “mess up” the group relations tradition.

In the large study group led by Dr. Taylor with Dr. Mack and Dr. Forbes as consultants—an all-Black and mostly female authority team—consultations were, for the most part, met with resistance and violence. In one instance, a member who was an attorney described in detail a case in which a rapist stated during his trial that the woman whom he assaulted pleaded with him, “Please. Why are you doing this? I’m a mother,” and mentioned other aspects of her life, hoping it might stir some compassion in him. He, however, responded, “I f— hate my mother!” and continued the assault. As this member recounted the incident, the group gasped and members wept. We consulted with one another about this story and wondered among ourselves what connections might exist between the discursive trends of violence and assault, while studying and learning about Black authority with a mostly female team. We found the (ab)use of power to maim and injure in a way that would have a lasting impact striking, in both word and deed. The members of the large group consulting team expressed in staff debriefs how difficult it had been at times to find their voices. In group relations study and practice, every action represents a cohesive whole of the story of the unconscious, and, as consultants, we offer possible interpretations to guide this study. The team persevered to consult regarding this dynamic, pointing out the potential resistance to Black female authority and the level of aggression being expressed, which could be related to the experience and study of Black authority. In this instance, we also felt some helplessness, sadness, and pain as this narrative was recounted. We empathized with the trauma that others had experienced sexually and felt that it might have been similar to our difficult and complex experience of Black leadership.

The “Other” in the Midst of Blackness

As we learned about generational complexity and the relationship of archetypes to Black authority, we also wondered, Where did the white and Brown people fit in a conference with open membership that focused on the authority of Black people? The data suggests that the Latino and mixed Asian conference members were perhaps unduly burdened in this context. The two Latinas left the conference for a whole day because of a sense of not belonging, experiencing the historically American racial dynamic of Black or white, but not Brown. Later, one of the women shared with the large group that while she was absent, Immigration and Customs Enforcement came to her community, a real-life example of many immigrants’ experiences of the current American political landscape. Who is a legitimate member of America and, by extrapolation, the conference?

An older, experienced, multiethnic member, noticing the absence of the two Latinas on day two, spoke to the large group as if on their behalf, but without their permission, claiming that they left because they did not feel as though they belonged. She formed a group without their authorization, claiming they were members. The women returned and spoke to their feelings of displacement and expressed rage about this member co-opting their voices. Outside, life’s pressures became a cauldron. Inside, they felt obliterated or used; the Brown people ended up fighting with and wiping out each other. For us as an administrative team consisting of all Black members—one immigrant and two based in San Diego (a border city)—we felt torn in our respective roles and somewhat protective of the women who left. Half of us had concrete ties to them, as they were part of an urban leader’s fellowship program that we led for a year. We were concerned and anxious. Would their departure represent our inability to hold the system? Were we leading an enterprise that colluded in an expulsion of that which was not Black as we sought to center Blackness? The immigration tensions are very present to us, as authors, because in our institutions, communities, and social circles there are people whom these crises (in)directly affect. As we studied Black authority, we experienced the interconnectedness of displacement, belonging, and trauma that also characterizes the experiences of Blacks in multiple contexts. We learned more about the intersections among marginalized populations at both the organizational and the larger systems levels.

The white members took up a number of roles, all of which seemed to share an aspect of either taking cover or claiming traditional hierarchical roles: Some white members said nothing throughout the three days. Some focused on the experience of Black people as if it weren’t OK for them to talk about their own experience. Some tried to explain to other white people how to be empathic across the racial divide. One left early and later explained that without an identity with currency (e.g., Jewishness or being gay), the “cost” was too great. And finally, some came with historical white authority, “I came to see if ‘they’ [the Black staff] would mess it up.” As staff, we felt the razor’s edge of being Black authorities in a mixed-race context and scrutinized by both the Black and the white people for missteps.

The theme of white surveillance emerged along with the traditional questioning and challenging of Black competence. We felt on display and tested to some degree, given the comments that were made about reporting on what we did and learning from us, which we read suspiciously as “extract to reuse,” that is, take our ideas and organizational and structural innovations and reuse in another context. We also felt nervous: How well could we accomplish this task of studying and centering Blackness, particularly in this tenuous political moment in the United States?

This experience was made both powerful and excruciating by the emotional connections to one another, the pressure on us, and the (ambivalent) longing for the approval and love of Black authority. Figure 15-2 summarizes our learning from the experience.

Discussion and Implications

The study and experience of Black authority brought with it complex dynamics that were almost uncontainable, including the following:

• Generations/generativity—Born out of great pain and injustice, multigenerational groups and movements converge around common missions, yet across generations, ideas about process, authority structures, and norms sometimes differ. Also evident are the ways in which diverse family, regional, and faith backgrounds intersect with the experience across generations and must be negotiated anew with each effort.
• Sentience/privilege—Complications of connections, love, desire, and important and formative relationships produce tensions with the requirements of the tasks. Through sentience, love and desire either prevail or become the basis from which a sense of deep betrayal can emanate. There are also cultural aspects of connection, respect, age, and values integrated in these dynamics.
• Marginalization/alienation—There are complex dynamics at work in negotiating how to be both authorized and deauthorized or challenged in and out of authority roles as Black, leaders, followers, and participants. For Blacks in positions of authority, the culturally embedded experience of personal and historical oppression is a part of the currency, as are the differentiated experiences of being or feeling marginalized.
• Black authority archetypes—Pervasive stereotypes and images are evoked in and through the unconscious that intersect with the learning and processual experiences of a group relations conference focused on the study of Black authority.

In many respects, the conference represented ongoing adaptive challenges much as posited by Heifetz (1994) and Thomas (1990), who researched Blacks in corporations.

Our work also has implications for the generativity and leadership of (Black) political and social movements: Black Lives Matter; the Women’s March and the reemergence of the women’s movement; the Me Too movement; the Time’s Up movement; the Never Again movement; Concerned Black Men, a group based in Washington, DC; and 2BU (Black and Brown Union), RISE San Diego Leadership Fellows. These movements experience generational tensions and leadership challenges as well. In order to survive and thrive, they must understand and negotiate processes, structures, and norms to achieve their common goals as the multiple intersections of gender, race, age, and other factors complicate these efforts.

The group relations model provides a framework to deconstruct and better understand systemic structures, authority, and their relatedness to historical, sociopolitical, and organizational oppression. Study and exploration of conscious and unconscious dynamics increase our ability to work effectively within and across diverse group and organizational contexts.

Our study and experience of Black authority revealed complicated and nuanced dynamics in “On the Matter of Black Lives.” Our intersectional approach to the group relations model enriched systems theory and practice and offered opportunities to study and learn about political and organizational systems. Our work also informs research about contemporary political movements and invites a deeper exploration of Black leadership and authority.

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