SNOW WHITE THEORY - 7 SOLUTIONS FOR RUNNING COOPERATIVE, PRODUCTIVE MEETINGS

Are any of the following situations familiar to you?

• Being charged with running a successful focus group?
• Sitting at a corporate round table trying to grapple with a situation or a crisis?
• Sitting with family or friends trying to decide which would be the best movie to see this evening, and whether to go to dinner before, after, or not at all?
• Trying to keep a group of friends organized and communicating together long enough to have a good time at a party or other social event?
• Being responsible for researching the opinions of a group or work team?
• Being stuck on an elevator with strangers and having to decide upon a course of action?
• Handling any group that is made up of individuals with striking and peculiar characteristics of their own?

Most of us deal with such situations on a daily basis. As such, we are constantly faced with the forces of Group Dynamics. Most succinctly, Group Dynamics is the science of understanding the forces that act on human thinking and behavior when we congregate in groups.

A Group Is An Entity Unto Itself, With Strong Dynamics Shaping The Behavior Of Its Individual Members

As much as we all like to believe we are unique individuals, capable of choosing our opinions and behaviors independent of the influence of those around us, research consistently proves otherwise. Indeed, there are powerful, almost tidal forces inherent in the group environment which sway individual participant’s, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors greatly. A group is an entity of its own, and there are good reasons for this – reasons having to do with evolution and survival of the species – reasons which pull at the core instincts built into our biology.

Less than 10,000 years ago, one couldn’t survive unless they were part of a group. Man’s natural predators, the environment, and rival tribes were all too harsh to allow an individual to prevail on his or her own. There was safety in numbers. We hunted in groups, sheltered in groups, and groups allowed us to divide up labor and become more proficient and specialized. Simply put – people were better off functioning as part of a group or tribe than trying to make it on their own. (In fact, one of the worst punishments in ancient times was being ostracized or forced to function without a group). In many cases, our survival depended upon it.

But there was a problem. Group functioning required that individual needs, desires, and actions be subordinated to the will of the group so it could function as a whole. (A group could not hunt with everyone running in different directions, nor could they build shelter, or coordinate the sharing of food and other resources). Our survival depended upon us developing instincts that helped us ‘fit in’ when we were part of a group – we had to learn to quickly and automatically subjugate our individual will to the collective will of the group entity.

The Forces of Primitive Group Dynamics Still Enter Modern Day Groups

Think about it for a moment. You can still feel these instincts in some modern situations. Recall the last time you were in a crowd and everyone began to cheer. Maybe it was at a sporting event. Maybe a political rally. Maybe it was just a game of family charades or Pictionary. But, as the group began to verbalize their support for moving towards a common goal, you felt an instinctual pull to mobilize yourself with the group. There’s an excitement, a great big “YES” inside of most of us that says ‘I WANT TO BELONG – I WILL DO BETTER IF I BELONG – I AM EXCITED TO BE PART OF THIS CROWD – I MUST DO WHAT IS NECESSARY TO BELONG TO THIS CROWD”.

I personally felt this force most strongly during the 1986 World Series. I’m not much of a sports fan, in fact I couldn’t even tell you the starting lineup for the Mets that year, but by a stroke of luck my sister managed to get me some tickets to the championship game (#7). I was in the stadium with about 55,000 other people – many of whom I probably wouldn’t associate with on a daily basis. To the left of me was a 300 pound Hell’s angel type, to the right of me a bum who clearly hadn’t shaven or showered for a week, smelling horribly of beer breath. But by the end of the game, for some strange reason, the three of us were literally hugging every time the Mets got on base. At the very end of the game, I distinctly recall the Hell’s Angel saying ‘I love you, man!’. While I didn’t say it back, and as ridiculous as it seems in retrospect, there was a part of me that felt that this man was now my brother, almost as if we would die to protect each other. It was gutteral, instinctual, primitive. We had forged a bond in battle (55,000 cheering Mets fans will do that, even to an educated psychologist!)

