Personal Empowerment & Leadership Skills

Celebrating Life:
Art & Creativity

Local, Bioregional & Global Outreach

1. Building Community & Embracing Diversity
The Power of Building Community	Starting Community: the Essentials	Finding & Sharing the Vision	Embracing Diversity

Stages in Group Evolution

Every group is a dynamic, living reality, in constant evolution. From its inception to its dissolution, every group forges it own path, partly predictable, partly unexpected. The stages of group development have been studied and described thoroughly. There are 4 main stages:

Formation Pseudocommunity	Difficulties caused by the lack of experience generate different states of expectation, anxiety and some tension. They are easily overcome thanks to a general feeling of excitement, and a strong wish to get along.
Conflict	Once the initial excitement begins to fade, differences appear and conflict arises: misunderstandings, unmet needs, power struggles, lack of clarity in goals or procedures... Conflict is necessary for the development process of a group. It forces us to know each other better. It helps us to grow, individually and collectively. It is our great opportunity to learn about mutual respect and acknowledgment, about democracy and interdependence.
Organization	The group decides to learn to solve conflicts, to make coherent decisions everyone can support, to work cooperatively. Everybody is seen and valued as they are. Individual needs and group needs accommodate one another better. Members are more aware of having a collective identity.
Community	There is cohesion, interconnectedness, harmony. Interpersonal relationships have a vibrant emotional quality. Productivity is high. The group works well in achieving its goals. Leadership is distributed among all members.

This process is by no means rigid or static. How the group experiences the process depends on the particularities of the group. Besides, external circumstances - such as the arrival of new members, change in the social reality where the group lives, political or economic uncertainties, etc. - can cause the group to regress from a stage of maturity to some previous stage of learning, with renewed tensions and conflict.

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Jazz Group

An experienced jazz group is a good example of a mature group where cohesion, harmony and shared leadership are visible qualities helping achieve their goals.
Source: customcartoonart