Fw: sociometric analysis

[Ann Hale]

To Ivo and Adam, and interested others

    I see belonging as a cyclical process, as well as a process involving self-propelling energy and reciprocity.  When we are successful, defined as ending up belonging in a way which both enriches and challenges us creatively, we tuck away the learning hoping it will help us the next time we identify a place we want to belong. There is no guarentee this will work in the same way next time, or somewhere else.

   The experience of not belonging brings self doubt, possibly and frequently projection onto the system and those who do belong, and loss of understanding of the positives which come along with not belonging. These are, a position within a group which is peripheral, allows for another view of the group as a whole, an opportunity to role-reverse with outsiders.  It is also a place to reflect of the reality of belonging in a new way, transforming one's position, feeling ones difference, and gathering strength from feeling the position to create a new place for oneself, and new role repertoire for the group.

When the position of not belonging is fraught with attack, ridicule, wanting without having, then the patterns of these behaviors which are coping as best they can, need to be reviewed in a friendly and accepting asmosphere.  Such as, having someone ask you how you came to feel this way about an organization or group.  Ivo, I appreciate so much your attention to having feeling be part of the investigation.

Within ASGPP there is a lack of spontaneity and creativity applied to the process of giving recognition. Psychodrama is heavily performance oriented, and many people are attracted to it because it provides an opportunity to shine, to be "on". Unfortunately, if praise , celebration and recognition is not forthcoming there is disappointment and hurt.  Within ASGPP recognitions seems to be limited to (1) applause; (2) gag gifts; (3) an award; (4) naming something after someone; (5) and my least favorite, asking you to do even more.  This is fairly standard for organizations.   It takes energy and thought, and role reversal to find a new way to offer recognition to lots of people in new and personal ways.

The less we seek ways to engage with one another around difference and judgments we make about them, the greater we burden ourselves withn unfinished business.



----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Ivo Banaco 
  To: Adam Blatner ; Grouptalk Listserv 
  Sent: Monday, December 29, 2008 5:03 PM
  Subject: Re: sociometric analysis


  Hi Adam and all,

  It's funny that Adam brought this complex issue as I am just spinning my head with just this. My thoughts: 

  This problem can be seen as the individual subjective perception versus the cultural/social dynamics and patterns. This is always our body material versus the conserve.

  When a person feel some sort of uncomfortable feeling about some sort of dynamics we have a problem to solve. We always have an organized pattern/cultural conserve to interact with. This dynamic, I feel, is seldom stable; it mixes a lot of things and various types of truths. Whether a person says to you "I feel that in your organization are clear political rivalries" a thing to ask to that person is what are your feelings about that? From this feeling we should catch an important thing that all this post-modernism era banish – From what level of awareness this person is talking from. It could be from some unresolved issues (disowned unconscious material) or could come from a place that takes a critical awareness which could lead eventually to some good and constructive opinions. Also, we can choose to not go to a party both because we see "above" the hypothetically emptiness of the event but also to avoid that old feeling of "not fitting". Both post-formal awareness and childish reactions/ transference could be in this game. Ideally, the person should be in the party and play with all that! I think the concept of tele capture this well in the sense that Tele includes both the "truth" and the pathological.

  This leads me to another topic: Do we believe in evolution or just deconstruction and new constructions, with no true moving forward. This entire problem about Parental transference, expectations versus actual experience, etc, it's all related to some group dynamics that can evolve, destroyed, be stuck, it can happen virtually anything. Taking an evolutionary approach I would say that a transparent leadership (point 4 of Adam Blatner) or "Lack of Warm Recognition" (point 6) and all the upper/down relationships (but also horizontal relationships) demands an awareness that rises above, but also play with it in order to evolve. We are "IT" but also more, if we believe that creativity is endogenous to humans.  

  In some trends this problem of awareness, this rising above is viewed like a sophisticated type of narcissism, but I don't think this is right. On the contrary, I think that this is what makes possible persons and cultures to evolve.

