ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3rd Edition

68 ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND LEADERSHIPintroduce ourselves?” Or “Let’s each of us say what we are here for”or “I feel pretty tense right now. Does anyone else feel the sameway?” or “Ed, can you give us some suggestion on how best to getstarted?” And so on.If that suggestion fits the mood of the group or at least of someother members who are ready to speak up, it will be picked up andmay become the beginning of a pattern. If it does not fit the mood,it will elicit disagreement, countersuggestions, or some other responsethat will make members aware that they cannot easily agree.Whatever the response, however, the crucial event of group formationhas taken place when the group, including the staff member,has participated in a shared emotional reaction. What makes theevent shared is the fact that all members have been witnesses to thesame behavior on the part of one of their members and have observedthe responses together. After the meeting they can refer tothe event and people will remember it. This initial sharing is whatdefines, at an emotional level, that “we are a group; we have beenlaunched.”The most fundamental act of culture formation, the defining ofcrude group boundaries, has occurred with the shared emotionalresponse. Everyone who has shared the response is now, by definition,in the group at some level, and anyone who has not shared theexperience is initially not in the group. And this fact of being in orout of the group is quite concrete, in that the person who did notattend and witness the events cannot know what happened or howpeople reacted. A new member who arrives one hour late willalready feel the presence of a group and will want to know “whathas gone on so far.” And the group will already feel that the newcomeris a “stranger” who “has to be brought on board.”The nature of that initial shared response in various other kindsof groups will, of course, differ. Some theorists have speculated thatearly tribal formation may have resulted from a joint emotionallyinvolving act, such as defeating an enemy or making a sacrifice. Forour purposes the important thing to recognize is that the originalintention to do something may have been individually motivated,