An Exercise: What Role Do Groups Play in Your Life?

We humans need to group. We've been grouping for thousands of years. By applying the Group Needs Model described in Extraordinary Groups, you can better understand the dynamics of your groups and see ways of behaving that will increase both the effectiveness of the group and, as a result, the quality of your experience.

Before considering action you might take—whether you are a group leader, member, or facilitator, it's useful to think about the groups in your life. As you increase your awareness, you will gain clarity about the relative importance of some groups over others. You will better understand your motivation for being in these groups.

On a piece of paper, draw a continuum with five points. From left to right, label the points as follows: bad, okay, good, great, and extraordinary. Give some thought to how you might define each position on the continuum, when it comes to two elements: 1) the group's effectiveness at achieving its purpose and 2) how you feel about the group experience. For example, "bad" might translate into group accomplishes little or nothing of importance and the experience is boring or filled with unnecessary conflict.

Next, consider the groups in your life: at work, in your community life, within your friendship circles, and within your family. Here's a definition of a group: a collection of two to twenty people who join together for some reason. Perhaps for a day, perhaps for a much longer period of time. Make a list and briefly describe the purpose of each. This will help you to assess the first consideration—the group's effectiveness at achieving its desired results. Now assign each group a location on your continuum.

What does this exercise suggest about the groups in your life? How many are there? Where do they sit on the continuum? Do you see any trends or patterns—perhaps related to the part of your life where the groups fit—at work, your family, your volunteer commitments, your hobbies, your neighborhood, your religious affiliations. Perhaps related to other factors such as the others involved, the purpose, of the role you play. What is it that motivates you in each of these groups? How important are these groups to you? Why are they important? And for each of your answers about importance, go one level deeper: why is that importance so important to you? In other words, at a more fundamental level, what do you hope will happen for you or for others as a result of being involved with any of these groups?

With all of this in mind, which groups might you want to invest some time and energy in, for the sake of improving either its effectiveness or the experience? For future reference, you might want to put a date on your notes and tuck them away in a folder that is easy to find. This exercise can begin a conversation with yourself that you might want to continue at a later date—to add more groups, to refine your definitions, to think more deeply about your motivations.

Please consider sending a note about any insights or thoughts that come to you as a result of this exercise. For what it's worth, reflections such as these have caused me to think more broadly in my life about groups—especially the ones in my personal life. It's been revealing to consider the purpose of my groups that are less structured or ones that I typically don't use the word group to describe. For example my relationship with my brother—we are a group of two siblings, or with my work-out buddy at the gym, or for a group of friends who come for dinner on a given evening. I have realized that I can be much more mindful about the importance of these 'groups' in my life and how I show-up in them. I know that I behave in much more constructive and encouraging ways when I think about the 'effectiveness' and 'satisfaction' elements in these more personal (and very important) groups in my life.

—Kathleen