I’m a celebrity… part 2… Grrrr!

Tonight’s little anthropological insight was about territoriality.  They brought two new people in yesterday who didn’t handle their entrance to the group very well.  and triggered the group’s territorial instincts.  New groups are observed to go through four phases:-

• Forming [where the group is being careful and relatively polite and cautious]
• Storming [where they start vying for position]
• Norming [when they establish a natural pecking order]
• Performing [where they can work effectively together]

If someone enters a group they change the chemistry and dynamics and this sends the group of in another micro-iteration of this process.  Interestingly, the viewing public recognised and responded to the inappropriate cues and ‘judged’ the malefactors and put them in the ‘trial’.

“The well-run group is not a battlefield of egos.”   Lao Tzu

Tags: cues, group dynamics, territory

This entry was posted on Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 23:27 and is filed under Hints, Tips & Techniques, Leadership, Mini-Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.