The Dangers of Mixed Mode

Recent consulting conversations have me thinking about meeting design, group dynamics and productive work. Research meets practice in a short article I’ve just adapted from the writing of Bob Rehm and Merrelyn Emery:

The self-organizing workplace and Open Space approach run on the group dynamics researched by Wilfred Bion over fifty years ago. Bion discovered that when people come together they establish a group quickly. We see this all time in Open Space when a diverse group with sparse existing connections quickly comes to know itself as a “team” or “community.”

A group or community is not just a collection of individuals. A group is a separate entity with its own dynamics and behaviors, and it operates on certain assumptions. Bion observed that, at any given time, a group operates out of only one of two possible modes. The group is EITHER in a productive work mode OR a basic assumption mode.

Fred and Merrelyn Emery applied Bion’s insights to workplace design, in their search conference and participative design processes. This adaptation of their writing extends these insights to the design and practice of OpenSpaceTech meetings and events.

As soon as the facilitator or leader “steps into” or otherwise “takes control” of the process, even for the most well-meaning interventions, everyone starts deciding, moment-to-moment if they will submit to being “in control” or dare to step “out of control.” In that moment, the momentum of productive work and felt sense of active, personal responsibility are in danger, as everyone has to choose between what they personally understand as productive work on the task and the structure that is being imposed by the leader or facilitator.

Why force that choice? Why intervene in productive work?

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