Making Interventions in a Group

Interventions are the actions you take in a group as the group facilitator, leader, participant or coordinator in order to develop its functioning with regard to the groups purpose. When discussing interventions it is worth noting that an intervention is something you do either during, before or after a group that assist the group to be effective and to meets its purpose. The areas where you can intervene are numerous. When your imagination and creativity are ‘going’ you will create new and relevant interventions.
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Working with the Ladder of Inference – a guide for group workers.

Have you ever been in a Mexican standoff? How about an Australian standoff? A standoff is where you and the other person or groups refuse to budge and you know you are right and they keep insisting, clearly wrongly, that they are correct and you are wrong. “How can they not see the obvious” you think to yourself. Another way to put it is to see each person or group as stuck in symmetrical roles (ways of being), where there is some imperative or need to convince the other that they are ‘wrong’ and you are ‘right’?
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Perceptual Positions for Communications By Scott Arbuthnot (edited by Peter Howie)

When was the last time you contributed to a discussion and you just weren't heard? How many times have you noticed people talking at each other without ever really hearing each other? Demanding they be listened to without really listening and really hearing the other person except to bolster their own argument or position?

It happens all too frequently. It's no wonder poor communication is one of the greatest ills of modern organisational and family life. This column introduces an elegant and respectful set of tools to improve your interpersonal communications skills.
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Levels of Learning - A model by Peter Howie and Elizabeth Synnot

Levels of Learning is a working heuristic (rule of thumb) that is easy to use as both a reflective tool and a planning tool. Diz Synnot and I have been working with it in groups and on it from a theoretical perspective for many years. When combined with other sophisticated models of human learning and functioning it is one pointer to the variation of human experience and lend confidence to planning or analysis of learning situations.
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Role-Play Realising it's Potential for Workplace Learning - Jenny Hutt

Jenny Hutt has worked as an organisational learning and development consultant for nineteen years. She is based in Melbourne and works with public and private sectors in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. Jenny is a Sociodramatist and TEP-in-training. She is on the teaching staff of the Australian College of Psychodramaand is Immediate Past President of ANZPA.
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