Sociometry

[Adam Blatner]

Dear Laure, (re  "Laure Gargano" <lgargano at ptd.net>   )  you asked, on July 31, 2008 :  I 
am most curious how I can apply these methods to team build in a clinical work 
environment? I am hoping to gain a better understanding of the existing relationships - 
and attempt to correlate that into understanding the roles each of the middle managers 
play in our organizational structure.. .. Why would I want to that??? Well - I want to 
work toward creating an environment that accesses and promotes individual creativity and 
learn how to better access individual talents/creativity to benefit each team. (there are 
seven clinical teams, and then medical/physical plant has three teams) I am equally 
curious about utilizing role theory as a construct to engage in clinical supervision with 
the therapists and team supervisors. So any
> information any of you have to share - or articles to review I would greatly appreciate 
> it!

    Adam: 1. First, curious is not a sufficient motive, because it edges into wanting to 
manipulate, or at least it may well be perceived as being that by your work-colleagues! 
Sociometry involves everyone involved pooling their subjective and objective observations 
and deciding together what to do about it!
      2. What have you read about sociometry?  Have you read my paper on tele on my 
website? Other papers on sociometry? That's a warm-up. Also to get Ann's book available 
from the Toronto collective (last I heard).

       3. Your interests, though, bring up a number of points to make:
              a. The roles a middle manager may play---in terms of work or task 
description--- may not correlate well with the group roles that are played, and these 
psycho-social (not task) roles can operate in such a way as to strengthen or weaken the 
official roles.
        How a given manager might see her role might differ from how others perceive her!
                  It's really quite complex, sort of the psychoanalysis of the 
small-medium-sized group. All the expectations, conscious and unconscious, all the 
limitations of consciousness and efforts at consciousness-raising, and so forth, all 
relate to each other.

             b. Warming up the group to being interested in exploring this arena takes a 
lot of work and often is not possible. Who wants to examine such things? It's only likely 
to hurt your feelings, or so you might well think. What would make you want to know rather 
than prefer not to know? How confident are you that the process or leader is likely to be 
able to get past all sorts of asymmetric psychological and social dynamics so that there's 
enough of a good chance for a positive result and a high probability that complications 
won't be deeply emotionally costly.  I'm pretty wary---I don't know anyone who I would 
trust to be able to intervene with, say, my community, in order to be able tp deal the the 
varieties of limited and low consciousness of people on various committees, etc.

      In summary, I see sociometry as being a field that is being practiced in smaller and 
larger ways here and there, not much, and a field in need of a great deal of refinement, 
writing articles and papers, and so forth.
       Don't get me wrong. While I have reservations about how mature it is, I think the 
general questions and arena of exploration involved in sociometry are supremely relevant 
to the advance of the psycho-social sciences and general contemporary understanding.    I 
hope this is helpful. Warmly, Adam