[teampractices] The invisible hand of group dynamics

[Kevin Smith]

Last night, Grace and I attended a local Agile Coaching meetup, and the
topic was "The invisible hand of group dynamics". I had no idea what that
meant, but we ended up doing an exercise in Systemic Constellations[1].

It's a bit hard to explain without you being there, but several volunteers
stood in positions which abstractly represented different parties in a
real-world difficult situation brought by one of the attendees (the
"client"). Each volunteer represented a specific party, but neither the
volunteer nor the client knew who represented who.

Each volunteer said how we felt, and then moved (or got moved), and they
expressed how the new position felt. When our roles were revealed, the
client said that our feelings and movements made sense, given our roles.
The client felt that the exercise gave some clarity about what was really
going on in the situation, and some guidance about how to improve things.

Now, there are two interpretations here: One is that on some subconscious
level, each volunteer knew what to feel, despite not knowing which role
they represented. For those who don't believe in "woo woo" stuff, a
different interpretation would be that humans see meanings and patterns,
whether they really exist or not. Like when people see themselves in a
generically-written astrology report that could apply to anyone. The client
may simply have interpreted the volunteer's actions in a way that made
sense to them.

Whichever interpretation is true (or neither), the exercise was fun, and
seemed to have value to the client.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemic_Constellations

Kevin Smith
Agile Coach
Wikimedia Foundation



*Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. Help us make it a reality.*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/teampractices/attachments/20150603/415ac891/attachment.html>