The Intergroup Exercise

In the first intergroup exercise in the 1959 conference, the members were asked to split into groups in any way they wished and, by negotiations between the groups, to decide on the content of four sessions in the conference programme. The more precise formulation of the task of the total conference helped us to simplify that of the intergroup exercise. In general, possible intergroup relations within the conference are numerous and complex. Members of staff who are not available as consultants to groups or to intergroup meetings, or who, if available, are not called on, form the staff group, and as such represent the management of the exercise. In an intergroup exercise the staffs are in constant danger of imagining that they are managing an exercise for its own sake; that is, that they are managing a communication system, but not necessarily a learning process.