Patterns of the grouping process

V.V.Gulenko , 11.05.1998, Kiev

The group can arise immediately, or it can be assembled "brick by brick".

Movement occurs either from small groups to large, or in the opposite direction - from large to small. I will consider in this article only the first way - through the gradual quantitative growth of the composition and debugging of the internal network of relations in the group.

From a large group to a small one: through the formation of individual groups within the mass of people over time. Then just cut off those people who did not fit into any of them. However, you will not receive such controllability and targeted formability as in the first case.

Mandatory prerequisite: not to include in the process of team-building people with extreme manifestations of character (accentuation): too sociable or very closed, inexorable truth-seekers or complete opportunists, visionaries not from this world or hardened materialists.

1. How the dyad interacts

A small group begins with a dyad - a bunch of two people. The dyad is an elementary link, from the set of which the team is “assembled”. A dyad, unlike subsequent operations, cannot be “assembled” by a technical method. It can only be “grown” as seedlings in a greenhouse. The thing is that in the dyad the subjective-emotional factor prevails over the objective-rational.

In order for the pair to converge, two issues need to be addressed:

Firstly, both must reach out to each other: T. Leary’s friend motive, mutual emotional choice according to J. Moreno. Informal (informal) side of grouping.

The attraction of opposites. The emotional reaches for the neutral, the romantic to the pragmatist.

Often the only criterion that people are guided by when they make a choice is the physical appearance of a person or the similarity of his lifestyle and habits with yours. In fact, if similarity is important for establishing relationships, then complementing and deepening requires complementarity (complementarity).

One of the reasons why many companies become one-sided and quickly lose their initial effectiveness is the natural inclination of a person to create an environment of people like themselves.

Secondly, one must assume the role of leader (leader), the other - the slave. This is the second motive of rallying people according to T.Liry - the property of dominance in relationships. It holds the formal (official) side of the group.

If both are equal, and this means that there is no fixed leadership, then the couple is encapsulated - it becomes closed, immune to external tasks. Just self-replicating.

A harmonious dyad is schematically depicted as follows (the arrow points from leading to driven):

X - - - - -> X

With such an organization of communication, the dyad has the necessary energy for expansive behavior. The actual integration of the group is carried out primarily in the course of the joint activities of its members.

2. Expansion of the dyad to the triad

Let's take a gradual build up of the group. The third person to join the dyad must be the competitor of the slave. Repulsion due to similarity. Then the competition is to take a place closer to the leader. Leadership is consolidated in this way, because the intermediate participant becomes a liaison .

In the triad, polarization occurs due to the repulsion of similar poles, supplemented by their mutual attraction to the third participant, who plays the leading role. The well-known dialectical scheme "thesis - antithesis - synthesis" is being implemented. Purposeful energy potential.

Let's take a closer look at the requirements for the bonder who heads and cements the group. In social psychology, if we use the terms of B. Beylza, we distinguish business and popular (emotional) leaders.

This means that the two participants in the triad must be ethics, and the binder must be a logician. Then there is the normal situation of business leadership. The second option: two extreme participants of logic. Then the binder must be an ethic. The situation of popular leadership.

Schematically, the triad looks like this (on the left, when the leader is the logic, the ethic leads in the right triad):

                        L E
                      / \ / \
                    / \ / \
                   E E L L

The slaves are located on the step below the leader, the extreme ones are shifted to the left and right relative to the average.

Why do not we consider the four? The fact is that adding a fourth member makes the group more stable, but less effective. She begins to work on herself.

In the four there is a closed loop, in which there is no focused leadership. Leadership scattered, or relay.

Quaternary (and in a broader sense, 1 is even 0 structures) work well for stabilization, but do not create special development incentives. They are competitive in the mature, late stages of development of groups, when the goals of expansion recede into the background compared to the values ​​of calmness and smoothness.

3. Expansion of the triad to the seven

At the same time build another floor. For the integration of two triples, one more participant is needed who assumes the role of coordinating downstream leaders. A liaison officer.

