The Role of the Trainers

The Role of the Trainers

To help the group and individuals analyze and learn from what is happening in the group. The trainer may draw attention to events and behavior in the group and invite the group to look at its experience. At times the trainer may offer tentative interpretations.

To offer theory, a model or research that seems related to what the group is looking at.

To encourage the group to follow norms that tend to serve the learning process, e.g., focusing on “here & now” rather than the “then & there”.

To offer training and coaching in skills that tend to help the learning process,

To not offer structure or an agenda. To remain silent, allowing the group to experience its anxiety about acceptance, influence, etc.

To be willing to disclose oneself, to be open with the group. On occasion being willing to offer feedback and challenge a participant

To avoid becoming too directive, clinical, or personally involved.

Objective of T-Group Training

Increase your understanding of group development and dynamics.

Gaining a better understanding of the underlying social processes at work within a group (looking under the tip of the iceberg)

Increase your skill in facilitating group effectiveness.

Increase interpersonal skills

Experiment with changes in your behaviour

Increase your awareness of your own feelings in the moment; and offer you the opportunity to accept responsibility for your feelings.

Increase your understanding of the impact of your behavior on others.

Increase your sensitivity to others’ feelings.

Increase your ability to give and receive feedback.

Increase your ability to learn from your own and a group’s experience.

Increase your ability to manage and utilize conflict.

Transactional Analysis TA is a theory of personality and a systematic psychotherapy for personal growth and personal change.

As a theory of personality, TA describes how people are structured psychologically. It uses what is perhaps its best known model, the ego-state (Parent-Adult-Child) model to do this. This same model helps understand how people function and express themselves in their behaviors.

As a theory of communication it extends to a method of analysing systems and organisations. It offers a theory for child development, where it ties in very neatly with the Freudian developmental stages -oral, anal, phallic.

It introduces the idea of a “Life (or Childhood) Script”, that is, a story one perceives about ones own life, to answer questions such as”What matters”, “How do I get along in life” and “What kind of person am I”. This story, TA says, is often stuck to no matter the consequences, to “prove” one is right, even at the cost of pain, compulsion, self-defeating behaviour and other dysfunction. Thus TA offers a theory of a broad range of psychopathology.

In practical application, it can be used in the diagnosis and treatment of many types of psychological disorders, and provides a method of therapy for individuals, couples, families and groups. Outside the therapeutic field, it has been used in education, to help teachers remain in clear communication at an appropriate level, in counseling and consultancy, in management and communications training, and by other bodies.

Philosophy of TA

People are OK; thus each person has validity, importance, equality of respect.

Everyone (with only few exceptions) has full adult capability to think.

People decide their story and destiny, and this is a decision that can be changed.

Freedom from historical maladaptations embedded in the childhood script is required in order to become free of inappropriate, inauthentic and displaced emotion which are not a fair and honest reflection of here-and-now life (such as echoes of childhood suffering, pity-me and other mind games, compulsive behavior, and repetitive dysfunctional life patterns).

The aims of change under TA are autonomy (freedom from childhood script), spontaneity, intimacy, problem solving as opposed to avoidance or passivity, cure as an ideal rather than merely ‘making progress’, learning new choices.

Key Points

The structured discussion are conversations between trainees, aimed toward specific learning objectives.

CBT- adds a valuable dimension in speeding up decision-making and also compressing the training time-scale.

TA is a theory of personality and a systematic psychotherapy for personal growth and personal change