❚❘ TYPES OF GROWTH GROUPS John E. Jones In the field of human relations training there is considerable confusion over terminology among both professionals and the public. The most obvious example of a failure to use a common language is the term, “sensitivity training.” To some people that term connotes brainwashing, manipulation, and a host of other horrid activities. To others the term refers to a technology of helping people to grow in self-understanding from analyzing their experience in social situations. To others the term carries the meaning, “feel and reveal.” There are many other connotations attached to the term sensitivity training, and, because it has such surplus meaning, it is for all practical purposes a garbage term. There is a need for consumers of groups—that is, prospective participants and people who hire group consultants—to have realistic expectations when they elect to invest in the group approach. There are important differences among various categories of groups commonly found in the human potential movement, and it is very useful for the public to understand what those differences are. A major reason why making distinctions among the various types of groups can be useful is that the various group strategies are not equally appropriate in all learning situations. The counseling group can be highly appropriate as an intervention in the lives of young people in school, where the emphasis is on their personal development; whereas, a more therapy-oriented approach may place too great an emphasis on personal deficiencies or may be inappropriate for a variety of other reasons. There are also political reasons why distinctions among different types of groups are important. The counselor in the school is taking a large risk if he describes his counseling groups as T- groups, since most parents are not equipped to understand the distinction and may have been propagandized by the mass media to think negatively of the T-group experience. Some of the distinctions among the more common types of groups found in the human-potential movement today are very real in practice, and some have an aura of arbitrariness about them; that is, the distinctions are in terms of degree rather than kind. An analogy may help. There are two times during the day when we cannot say for sure whether it is day or night: At dawn and during the twilight hours we cannot say with complete confidence that it is day or that it is night. Nevertheless, we find the two terms, day and night, to be enormously useful. While there are rather large commonalities among T-groups, counseling groups and other kinds of groups, there are some differences that are useful to explore. These very often represent differences in the Originally published in The 1972 Annual Handbook for Group Facilitators by J.W. Pfeiffer & J.E. Jones (Eds.), San Diego, CA: Pfeiffer & Company. The Pfeiffer Library Volume 13, 2nd Edition. Copyright ©1998 Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer ❚❘ 1 degree of emphasis on a particular method or a particular learning goal, and often different types of groups look similar and are experienced very much alike. The dimensions that will be considered to differentiate the selected types of groups are goals, time orientation, the settings in which they are found, the roles of facilitators, and the usual clientele to whom the group experience is offered. MAJOR TYPES The major types of groups that have been selected for analysis are the T-group (training group), the encounter group, the marathon group, the therapy group, and the counseling group. Figure 1 represents a summary of the major distinctions between these types of groups. There is no attempt to make exhaustive lists of the variety of types of groups that are available in the human-potential movement today, such as developmental groups, emergent groups, transactional-analysis groups, etc. GROUP TYPE TRAINING ENCOUNTER MARATHON THERAPY COUNSELING DIMENSION To develop To develop To break To increase To develop GOALS awareness and awareness and down coping effective skill-building genuineness defenses planning skills TIME Here and now Here and now Here and now Past and Present and ORIENTATION plus plus present future Education, All over All over Clinical Educational SETTING business ROLE OF Model and Model and Confront Treat Facilitate group FACILITATOR scan confront aggressively helpfulness “Normals” Anyone Anyone People “Normals” CLIENTELE deficient in coping Figure 1. Summary of Types of Growth Groups Training Groups The major objectives of a T- or training group are awareness and skill building. The objectives center around helping the individual participants to grow in increased awareness of their feeling experience, of their reaction to other people, of their impact on other people, of how others impact them, and in their awareness of how people interrelate and of how groups operate. In terms of skills, the objectives are to improve one’s ability to listen to people, to understand them empathically (to put oneself in their shoes, so to speak), to be more effective in expressing what is going on with oneself, and to improve one’s own skill in responding to other people when attempting to give them feedback. The major goals, then, are increased awareness and increased skills in 2 ❘❚ The Pfeiffer Library Volume 13, 2nd Edition. Copyright ©1998 Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer interpersonal relations. The goals also include understanding group process (i.e., becoming more cognizant of trends, unacknowledged relations and communications, functional roles, and so on). There are two major types of T-group trainers: those who emphasize the personal growth of the individual participant in terms of awareness and skills and those who take as their primary objective helping people to learn about how groups operate, how societies form, and how communities develop. In terms of time orientation, the T-group is distinguished from all the rest of the types that will be discussed in this paper by a rather rigid adherence to what is called the “here and now.” There is no history-taking, no story-telling, and no future-planning activity. The entire energy of the group is focused on the immediate present, trying to find that reality, and discussing it openly with each other. T-groups are most commonly found in educational and business settings. The educational settings are usually in teacher training, in-service education, and higher education. Very little T-group work is done, as such, with elementary and secondary school students. In fact, it can be argued that the T-group is largely an inappropriate intervention into the lives of children and early and middle adolescents. It is generally felt that the giving and receiving of open, honest feedback about feeling reactions to one’s behavior requires that the participants have a certain amount of ego strength and stability in their view of themselves. T-groups have long been a part of managerial training; however, in recent years there has been a retrenchment from wide (occasionally indiscriminate) use of T-groups in industries. Managers and other people in business and industry experienced subtle coercion into participating in T-groups, and the effects of T- groups on managerial development were sometimes negative, or at least not positive. The development of a set of theories and strategies called organization development has largely supplanted the misuse of T-groups in business and industry; however, the appropriate use of them can be found as a part of the repertoire of organization development specialists and consultants in the business and industrial arena. The role of the facilitator in a T-group is to participate and to provide some leadership in helping people to get in touch with themselves and to share openly with each other. Two major approaches that T-group trainers use are modeling and scanning. These ideas are described most aptly by Schein and Bennis (1965). The T-group trainer who models is a person who tries to be as open as he or she can be, gives feedback, solicits feedback, and tries to be, in short, an ideal participant. This trainer does not run things, but simply attempts to be as open and sensitive as possible. The T-group trainer who adopts the role of scanner is a person who participates less as a person and more as a professional. This is a person who monitors the dynamics of the group’s development and comments on the processes that he or she sees. This trainer is more aloof from the interaction, more authoritative in approach, and likely to be a person whose major interest is more in getting people to learn some model of social interaction than in getting people to be more open and sensitive. Both modeling and scanning are necessary to group training to various degrees, depending on the needs of the individual group, and The Pfeiffer Library Volume 13, 2nd Edition. Copyright ©1998 Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer ❚❘ 3 many T-group trainers assume both roles with varying emphasis during the life of the group. The clientele for T-groups is that broad range of people who are colloquially called “normal.” Egan (1970) describes some of the psychopathology of being normal in Encounter. For purposes of this discussion, the term “normal” describes that person who gets along in everyday existence without significant assistance from other people. His or her level of coping is sufficient to accomplish his or her objectives. In addition, this is a person who does not ordinarily distort the reality of the situations in which he or she finds himself or herself. There is no precise technical definition of normality that has been agreed on by those in the helping professions. What we are concerned with in the T-group are people who encounter and respond appropriately to everyday concerns.