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The Group Personality

Whenever people are mixed together in a group, a different personality takes over: that of the group. This personality is real and positive to the point that a skilled observer can analyze it for any given group much the same as an individual's personality can be analyzed. This group personality consists of all the factors that make up all the individual personalities present in the group, intensified or modified in direct relationship to how many times each of those individual factors appears in the group. In other words, a group made up of predominant extroverts would tend to have a sharply extrovertic personality; one made up of predomi­nantly hostile or suspicious individuals would be most disagree­ably hostile or suspicious in its group behavior.

The executive who is attempting to use a group for problem-solving must be sharply conscious of the effects of this group personality. Just as the group personality is affected by the indi­vidual factors involved, so too will continued exposure to any group affect the individuals. Many people, over a period of several adult years, acquire their attitudes, beliefs, and feelings from their experience with groups. Therefore, one of the tools of prediction for group behavior is to know in advance the outside interests the individual may have in other groups.

By balancing out the individual personalities you select for a group you are putting together, you can make reasonably sure of a group personality that will have the best opportunity to solve the problem.

This is demonstrated clearly by the composition of many re­search and development task groups: depending on the nature of the problem, R&D group members may include a balanced ratio of chemists, physicists, metallurgists, electronics specialists, and engineers. Each would be selected because of a specific knowledge contribution he was expected to make. And the group can be directed or steered toward a specific type of group action by including more of one type of personality than another, or by carefully selecting individuals of one type who are known to be more aggressive in their personalities than the others. The pre­dominant or aggressive specialists then tend to take over the leadership of the thinking, with the secondary members dropping back into the roles of resource people—specialists who will be called upon by the group as their specialized training and experi­ence are needed.

An effective use of groups depends, however, on how well the various personalities and interests can be pulled together by the leader into an integrated and smooth-working whole. Therefore, the prospective group leader would do well to familiarize him­self with some of the resistance factors that can be encountered once the group personality has come into being.

Related terms include business manager and business consultancy.