If you are planning to attend the Organizational Behavior Teaching Conference at the College of Charleston this year, please consider attending the OB T-Group as a pre-conference professional development activity. Quality teaching depends on the ability to interact effectively with others, to have sufficient emotional awareness and competence to handle difficult interpersonal situations, and to create emotional intimacy – all of which are skills you can develop in the OB T-Group.
The OB T-Group has been around as an OBTC pre-conference activity for the past 19 years. This year's OB T-Group will take place immediately prior to OBTC at the College of Charleston from 8:30 AM on Monday, June 8 to 3:00 PM on Wednesday, June 10.
A T-Group is facilitated experiential learning, focused on the here and now, in an unstructured small group setting. It was invented in the late 1940's by Kurt Lewin, Ken Benne, Leland Bradford (the father of David Bradford, founder of OBTS) and Ronald Lippitt, and was the basis for the founding of the NTL Institute for the Applied Behavioral Sciences. The T-Group has been a major component in the growth of organizational development and management education, and T-Group technology is inherent in the teaching of managerial skills, interpersonal skills, self-awareness, diversity and group dynamics. This T-Group experience is intended to provide you the opportunity to:
¨ Hone your interpersonal skills.
¨ Increase your sensitivity to your own feelings in the moment.
¨ Increase your understanding of the impact of your behavior on others.
¨ Increase your sensitivity to others' feelings.
¨ Increase your ability to give and receive feedback.
¨ Increase your ability to handle conflict in a way that meets your needs and strengthens the relating.
¨ Increase your understanding of process in the small group.
The Founder and Dean of the OB T-Group is Esther Hamilton. She has facilitated T-Groups for the NTL Institute for the Applied Behavioral Sciences for many years, is a former JME editor and OBTS Board member, and received the OBTS Distinguished Educator Award in 2000. In previous years, her co-facilitators for the OB T-Group have included Bill Torbert, Michael London, Bill Van Buskirk, Ken Pittman and myself. Facilitators this year will be Esther Hamilton and Michael London. Complete information, including registration instructions, is available at: https://obtc.org/reg.asp
Please feel free to contact me or Bob Herring, T-Group Administrator, if you have any questions.
Looking forward to seeing you in Charleston!
Dale M. Finn Robert A. Herring III
University of New Haven 1002 Somerset Place
300 Boston Post Rd. Greensboro NC 27410
West Haven, CT 06516 H 336-299-0758
203-932-7093 W 336-750-2338