History
In 1947, the National
Training Laboratories Institute
began in Bethel, ME. They pioneered the
use of T-groups (Laboratory Training) in which the learners use here and now experience in the
group, feedback among participants and theory on human behavior to explore group process and
gain insights into themselves and others. The goal is to offer people options for their behavior in
groups. The T-group was a great training innovation which provided the base for what we now
know about team building. This was a new method that would help leaders and managers create
a more humanistic, people serving system and allow leaders and managers to see how their
behavior actually affected others. There was a strong value of concern for people and a desire to
create systems that took people's needs and feelings seriously.
Objectives
of T-Group Learning
The T-Group is
intended to provide you the opportunity to:
Possible Problems
-
T-Group methods
usually encourage self-disclosure and openness, which may
be inappropriate or even punished in organizations. This was an early learning.
When managers thought they could take the T- group method into the back
home organization, they discovered that the methods and the assumptions of a
T-group did not fit. T-groups consisted of participants who were strangers.
They didn't have a history or a future together and could more easily focus on
here and now behavior. Another issue was that in the organization there were
objectives, deadlines and schedules related to accomplishing the work of the
company or group. Groups with a task to accomplish could not take the same
time that would be used in a T-Group. These difficulties helped lead to the
development of Organization Development and team building. What had been
learned in T-Groups was combined with other knowledge and these new
disciplines emerged as ways to address the values raised by the T-Group
experience.
- The T-Group experience can open up a web
of questioning in a participant.
Ways of behaving that the person has used for many years may be called into
question by others in the group and oneself. This has in some cases brought the
participant to question relationships in the family or at work. While this can be a
very constructive process that leads to the renewal of relationships, it has on
occasion lead to the breakdown of a relationship. While such a breakdown
may have, in time, come to the relationship without participation in a T-Group,
it remains a painful and possibly damaging experience.
- Participants being forced or pressured
to attend, by an employer or other
person with influence, are on the whole less likely to have a positive learning
experience. Employers or others who want to require the participation of others
may enhance the chance of having a productive outcome if -- they attend a lab
themselves before sending others; they speak with the lab coordinator before
the event to discuss what might realistically be expected and what the leader
could do to assist in the learning process when the participant returns home.
- Very rarely there have been situations
in which a participant has a psychiatric
problem. One report said "The possibility of negative psychiatric effects of ST,
and especially its role in inducing psychiatric symptoms, is yet to be clarified."
This reinforces the value of participation based on intrinsic motivation; a norm
that discourages people in therapy from attending without the approval of their
therapist; and trainers staying focused on the learning areas suited for T-Group
experiences.
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1. Dialogue This!
