Strategies for Managing Group Conflict

¶ … fight-Flight Assumptions

Dependency and fight-flight are terms in psychology are used to describe the condition that befalls a group of people with a common agenda in a collective system. They are part of the four conditions suggested by psychologist Wilfred Bion. The other two are pairing assumption and switch between states assumption. Groups develop the conditions because of having anxiety growing in their midst. In this case, they will be trying to negotiate their way out. Dependency refers to that state where the group members will be seeking to find one among them who will lead them out of the mess. In contrast, fight-flight is a condition where the members will be trying to solve their problems as thou they are attempting to run away from a particular state. In the latter condition, cohesion among the members will be so wanting unlike in the former where they are united by grief. This paper will seek to depict how these two effects dominated a group meeting I had with my classmate. The meeting was to spearhead the formation of a charity organization in our school

Case in point

We held a meeting at school with my colleagues as we sought to discuss the formation of a charity group. The charity group was to help the vulnerable children living near the school for their upkeep. During this meeting, Derrick, the de facto convener of the meeting took the members through the process of registration, given that this was the third meeting held for the same agenda. In this meeting, there was much anxiety and tension. The reason perhaps was a spillover of effects from the previous two meetings held. In the past two meetings, no major steps had been made towards setting the goal of registering the union. Members had been quarrelling over who should lead the process and differed sharply on the name of the organization to be registered.

Effects of dependency and fight-flight assumptions

Because of the anxiety, there was evidence of dependency assumptions taking effect. Derrick had chaired the meeting from the start. However, his inability to unite the members fueled a revolt against him. Antony was the other member who seemed to have the following of the masses at this moment. As a result, the two young men, Derrick and Antony were at loggerheads. Their supporters were threateningly violent. However, Antony did not want to dethrone Derrick from his de facto leadership: a section of the members wanted to do so.