Group Orientation

Facilitation Project: Laying the Groundwork According to the management theorist Bruce Tuckman, all groups go through an inevitable process of forming, storming, norming, and performing (Chapman 2015). The first stage of formation is when members of the group get to know one another and are tentatively establishing their roles. In many ways, this is the most important step of group development, given that a good beginning can help shorten the rocky storming period and ensure that the group members learn to trust one another and focus on their goals relatively quickly.

The group setting in which I chose to conduct my facilitation exercise was that of a business setting, involving a recently-formed project team. The team was made up of individuals from a number of different departments, so while they were all acquainted with one another, they did not know one another very well, nor have a good sense of one another's working styles. With this in mind, I created a group orientation icebreaking facilitation exercise.

The exercise involved splitting the participants into groups of two and having one person in the pair interview the other, and then swap roles. Then, the interviewer would introduce his subject to the group when we reconvened, and vice versa. I was careful to pair two members who did not know one another and who came from different departments. I felt that pairing people from non-related disciplines such as human resources and IT would increase the chances that they might have different personality profiles as well as frameworks of knowledge.

This was critical, given that non-complimentary personalities and worldviews can lead to future conflicts on teams. I hoped that having members get to know one another in a personal and intimate format face-to-face would help to counteract this tendency. The interview format was semi-structured. Before breaking off into groups, I provided several questions via a handout which I suggested that all the group members should use such as their subject's name, his or her department, and something the interviewee would like the group to know about him/herself.

I also asked the interviewer to inquire about what the subject had enjoyed about working in group projects on the past and what he or she did not enjoy. I intended this to be a useful touchstone of information when we set group rules for dialogue and meeting later on during another possible facilitation session. Once these questions were asked, however, I stressed that group members could then go off-script and ask their interview subject about anything they found relevant.

At first, when the group members returned to the circle, they were slightly hesitant and uncomfortable. Many of them did not have extensive experience speaking to an audience. However, the fact that the format was friendly and not confrontational put most at ease. There was some laughter as they noted some humorous anecdotes the two of them had shared during the interview. There was also some important information about what had worked and not worked during previous group exercises, such as having rules about not speaking out of turn.