For too long and in too many quarters, organization development has been considered an extension of the psychological sideshows reported so dramatically in the popular press. The encounter movement permits people— or their employers—to pay for the privilege of enduring abusive indictments of their social and sexual selves. These days learning for adults seems to require getting “grounded” as the guru-for-the-day intones sonorously, “Now relax, and let your buttocks really feel the floor.”
You can download excellent powerpoint slides on HR management, business strategy and personal development HERE.
This mentality has distorted OD the way it tainted another valuable—and valid—educational technique. Is any¬one buying T-groups this year? Of course not. Because T-groups in the late sixties and the seventies weren’t the same educational medium spawned by Kurt Lewin and developed by Lee Bradford and a group of educators in the late forties. Continue reading