Group Dynamics and Facilitation

Using the Knowledge to Design the Facilitation Process

After writing about the Facilitation Star and Facilitation Competency Wheel and putting them onto my blog, several facilitators had asked me about the things they should be mindful of when putting together the facilitation process for a facilitated event.

I had suggested the need of finding out from the participants about their learning profiles. While this is a piece of good information, facilitators need to know more. Our understanding of group dynamics is useful.

What is group dynamics? This is a branch of social psychology that studies the psychodynamics of a social group.

Amongst social scientists who had studied group dynamics, Dr Bruce Tuckman's model of Team Development provides a good framework in helping us comprehend the impact of a team's growth and maturity has on the psyche and psychodynamics of its members.

According to Tuckman, he believes that one of the four stages teams have to go through before delivering high performance is the storming phase.

Watch this video clip and try answering the following questions:

• Who was leading?
• With whom were they aligning themselves with?
• Who was playing the ‘credential’ game?
• Who was competing based on his own personal agenda?
• Who had fought?
• Who had taken flight?

Some teams are stuck in the storming stage for a long time and many never pass it, which eventually cause them to be reconstituted or disbanded. As faciltiators, we must be aware of the stage the team is currently at and apply the most appropriate facilitation process to the participants we are facilitating.

I have create a set of slides on group dynamics and their impact on facilitation.

Group Dynamics and Facilitation

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: design processes)

In these slides, I have introduced a design guide, which facilitators could use to shape their thoughts when they develop their facilitation methodologies. Facilitators must attempt to discourage disruptive behaviours and conflicts brought about during the earlier stages of the team's development and towards the later stages of its growth we must be careful not to let the groupthink gets in the way.

I have also suggested the psyches team members could experience at each stage of their growth. These may be good indicators for detecting and determining the position of the team.

This article was written by Anthony Mok on 9 Nov 2008.
Copyright 2008. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.