  About Marginal competence, roles. I relate that with the well known multiple intelligences of Howard Gardner. Again the question is do you know yourself enough to pursuit the best you can give to life. (This is also an Economic question – China you couldn't produce and export the entire stuff of the world even if you could. China should produce, in a given time only what you can do relatively better – you have to know what it is). But also don't be afraid of try it all. Learn to learn…

  Generally people don't know themselves, so they react to events rather that act. When it comes to leadership this could be rather toxic. The bad leaders (often the majority) tend to protect their vulnerabilities (avoiding both delegate and learning with a beginner's mind) and repress, attack the lower hierarchies. With awareness the lower could both discern and appreciate the qualities and courage of the higher (discerning also the bad things), setting also the possibilities of the higher. At the same time the higher could also do the same, setting the probabilities of the lower (perhaps the ones that want to climb the ladder or just pursuing what he feels it's best for him).

  Without awareness (We could define this better), the "Sociodynamic effect" will still have his apparently  random and dysfunctional form.

  And on, and on, and on…

  To all a Great 2009,

  Ivo



  On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 4:58 PM, Adam Blatner <ablatner at verizon.net> wrote:

    (About 7 paragraphs about systems analysis):
            Hi, All. Happy New Year. 
                  I thought I'd throw out something that interests some of you. A friend was talking about the ASGPP and said that she or he was bothered by "the political rivalries,cliques and all that" --- and I found this analysis inadequate.
           I've heard this analysis before, and maybe it's so, but it occurs to me that maybe this is a culturally conserved perception of a group whose dynamics are unsatisfying and obscure. What I mean, and why I'm motivated to share this with you, is that I suspect there may be all sorts of other reasons groups or organizations can have problems without there being any clear political rivalries or much in the way of the power or negative power of cliques.
             First, I don't perceive clear political rivalries or cliques of any significant power. I don't think that's what is going on. Instead, here are some further comments (if you wish to read further):

                 Would grouptalk be considered a clique? How do we know when we're "in" or not? 
        I confess my possible naivete---and I'm getting a bit better as I think about all this, but still am not entirely sure--- in thinking that so far I have a different analysis of the ASGPP group dynamics. (Also, I suspect from many different conversations that what I will say may apply equally to the national societies for different countries, for the drama therapists, and for many if not most organizations in general!)
        Second, the key point is to recognize that there may be many sources of disorganization, dystfunction, or perceived dysfunction. Here are some thoughts:

    1. A discrepancy between conscious or unconscious expectation and what is then experienced. One category for this is the desire for feeling recognized and included. They're keeping me out because they're a clique. Very age 14 or so. What about the possibility that I might be able to gain entry rather easily just by participating, by daring to participate?  Oh, no, they'd exclude me. Cop out  I suspect this happens far more than folks realize. As I say, some of this may be unconscious.

    2. Similarly, what is desired and what can be reasonably delivered: "They should..." assumes that they could, that the job can be done. Just because someone runs for office in situations when most folks are thinking "Whoa, I wouldn't want that job!" doesn't mean that they (Obama?) knows how ahead of time to guarantee fix it! Sometimes taking more responsibility means simply "I'm willing to step up to the plate and do what I can."  Well, there's a lot of parental transference here: We all know (or believed at one point) that mum and dad could make it all better. If things were not all better, well, that proves that they don't love us, because if they did, well, they'd make it all better now, wouldn't they? The awareness that they can not, they don't know how, they don't have the resources, or that it's bigger than any single person---well that's inconceivable. At what age does it get to be not only conceivable, but the default way to think? For some, never, alas. I suggest that this also applies to the way folks think about group, organizational, and national politics.

    3. Marginal competence. I think that many roles are complex, consisting of a goodly number of sub-roles and sometimes sub-sub-roles. In marriage, parenting, managing, and even as a student taking many different subjects, there is a range of competence: We're good at some things, medium at many, poor at some, and everyone has a different profile. We're often unaware of what we're not so good at, or at least some of the things, and so pretend to be good at everything. Sometimes we can coast along doing what we're good at and it works, but then a situation comes up where we're not good and we don't know it and we fail to delegate or get help or consultation and mess it up. Whose fault is that? Obviously, the other guy's fault, or "them"---because since we meant well, that should cover our own incompetence (or in cases where high competence was needed, our merely okay-ness, or marginal competence). 

