Hello - Welcome to Our Site

It seems appropriate that for the first blog entry on our Extraordinary Groups website that I should introduce myself, Kathleen Ryan, and tell a bit about the hopes that I have for this blog.

You should know that Geoff Bellman and I have been colleagues and friends for over twenty-five years. We each live in the Seattle area, have separate national practices as organization development consultants, and have written several books—but never one together until now. We are both among the founders of a wonderful and inspiring volunteer effort, the Community Consulting Partnership.

Geoff and I are very excited about the potential for our site and this blog to connect us with new colleagues, encourage new thinking and ideas, and share perspectives on a variety of topics that relate to groups. As I write these words, I'm keeping my ear tuned for the arrival of the UPS truck, bearing two boxes of books—containing our just-published, not-yet-seen-by-us, creation—Extraordinary Groups. Three and a half years in the making, this "new baby" has been a primary focus for Geoff's and my professional life for quite some time.

With the arrival of the book in tangible form and the launch of this website in electronic form, we begin a new phase of our mutual exploration of all things related to groups. Groups at work, groups in the community, groups within our families and personal lives. We plan to blog weekly, posting on Mondays, offering ruminations and suggestions that we hope will be intriguing to you and useful in your lives as group members, leaders, or facilitators. We'd love for you to comment on what you read, sharing your experiences and thoughts. When you do, we promise to respond in some way. Our postings will draw from our experiences as organization development consultants and authors, and certainly from our many years as members and leaders of groups. If you've not read our bios, you might want to check them to gain a sense of what we've been up to in our professional lives.

Here's a line from the book that I've found myself saying a lot lately: Life is too short to spend time in groups that do not fulfill their promise. The question is, when you find yourself in such a group, what do you do? Quit? Put up with it and grumble? Take action to nudge, pull, or yank the group into a more effective way of being? If you are inclined toward the third choice, here's a set of assumptions you might find interesting, ones that have become very compelling for us:

• As human beings, we have a set of instinctive needs or longings that we unconsciously hope will be satisfied when we join a group
• It is possible for each of us to choose certain behaviors that can intentionally encourage amazing group experiences. We don't have to wait for "the stars to line up" or the "chemistry to be just right" to have a wonderful group experience.
• Using the Group Needs Model that sits at the center of Extraordinary Groups, any one of us will find ways to help meet the Group Needs of others in the group—or take action that will help us to meet our own needs. In doing so, we significantly increase the likelihood that a group will start performing at a higher, more effective and satisfying level.

In the next blog, I'll pick up on this theme and suggest an exercise that might offer some insight about your current group experiences.

—Kathleen