This implies a certain pattern of career growth. The addition of a vertical career will be considered optimal, that is, promotion from a subordinate position to a higher, horizontal career - moving to an equivalent position, but in a different typological environment.

Seven to eight people is the numerical limit of the contact group. Such a group where communication takes place “face to face” - often and deeply. Above this boundary, the danger of a split into subgroups begins to grow, the aspirations of which are difficult to reconcile with each other.

In a group of seven or eight people according to the experiments of the American psychologist S. Asha, which he conducted as early as 1951, there is the greatest conformism - the subordination of an individual member of the group to collective opinion. By conformism is meant voluntary adherence to group norms, and not servility. It is not by chance that Japanese managers make up their famous “quality circles” at enterprises precisely from this number of employees.

As a result, we have the following structure of a normally established seven:

                                L
                              / \
                            Uh
                          / \ / \
                        L l l l

If both are contacts in triads of ethics or both logics, then there are no problems in determining the general leader of the seven. They will be the type of the opposite direction. But if one of the leaders of the triads of ethics, and the other - the logic, how to be then? The decisive word is left to the task for which the team is being formed.

If the essence of the goal facing the team is impersonal-technical, then it is better to be headed by a logician. If the team has to act on the relationship, with a predominance of orientation towards the person, then this will be a more effective leader.

Two-tier control system. Quite mobile.

4. Design and launch units

What could be the preparation for the formation of a coherent team? Under the team, I understand a team in which tasks are performed together, and not scattered. Collaborative work: did your part of the work, give way to another. Not only a common goal, but also the synchronization of actions.

When workers act on their own, then authoritarian leadership is better suited. Co-ordination is more appropriate by force, otherwise a lot of time will be lost on self-organization. The ability to quickly force to follow the instructions. And in case of exceeding the tension beyond the dangerous mark, discharge the steam by treating the scapegoats. This situation is the norm for primitive groups.

The driving force in the team is not the fear of punishment (fine, loss of workplace, demotion, etc.), but kratennost - creative achievements.

Preparation begins at the analysis stage. An inventory of the existing typological composition is made. Based on available human resources, all possible dyads based on the principle of complementarity are compiled. This is a slow process. Each candidate is familiarized with the personological characteristics of three or four dyads.

In the course of such an interview, the candidate must assess his place in the system of relations. He gives answers to the question: to whom would you obey, who would you take to lead, and with whom would you be on an equal footing and why?

As a result, he was introduced into the triad, which he estimated adequately. Then, with the leaders of the triads formed in this way, a similar comparative work is carried out. The leader of the second stage is the one who, close to the expected, has estimated the distribution of roles among the leading triad.

In order to speed up the process of drawing up dyads, communicative training is conducted, and then, using a sociometric method, pairs of mutual choice are identified. You can immediately identify the triads in which two participants choose the third, but they are indifferent to one another. Immediately after this, more complex training is conducted on the coordination of the two sevens.

It is inexpedient to take a larger number of sevens, because the second limit on the number of small groups — about fourteen people — will be exceeded. In such a already rather heterogeneous group, a group discussion goes well. But joint proactive actions of everyday nature are impossible.

Finally, all this complex and time-consuming work could be put to chance. What happens partially or completely in most real-life organizations. But then the repressed and distorted processes of natural self-organization will declare themselves periodic, difficult to explain failures and conflicts.

The technocratic approach, utterly expressed in Taylorism, gives way to E. Meio’s “doctrine of human relations”. However, the humanization of economic relations in our society is still far away, so we are talking about some kind of compromise position between the orientation towards the task and the orientation towards the person. A measure of compromise between hardness and gentleness is determined by the leader himself, depending on his psychological readiness to accept the values ​​of a post-industrial society.

L I T E R A T U R A:

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3. Management is a science and art: A.Fayol, G.Emerson, F.Taylor, G.Ford. - M .: Republic, 1992.
4. O. Kreger, J. M. Tewson. Types of people and business. How 16 personality types determine your success at work. M .: Perseus - Veche - AST, 1995.