         (I wonder how many therapists ever had the courage to say to a client, "Maybe the reason you're suffering in this role is that you don't really have the skills, talent, stamina or other what-it-takes to fulfill this role.") 

    4. Applied to organizations, what if our leaders have this same (really quite normal) distribution of role skills. What do we do when we find our leader, our pioneer, our elder, our ideal, has faults? Do we see Moreno, for example, as having feet of clay? That metaphor implies the entire edifice of his good ideas is based on his weaknesses, and as they are exposed, so falls the edifice. Or what if we grant (using a different metaphor) that many if not most heroes were heroic or genius or really pretty good in some ways and in other ways may exhibit character flaws, inconsistencies, what we see now as hypocrisy (How could Thomas Jefferson have kept slaves?!), etc.?

    5. My base-line expectation is that folks who "should" know or know how or be perfect are just doin' the best they can. Stepping up to the plate and offering leadership is admirable. The problem, though, is how transparent the system is so that higher ups can get feedback from the lower-downs? 

      I suspect that a major role for contemporary managers is that of building up feedback systems in which subordinates are not afraid to speak up and be heard. This kind of communication is needed. Also needed is the ability for leaders or managers not to feel torn up / down by criticisms---because a significant number of criticisms are insufficiently specific, mis-diagnosed, lack diplomacy or tact, impugn motivations, and are in other ways not-optimally constructive---if not outright destructive. So a leader has to build that into her system, too, not just in terms of resiliency, but communications among the various leaders giving support. (Think of what a clinic staff needs to do to avoid burn-out.)

    6. Part of system dysfunction is lack of warm recognition up and down the status ladder. Lots of people in many systems are still fixated in their surly adolescent role and don't feel the moral obligation to thank others explicitly and clearly for what good is being done. This is the art of tact. (I'm appalled to discover that this is painfully true among elders, people who "should know better." Apparently caught up in their own feelings of victimhood and reacting to their own unconscious feelings of limited power, it's easy to blame or displace on secretaries and other intermediaries. Many people at all ages don't know the political realities of whom to complain to in order to get the best response---and also how to complain or seek redress or adjustment. Political art is not taught much or respected much in our culture.)

    7. Perhaps most prevalent and subtly influential: Group cohesion and group morale overlap a lot, and group morale overlaps also with morale in other fields---family, personal finances, the numbers of people coming to your workshops, if they fill at all; how's life, how are other people in your life dealing with the economic downturns? How busy are you just trying to make a living? 
         As things get tough, people pull in a bit. What's the pay-off in over-extending yourself? Less surplus energy is given over to helping the needs of the larger groups. Less money for charity, less participation in professional organizations. A 3% decline is felt, at least unconsciously, and it tends to lead to further reciprocated withdrawl. If you don't want to play, then I won't either. 

          I don't question that, speaking of the USA, that the present (and soon-to-be-replaced) national political administration has been for many people a profound source of demoralization. Many people in the fields of psychology tend to be liberal, and this group has been targeted and denigrated. The hope of a renewal is there. It may be that the new administration may exhibit leadership and policies that again redound to an overall lift in morale and participation. We should not underestimate such general flows of psychic energy.

       -   -   -
    And on and on. Your comments could add to this. To summarize, the simplistic diagnoses are prevalent and profoundly misleading, feeding residual teen-aged complexes of "them" and us, images of what the school faculty, parents, society, and others are doing to make life more complex than it needs to be. The truth is that they are doing all they can to improve things, but in fact they cannot do much more, or go much faster, because 82% of them haven't a clue how to improve things; and of the other 18%, half or more have what seem to be bright ideas that are in fact quite misleading or flat wrong; and those who will turn out to be right are going to have to spend five to twenty years in persistently making their case, consolidating their evidence, being heard, selling themselves, and not sabotaging their own efforts by being too obviously foolish in other ways (such as having a forbidden sexual escapade).  Thus does progress happen, as far as I can tell from my study of a variety of types of history.

    Warmly, Adam


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