„‚ CONDITIONS THAT HINDER EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION

intent is to enlarge the freedom of the feedback recipient, the message should increase
options.
Ideally, openness should be both strategic and constructive. It should enlarge the
range of the recipient’s options without shutting him or her down emotionally. It
requires demanding self-appraisal of motives on the part of the person who chooses to
be open because he or she must assume responsibility for that openness as well as for
imposing the results of his or her behavior on another. A person’s openness must be
dealt with, in some fashion, by those with whom he or she has chosen to share feelings
and ideas or to give feedback. Therefore, openness should never exceed the system
expectations to the extent of reinforcing closed behavior in others; rather, it should
become a growth experience for both the open person and the system with which he or
she is interacting.
IMPLICATIONS
The group facilitator needs to be aware of both the problems and possibilities with
regard to openness, collusion, and feedback. A number of these implications are
suggested by the points of view expressed in this article. Feedback criteria can be taught
rather easily in small group meetings either experientially or didactically. Building and
maintaining the norms implied in these “standards” can result in constructive openness
and trust.
The facilitator should be careful in surfacing evidence of collusion in a human
system. He needs to find a nonthreatening way of helping the colluders to “own” and to
deal with their complicity. It is equally dangerous to generate or focus on more data than
the system can process. One example of generating too much data would be calling
attention to the feelings of task-group members who have not voluntarily committed
themselves to studying their interpersonal process. Another example is a facilitator who
“models” openness in the initial session of a growth group but expresses so much
feeling that participants become unduly anxious. Hypotheses about a system’s readiness
for increased openness need to be tested. The facilitator should be wary of a tendency to
project his or her own position onto others or to be party to the collusion that may exist
in the system. The facilitator needs to check out his or her assumptions about the client
system and to find out the assumptions that people in the system are making about him
or her.
Openness and trust grow in a nurturing environment; they cannot be expected to be
engendered instantaneously. The level of openness in growth-group meetings usually
cannot automatically be reproduced in “back-home” settings. The facilitator needs to
negotiate (and renegotiate) the level of openness that is to be expected in his or her
relations with others.
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The Pfeiffer Library Volume 6, 2nd Edition. Copyright ©1998 Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer