T-Groups, Trust, Leadership and Management

Why are personal issues relevant in a professional setting?   How do our internal dynamics shape our external effectiveness as leaders and managers?  When designing leadership and management training programs, is it even necessary to address internal issues, or should we focus on external behaviors that are visible to others?

One of the most profound influences on my professional and personal growth has been my participation in "T-groups," an interpersonal training methodology (the "T" stands for "training") developed by social psychologist Kurt Lewin.  I first participated in a T-group through the Interpersonal Dynamics class at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, and over the past two months I've been co-facilitating a T-group consisting of second-year MBA students who are taking the same class (generally known as "Touchy Feely.")

I believe that the class's emphasis on the disclosure of personal issues is deeply relevant to my work of developing leaders and managers, but recently I've been asking myself why.  What's the mechanism by which participation in a T-group translates into greater effectiveness as a leader or manager?

First, I begin with the premise that trust = motive + reliability + competence.  We can discern others' reliability and competence from external signals, but we can only understand their motives by having candid (and thus difficult) conversations with them about internal (and often quite personal) issues.

Trust is so important in an organization because of the difference between alignment and agreement.  When people in an organization trust each other, alignment is sufficient for decision-making purposes (i.e. everyone can fully support a choice that's made, even if it's not their first choice.)  But when they don't trust each other, their skepticism or fear often compel them to require agreement (i.e. everyone has to get their first choice in order to proceed willingly.)  It's obviously much easier to obtain alignment, so if an organization can operate on that basis, it's going to be much more productive.

T-groups allow people to come together in a professional setting, have candid and difficult conversations about internal and personal issues, and in the process develop powerful bonds of trust. People do get a lot of valuable feedback in T-groups about communication mechanics, means of gaining and losing influence, and similar dynamics that could be replicated in a less personal setting, such as a workshop focused on external behaviors.

But they also get hands-on experience asking and answering challenging questions on personal topics, which allows them to practice having difficult conversations when emotions are running high and being authentic in order to develop trusting relationships with colleagues.  Those dynamics are unique to T-groups (or at the very least would be difficult to replicate in a typical behavioral workshop.)

Do people grasp how to do these things skillfully after taking a single class?  No--and if my experience is any guide, it's a lifelong process.  Do students come out of the class and apply these techniques unskillfully and even inappropriately?  Absolutely--but they have to make those mistakes if they're going to continue learning.

I don't view this as an either/or proposition.  I'm a big fan of workshops, role plays, video analysis and other techniques that allow us to better understand how our external behaviors are perceived by others and how they enhance or diminish our effectiveness.  That said, I also believe that these training tools have the greatest impact when they're complemented by something like a T-group that addresses internal issues as well as external behaviors and allows to better understand the connections between them.

Comments

[Steve Roesler]

Hello, Ed,

Thanks for resurrecting the T-group. Many years ago I had what could only be described as a breakthrough experience as a result of a group. It did not happen IN the group, but as a result of the candid feedback and introspection that followed. Eventually, I ended up running some T-groups for doctoral candidates in OD.

At the risk of going out on a huge limb, much of what passes as 360 feedback is a watered down version of the T-group. The lack of intensity, relationship, and trust-building makes it a lot more difficult to have an AHA! experience unless one is very introspective and committed to growth.

Kudos on the post. And I do hope that the new role there at Stanford is proving to be a satisfying one.

[Ed Batista]

Thanks, Steve. I've also found that the learning from T-groups continues long after the formal group experience is over. A T-group is a lab in which I'm both the researcher AND the subject--I'm paying close attention to the ways in which I interact with people, and I file away a lot of data that results from those interactions. After the group is over, I don't necessarily go through daily life maintaining such a heightened sense of awareness about my interpersonal interactions, but I'm still able to refer back to the data generated by the T-group. And on certain occasions, an interaction will trigger a memory of a T-group experience. I didn't fully understand what happened at the time, but in hindsight it suddenly makes sense.

And my Leadership Coach work at Stanford has been incredibly rewarding--I feel very lucky to be part of the team here. Thanks again!

Ed

[Charles H. Green]

Ed,

Don't know why I'm running across this posting so late, but glad I did. Very good thinking here, thank you.

My own equation for trust is similar (credibility plus reliability plus intimacy, all divided by self-orientation). Your model and mine both include intentions--what you call motive.

That component--unlike reliability and competence--has a lot to do with one's innermost psyche, and with our ability to connect with another. To my mind, this explains why a T-group format is so powerful; it forces people to reveal of themselves (which the "intimacy" factor on my model speaks to), and to do so in the presence of others, recognizing how the doing also affects them.

Transparency is the social manifestation of the personal virtue of intimacy. It is a key part of trust at the organizational level.

The business world needs such kinds of work as an antidote to the dry, linear, cognitive, process-based approaches which dominate the landscape. Thanks for the testimonial.

[Ed Batista]

Thanks, Charles. I really like the parallel you draw between intimacy at the personal level and transparency at the social or organizational level. Those qualities--intimacy and transparency--are clearly related, but I hadn't seen the connection in those terms before.

Ed