People Will Sacrifice Their True Opinions, Thoughts, and Feelings in Order to Achieve Their Desired Role In The Group

If you took psychology or sociology in college, you may have read about some of the classic conformity experiments. In one example, an unknowing research subject is led into a room with 9 other ‘actors’ (experimenters). The whole group is then shown two sets of lines exactly the same length. The group is then asked (I am paraphrasing) ‘please raise your left hand if you think the left line is clearly longer, your right hand if you think the right line is clearly longer, or both hands if you think they are equal. Without hesitation the 9 actors raise their right hand (even though the lines are clearly equal in length). Then it is the research subject’s turn to indicate their answer. What percent of research subjects do you think would give the truth – that the lines are equal? The answer is frighteningly small, less than 10%. When interviewed afterwards they usually said something like ‘yeah, I really thought they were equal, but I didn’t want to stand out’. In other words, 9 out of 10 people give in to the group pressure to quickly come to consensus and develop a unified opinion. Even when that opinion is clearly wrong, and they individually disagree, they will behave otherwise to be part of a group.

The problem with all this for modern day tasks is that we are no longer facing tigers and bears and the forces of nature (at least not nearly to the extent we used to). Instead, as groups, we are facing more intellectual, cognitive challenges which are better faced not by group consensus, but by ensuring that each group member’s individual resources are placed squarely on the table for all to see. Research in group problem solving demonstrates that the greater number of genuine ideas that are put forth by participants, the more successful is the group at solving the problem in a manner that maximally benefits all group members. This is true whether the problem is deciding upon which movie to see and what restaurant to go to, or determining the appropriate international policy a country should take regarding another nation.

To Conduct Successful Groups, You Need To Recognize And Neutralize Primitive Group Forces

In order to conduct successful groups of all kinds, one needs to be able to identify the primitive forces of group dynamics as they manifest themselves in a group, and to neutralize them so that the group can optimally function to solve more modern day problems. When properly neutralized, each group member is able to contribute their true opinions and optimize their creative resources towards solving the problems of the group.

Many Ways To 'Fit In' Or Belong To A Group. Seven, To Be More Precise.

Much more than the primitive instinct to conform interferes with optimal group functioning Primitive group dynamics required that individual participants play particular roles. Some were leaders, others would follow in their own unique ways. Some would quietly hide in the background, others would loudly make their opinions known. Some would falsely admire the leaders for fear of being ostracized, others would function as peace makers trying to neutralize all conflicts before they brewed too much disruption.

Snow White Got It Right!

The classic story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves details in caricature the different postures that people tend to play in a group in order to maintain group cohesion. Happy, Grumpy, Sleep, Doc, Bashful, Dopey, and Sneezy can be thought of as primitive defenses against expressing truly individual thoughts and behaviors, in favor of ‘belonging’ to the group.

In her work conducting over 6,000 corporate meetings and focus groups, Dr. Sharon Livingston has astutely picked up on this, and formulated a method for quickly diagnosing the ‘dwarf type’ people might be portraying in a group. After diagnosing these roles, she seeks to understand the psychological motivations which motivate them, and, with this knowledge in hand, intervenes in such a way as to allow the TRUE thoughts and feelings of each group member to emerge. The results is a more cooperative, more smoothly flowing group which has a MUCH higher probability of accomplishing its goals.

Snow White Theory is a cohesive set of constructs intended to help group leaders and group participants in all walks of life recognize and improve group dynamics.

Snow White Theory contains an easy to remember formulation of the postures that people tend to take in a group (‘postures’ meaning ‘safe roles to protect their true thoughts, feelings, and desires’), and methods for neutralizing these postures in order to optimize group functioning for modern day tasks of all kinds.

No one fits any one type perfectly. It's possible for someone to have feelings and thoughts which cut across several personalities. In reality, you'll never find a pure "Happy" or "Doc." This is a simplified model which helps the group leader to figure out what they most need to attend to in a limited amount of time in order to optimize group function. Please know that we understand people aren't really that simple. A ‘dwarf personality’ is just a useful construct for identifying the primary difficulties you will encounter when managing a particular person in a particular group. You will probably not ever feel that anyone completely fits any particular role.

Moreover, the dwarf personalities contain some exaggerations of the features being illustrated. We've done this to make them easy to recognize and identify with. They are much like the characters we meet in fables and children's stories. While we all know they don't exist in reality, there are important lessons to learn by examining those which most nearly approximate the people we have to deal with.

Our CD-ROM Teaches You How To Manage The Seven Dwarves In Your Groups!

In this intriguing educational CD-ROM you will find over 90 minutes of descriptions, explanations, and strategy tips for each of the seven dwarves you might encounter in your group events. Each dwarf page not only contains text, but actual audio files wherein Sharon discusses and brings each dwarf to life (along with the appropriate interventions for managing them).

We know you will enjoy SnowWhiteTest and find it extremely useful for any group environment you find yourself in ... from the boardroom to small gatherings of family and friends!