ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3rd Edition

HOW CULTURE EMERGES IN NEW GROUPS 83trol the anxiety. Therefore, the energy available for work is lowest inthe early stages of group formation, though a focus on work is often aconvenient way to work out underlying group issues. The importantpoint to note is that a focus on work does not necessarily producegood results if members’ energy and attention are bound up in personalissues.One way of thinking about group evolution, then, is to recognizethat the work of the group gradually attracts more and more of themembers’ attention, with the periods of regression into dependence,fusion, fight or flight, or pairing becoming less frequent as the groupevolves a culture, stabilizes its way of working, and thus releasesenergy for the task at hand. On the other hand, the quickest way forthe group to lose its ability to work productively is to question someof its cultural assumptions, because such a threat rearouses the primaryanxieties that the cultural solutions dealt with in the first place.As the group works on its tasks, a new issue arises. Do membersseek solutions that “satisfy,” then institutionalize them because theyreduce anxiety? Or do they seek optimal solutions and create a climatefor perpetual creativity in order to remain externally adaptiveeven though internally more anxious? It is a paradox of evolutionor development that the more we learn how to do things and to stabilizewhat we have learned, the more unwilling or unable we becometo adapt, change, and grow into new patterns, even when ourchanging environment demands such new patterns.Stage Four: Group MaturityOnly a few remarks will be made about this final group stagebecause it will receive much more focus in later chapters. If a groupworks successfully, it will inevitable reinforce its assumptions aboutitself and its environment, thus strengthening whatever culture ithas developed. Because culture is a learned set of responses, culturewill be as strong as the group’s learning history has made it. Themore the group has shared emotionally intense experiences, thestronger the culture of that group will be.