Bruce Tuckman

That's group theory.

There's a paper that came out in 1965 by a organizational theorist called Bruce Tuckman, and he modeled the life cycle that groups go through.

And the first is to form.

And he basically, he says, if your group lasts long enough to be relevant, which is a big if, a lot of gatherings are like a one night thing and that's it.

And you say to get better at group life, you have to get better at group death.

We avoid endings with all our might and we need them desperately.

And so often, I mean, when I talked about Bruce Tuckman's paper earlier, it became so popular.

It was one of the most cited papers in a decade of organizational work in academia.

In group theory, there are the, the phases.

There was a paper in 19, uh, in the 1960s by a sociologist called Bruce Tuckman, and he looked at how groups form over time.

He, uh, all types of groups, and a group cannot last over time without a fight.

So the first stage is you form, and this could be a trivia night.

It could be a worship s- or prayer circle.

It could be a knitting group.

A group forms, and if they last long enough to be relevant, a period of conflict ensues, and they go through what Bruce Tuckman calls the storm because basically group life is coordination.

How are we gonna do this? What night are we gonna meet? Whose house are we gonna have this at? Are we really gonna let them chat all the time? They're ta- they're taking over the entire meeting.

I'm a conflict resolution facilitator, and part of what I did in my research for The Art of Fighting was looking also at group theory and how groups form over time.

And there was a famous paper in 1965 by an organizational designer called Bruce Tuckman, and he basically looked at the idea that groups cannot form or last without a fight.

And if you come together again, whether you are a church or synagogue or whether you're literally a film club with a bunch of friends or a reading group, which seems to be the vibe lately and people last people, it's interesting enough that people want to be a part of it.

The the group actually goes through a period of increased conflict, which Bruce Tuckman calls the storm.

And it has to in order to answer these questions of, hey, who are we? What night do we meet? Are we a dictatorial book club? Or are we a laissez-faire book club? What kind of group are we? Are we reading fiction or nonfiction? Fiction or nonfiction? Do we read the book? And so I'm actually trying to de-exoticize I'm trying to reclaim the word fighting, to not make it seem something that we think of as dysfunctional or amoral, and to actually say, hey, hey, hey, this is actually incredibly important to the core of how we figure out who we are.

And if we only think it's a bad thing, we don't actually then develop the deeply needed skills we have to do it