Confrontation Issues in Groups / Teams

I want to spend some time on confronting issues in the team setting. It's not easy to get this right. Confronting team issues in the group setting is a complex skill. It requires plenty of practice to get good at it. Although we are probably afforded many opportunities to practice the skill, it's easier to practice a related skill, avoiding the confrontation, and/or colluding wiht the team to avoid the confrontation. Thus we actually and unwittingly can become highly skilled at collusion versus confrontation. John Heron does a nice job of describing the confrontation process in his "The Complete Faciliator's Handbook." I will be using his framework, and telling how I apply his insights as I add my own.

This is about how to raise consciousness about resistances to, and avoidances of things that need to be faced and handled. Many times teams avoid and resist, flee and fight, and collude to keep things the same. The facilitators job is to walk the razors edge: too much love and you end up colluding, to much power and you can strip the nut, causing unneeded resistance and pain. We will be working from four authors as we delve into this topic. Gibb on Trust, Argyris on Self Deception, and Heron on Facilitation, and Aggassarian on Sub Teams. Tune in tomorrow for the first session. Some of this will be so old, that it is new!