For example, in the case of Pink Power, a consultant might be hired to provide Leon with executive coaching to reduce his antagonizing behaviors (intrapersonal level), mediate the conflict between Leon and Alice (interpersonal level), conduct team building (group-as-a-whole level), or address diversity issues in the organization (intergroup or interorganizational). An executive coach who worked with Leon individually could (and should) address how the larger contextual issues have an impact on how he functions in the organization but would not necessarily be allowed to expand the scope of work to include working directly with the larger team or organization.
A mediator might work at the interpersonal level of analysis toward conflict resolution between Leon and Alice, getting them to agree to shared goals, ground rules for working together, and the like but might not have access to the larger team or organization.
At the group-as-a-whole level, a consultant might be hired to work with the senior leadership team on team building, as a way to address its conflict regarding diversity, but may not be given access to the board. And so on.
Ideally, a practitioner engaged in conflict resolution work in a group or team would have access to the entire organization or system and would use Wells’s taxonomy to diagnose the conflict of the group, team, or system at each level. This provides the most breadth and depth in offering strategies for conflict resolution. Yet when one is granted access to only one or two levels, it is still immensely helpful to frame the issues at the other levels to provide valuable organizational context for the conflict’s potential multiple root causes.
Joining Wells’s Levels and the BART System
Wells’s five levels of organizational analysis applied to a group conflict allow a nuanced diagnosis of that conflict at every level of the system. This gives practitioners maximum information in understanding the conflict, as well as a maximum number of options in where and how to intervene toward conflict resolution. This approach provides multiple points of entry to help a group shift from destructive conflicts that paralyze to constructive conflicts that enable a group to more forward. The BART system—boundary, authority, role, and task—is a set of social-structural concepts for intervening in groups, teams, and organizations and can be used across Wells’s five levels. BART is a useful model for helping the Pink Power’s senior leadership team resolve their group conflict.
At the intrapersonal level of analysis in Pink Power, Leon would benefit from attending to authority and role. His role of director of diversity was ambivalently authorized. Several on the team did not approve of its creation. Diana had said repeatedly she supports Leon’s role and Leon himself, yet Leon noted he feels unsupported by Diana. Part of the problem is that Diana does not clearly, forcefully, and publicly state that the diversity work that Leon is doing for Pink Power is integral to the entire organization; as a result, Leon’s work and his role are underauthorized. Instead, affinity events are perceived as Leon’s pet project and an outgrowth of his own career goals rather than role-appropriate work that is vital to the organization’s growth into new communities. Diana needs to acknowledge to Leon and the rest of her team that the diversity director role is essential and that affinity events are a key part of the organization’s efforts to serve new communities in breast cancer advocacy. Framing some of these conflicts for Leon (and the entire senior leadership team) as about role and authority enables the team members to engage in concrete strategies for resolution rather than staying stuck in a fight about Leon’s personality.
At the interpersonal level of analysis, Leon and Alice need to work on role and task. Both care deeply about the organization and have shared goals to help the organization grow and thrive. Thus, they have shared tasks broadly speaking: promoting the organization and securing its successful future. In addition, both are skilled fundraisers, so they share a common strength. Leon and Alice would be helped to see how their work roles complement rather than contradict each other. Although they may not be best friends, each has areas of expertise the other could appreciate: Leon in strategies in diversity and Alice in history and tradition. Both areas are needed to help Pink Power continue to be successful. Reorienting Leon and Alice away from the idea that they can never get along and toward the idea that they can work well together in role on shared tasks would be a useful strategy for ameliorating the conflict between them.
At the group-as-a-whole level of analysis, the entire team needs to work on task, role, and authority. The senior leadership team is having significant conflicts over diversity in the organization, yet working with diversity (their own and that of their clients) is an essential part of their organizational work. Diana sees it as key to their organization’s continued growth, and her board concurs. The senior leadership team needs help understanding how diversity tasks are aligned with the organization’s mission and its strategic plan. Clarity around these tasks also means authorizing diversity work. The senior leadership team is refusing to authorize affinity events as if they are not a part of their organizational work. If the team can agree to rethink how they do diversity as a way to improve their effectiveness, they would likely be able to authorize affinity events as a valuable offering. Finally, at the group-as-a-whole level, the team has difficulty addressing conflict openly. Leon is being scapegoated as “the problem” when the difficulties around diversity lie within the entire team. There is a lack of role clarity and a lack of authorization concerning Leon’s role. The team unknowingly has an investment in keeping Leon’s role and authority ambiguous because this maintains him as the problem and protects them from having to take responsibility for the conflict as a group issue. Similarly, the team has allowed Leon and Alice to enact the conflict as if it were solely between their dyad rather than present in the entire team.
At the intergroup level of analysis, the various subgroups on the senior leadership team need to address boundaries, task, and authority. The organizational tasks require them to work across generational boundaries to collaborate to get work done. The tasks require them to authorize both the young and the senior, the new and old. They need to stop splitting into subgroups that keep them isolated and in opposing camps, and instead collaborate across generational and belief boundaries. They would do well to form a subcommittee with multiple members of both generational groups to work explicitly on addressing diversity both within and outside the organization. Knowing that their conflicts about diversity are related to generational struggles and the future of the organization and that they need each other in order to move forward would likely help them collaborate more and fight less. That is, they would have new awareness of what the critical issues are rather than staying stuck in a conflict about affinity events. They then could directly address strategic planning for Pink Power’s future sustainability that incorporates tradition yet embraces new ideas and strategies concerning diversity.
At the organizational level of analysis, the team needs to work on boundaries, specifically, increasing its boundary permeability with the external environment. If the organization’s recent negative press is to be believed, Pink Power is in danger of being too insular and ignoring the very communities it should be targeting (e.g., African American women). It could amplify its community engagement and make it visible and meaningful. Those at Pink Power could go on a public relations campaign to highlight their accomplishments and the ways in which they do work for a broad cross section of women. They could form strategic partnerships with organizations that work directly with African American women with breast cancer. They could build a strategic plan incorporating this type of community outreach as an essential goal.
CONCLUSION
This chapter has presented a group relations taxonomy for understanding conflict in groups: Wells’s (1995) five levels of organizational analysis. The group relations perspective incorporates psychodynamic and systems thinking, and Wells’s model provides a means to understand group conflict at various levels across an organizational system (intrapersonal, interpersonal, group-a
s-a-whole, intergroup, and interorganizational) that includes group members’ unconscious behaviors that promote destructive group conflict and keep it entrenched. In addition, this chapter offered a group relations framework for conflict resolution, BART (boundary, authority, role, and task), which can be applied across Wells’s five levels to offer groups specific strategies for making group conflict constructive rather than destructive.
The field of group relations and the use of its perspectives to understand and improve group and organizational life remain strong nearly seventy years after its birth in England just after World War II. Dozens of group relations professional organizations around the world and organization development consultants engage in conflict resolution work from a group relations perspective internationally in settings as diverse as small community mental health centers to large multinational corporations. A group relations perspective offers an unparalleled richness in understanding group life in that it examines all levels of the organizational system in which the group lives, as well as helps to uncover and explain group members’ unconscious motives, behaviors, and feelings (as well as their conscious ones) to free a group from entrenched conflicts. More applied research on the use of these models in organizations will help refine and hone what works and what does not across what organizational contexts and will add to our understanding of group dynamics and conflict resolution. We surely need to understand more about how to hang together so we do not hang separately.
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