Sociometry

[Effie Best]

Laure,
You may be interested in the way Diana Jones in New Zealand uses  
sociometry in her work with organisations. Her website is at http://www.sociometry.co.nz/

On 02/08/2008, at 2:08 AM, Adam Blatner wrote:

> 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
>
>
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Effie Best
7/101 Sturt St
Adelaide  SA 5000
effieb at merlin.net.au