Large Group Awareness Trainings 1.0, good and bad

Chunk 06 from the forthcoming Attract More Cultural Creatives to Your Team Human Org. Subtitles:
Group Process at the Center of Organizational Development;
Creating Social Glue As an Art-form;
How to Re-Invent Face-to-Face Culture Series

In the earliest encounter groups and LGAT trainings, 1960–1982, some encounter groups ran weekly for months or years. Some LGAT trainings were all day for 5–6 consecutive days. The immediate training goal was simply capturing and sustaining participant’s interest, attention and involvement.

Not all methods were equally successful. Text-based approaches of any and every kind quickly proved to engage adults for no more than an hour at a time, at most.
Prototyping occurred. The most charismatic facilitators were noted. The most successful scripted sequences of group processes were noted. These two converged to become the earliest for-pay LGAT trainings.

Large group awareness training experiments began with Mind Dynamics In 1968. Soon in the later 1960s came Silva Mind Control and est. These were commercial ventures. They addressed the consumer demand for alternatives to lecture-textbook-learning; and to NO-Feeling learning. They were a response to the new market for experiential learning, social-emotional learning. Let’s experiment in new ways of learning.

Each new training was a “laboratory” for its next iteration: what worked? What did not? Facilitators in training took notes. Successes were shared and learning occurred. Innovations became visible in the next go-round of a training.
LGATs are still offered today, no end in sight. Not as many as in the 1980s, for sure. I like to divide LGAT history into two pieces: prior to the standard of a heartfelt look and feel and after the standard of a heartfelt look and feel was established as an industry Best Practice.

To do this I make a line in the sand at 1995. After this, I believe most consumes of personal growth trainings expected events to have or at least attempt this standard.

What did LGATs focus on prior to this?
LGAT 1.0 large-group trainings focussed on:
- Humanistic Psychology 1.0 academic topics,
- Sensory awareness topics; including, sensory awareness exercises,
- Closed-eye visualization processes,
- Dyads and Active Listening experiments,
- Self-esteem and assertiveness training,
- Body-based psychotherapy exercises,
- Long-form one-on-one psychotherapy in a group setting (not recommended).

Some early LGATs were characterized by an intentional and deliberate harshness and confrontational tone. For example, persons arriving even one second late at the entrance to the training room were barred from entry until an hour or more later. The “teaching” conveyed was supposed to be about personal “ruthlessness” and “personal excellence.”

In 2018, we have come so far, how harsh and intentionally dogmatic the earliest trainings were, up thru 1978 at least, is difficult to imagine. Political Correctness was hardly a thing yet.

The harsh tone was a holdover from an early stream in early 1960s group therapy in California, an over-zealous “calling out people on their bad and dysfunctional behavior.” This put much power in the hands of group leaders in the early 1960s who were often unsupervised by mentors of any kind.

How did this evolve? This much power in the role of group facilitator proved to be “cutting warm butter with a hot knife” if your goal is arranging the room so people learn from their own experience; and, learn form each other. “You attract more flies with honey then with vinegar.”

Only group leaders wishing to control and manipulate a group wanted and needed the added power of punishment embarrassing people publicly by calling out their bad behavior brings. This is why the harsh overlay of early LGAT trainings melted away by 1985. It was not a useful tool for facilitating fun group processes.

Hallmark exercises

The hallmark exercises did not change that much from LGAR 1.0 to LGAT 2.0. Large group awareness trainings will sequences of partner and small group exercises/problem-solving. In addition to the above list; and, in no particular order, classic group process exercises were and are:
- “ice breaker” exercises
- Dyads
- Milling
- Triads where the active role rotates
- Small group and jigsaw tasks
- various exercises borrowed from improv theater training

For classroom teachers, the earliest grade recommended for these exercises is Grade Three because of the highly individualizing nature of these activities.

How the above adult group processes are both workable and needed in K-12 classrooms is a major discussion in the forthcoming Growing Sustainable Children and Schools Worthy of Our Affection.

SIDEBAR ~ Dangers of LGATs? Right here

A good summary account of the negative “hardball” confrontational LGAT trainings and the negative consequences of errors can be found at the RationalWiki LGAT page: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Large_group_awareness_training
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