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| Enhance Your Group Leadership Skills In Less Than One Hour |
| Columns - Professional Development | ||||||||
| Monday, 30 September 2002 | ||||||||
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When I drafted my column for April 2002, entitled Six Exercises to Drastically Improve Your Counseling Skills I never in my wildest dreams thought it would generate so much positive fanfare. Counselors and seminar trainers throughout the nation contacted me to praise the merits of the exercises I depicted in that article. They especially liked the fact that the exercises were brief. A number of the professionals who contacted me asked the same relevant question: Do you have any tricks up your sleeve for improving the performance of our group counselors? After all, most addiction treatment centers rely heavily on group work. It is cost effective and an efficacious form of intervention. Since time is of the essence, the professionals who contacted me made it clear they were looking for an experiential paradigm that - like my previous ones - could be implemented in less than one hour.Here is a dramatic exercise that I assure you will produce stellar results. I have now used it successfully since the late 1980s. No, it won’t give your counselors the vast knowledge of Gerald Corey or the genius of an Irvin Yalom in less than one hour. This strategy, will, however, allow your counselors to make a quantum leap in their own leadership skills. A brief investigation of your addiction treatment center staff may reveal that some of your counselors have never completed a single course regarding group counseling (horrors!). In many cases the sum total of their experience is derived from their own recovery. Let me share the specifics with you. The first thing you will need to do is to set up a mock group session with your staff, students, or seminar participants. Next, pick a controversial topic that is guaranteed to produce a lot of discussion. For example, give each group member a list of 10 controversial people each described on a sheet of paper. Describe each of the 10 in a brief sentence or two (e.g., a 53-year-old male business executive serving jail time for stealing corporate funds and giving them to needy individuals) and tell the group they must pick 5 of them to start a new planet. Another scenario I have used is to tell the group to imagine that they are the school board and that they must decide whether to put condoms in the 8th grade girls’ restrooms since sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise. Again, it could be anything controversial, but ultimately the group must come to a conclusion or decision. The trainer should pick something with which he or she feels comfortable. Strange as it may seem, I do not recommend that you set the mock group up as an addictions counseling session. Why? Participants will begin to analyze the leader’s interventions from a theoretical standpoint and this defeats the purpose of the exercise (e.g., “you shouldn’t be so psychodynamic with an addict” etc.). The exercise is intended to focus on the impact of leadership skills though this is not explained to the group as a whole until after the completion of the exercise. Next pull three participants out of the room. Each will take a turn playing the role of the group leader or facilitator. Remind each individual not to reveal his or her role (even if somebody guesses it!) until the entire role-play is completed and you ask each person to reveal this information. Here are the roles: 1. Tell the first person that he or she will play the role of the autocratic leader also known as the authoritarian style in some of the literature. This type of leader gives orders and dominates the group. I have the individual exaggerate the role by saying something like, “I want you to rule this group with an iron hand. Demand obedience. If somebody is talking too much or not talking enough I want you to call them on the carpet. You need not be mean but don’t beat around the bush, and don’t mince words. Be direct. Confront. If you don’t like what somebody is saying, say so. You’re the expert.” (Just for the record, if a counselor smiles and says something like, “Hey, that will be easy, I’m always like that,” begin monitoring his or her groups immediately. I’d also check your malpractice insurance policy to make sure everything is in order.) 2. The next person is told to play the role of the laissez-faire or so-called hands off group facilitator. The laissez-faire leader exercises little or no control over the group and he or she has a minimum of participation. I would instruct this person to, “Be like a fly on the wall. Say a few words to get the group going and then sit there like a bump on a log.” 3. The third and final group leader will portray the democratic leadership style characterized by encouragement and participation (e.g., “thanks for sharing that with us” or “Linda and Mark have made excellent points”). I might say something to this person like, “Encourage and possibly even praise interaction of group members. Give them information and guidance as necessary and feel free to participate yourself. Try to empower group members to direct themselves. The group will help share the authority with you.” Give each leader about ten minutes of time unless a consensus is reached (e.g., “we will take these five people to start the new planet”) and in that case just start the discussion over from square one with the next leader. After all three leaders razzle-dazzle the group with their respective styles of facilitation you will ask each group member to pick a winner; in other words which leader did they like best. If your confederates play their roles correctly the democratic style will champion over the others about 99 percent of the time. This was first discovered in 1939 when Kurt Lewin (who created the term group dynamics), Ronald Lippitt, and Ralph White did the pioneering research on this topic. And as the saying goes: Some things never change. First canvass the participants to discover what they liked best about the democratic style. You most likely will not encounter any surprises here. The leader’s genuine interaction and fair treatment are routinely praised. Next you will want to investigate how the other two styles fared. Commonsense would dictate that the somewhat punitive authoritarian style would come in dead last, nonetheless, the exercise often finds the laissez-faire landing in this less than desirable position. The group as a whole will often assert that the laissez-faire leader was useless and perhaps seemed disinterested. Worse yet, participants often suggest that this method was a hindrance and virtually inferior to having no leader at all. When you discuss the autocratic technique you generally discover that what worked so well for Rambo, rarely works in the confines of the treatment arena. Dwight D. Eisenhower once commented that, “You do not lead by hitting people over the head – that’s assault, not leadership.” A terrific question to ask participants about this style is: If you were personally a client in an addiction treatment center and a group leader actually treated you in this manner during the initial group session would you return? In many cases the answer will be a resounding “no.” When you probe for additional information, participants often remark that the authoritarian leader treated them “like children” and “discounted their thoughts, feelings, and ideas.” In the original Lewin, Lippett, and White study hostility of group members was up to 30 times greater when using this style of leadership. It is critical to emphasize that a good leader is not static in his or her style, but rather moves on a theoretical continuum inasmuch as every group has a life of its own. For example, when a group must make an immediate decision or work at an unusually rapid pace (e.g., when a managed care company is demanding that this is the client’s final group session), a style that leans a bit toward the autocratic position is actually desirable. On the other hand, a group that is working at an optimal pace toward their goals and has exemplary interaction a leader with a laissez-faire bent may be appropriate. Although to be sure, in most cases the leader will hover closest to the democratic style. Henry Kissinger once said, “The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.” This exercise is a great way to begin that exciting process. Howard G. Rosenthal, EdD, MAC is the program coordinator of Human Services, St. Louis Community College at Florissant Valley and the author of the popular book Before You See Your First Client, 55 Things Counselors and Human Service Providers Need to Know. His web site is www.a-zuc.com/counseling.
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