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Group Dynamics: Will things ever change?
September 7, 2008

When I was in graduate school I spent my days in class learning and nights at home reading and writing about organizational psychology.  I was fascinated by the idea that while individual behavior was one thing in its own right, it could morph into something else altogether amidst the influence of a group.  In the context of business specifically, the study of organized behavior is based on the notion that people gather collectively around a common goal and work toward its successful achievement   I loved every minute of it.

But a long weekend with my mom who lives in an assisted living facility in Florida got me thinking.  I realized that the presence or absence of a common goal really has no effect on people’s behavior.  Regardless of purpose, people are people and capable of messing things up no matter what the setting is.  In the case of the retirement home, we had a bunch of old people living out the ends of their lives in a community-based structure and acting no better (or older) than a bratty preschooler in daycare or petty, dysfunctional employee in the workplace.

Granted, whenever people have to co-exist and there are differences, conflicting interests are bound to flair.  But that wasn’t the problem.  No.  It was actually the same problem facing organizations of all types everywhere - a bunch of adults acting like obnoxious children in kindergarten on a playground.   But this begs the question, why?  The average age of these folks was eighty-something.  Go figure!

I am forever baffled as to why people don’t, or can’t grow up?   It seems so unnatural that maturity should be such an elusive element of life. 

Posted by Donna Flagg on September 7, 2008 | Comments (0)