ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to elucidate some of the thinking involved in the kind of group relations training that was developed within the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and is conducted by its Group Relations Education Programme. The former were designed to give participants experiences of the dynamics of small groups and the latter to explore how the learning could be applied in real-life situations. Other institutions have been founded to develop not only this version of group relations training but also related consultancy and action research activities. The working hypothesis is a sketch of the reality of a situation to be either elaborated or erased and replaced by another sketch. The working hypothesis is always an approximation— valid and reliable at a particular point in time of the relationship between members of a grouping in a conference and the consultant or consultants.
