Group Dynamics

The term “group dynamics” has meant one thing for almost a century — what Kurt Lewin and his successors described in the psychological field: roles, norms, phases, conflicts, cohesion.

But I want to look at the same thing from a different level. Not how people interact inside a group, but how the group as a system turns resources into value. At the psychological level, we see personalities and relationships. At the structural level — baselines, spectrums, orthogonal interactions, R-process phases. Two lenses on the same reality, both needed. This chapter is about the structural lens.

Specifically, through the principle of homocentrism from Malyuta’s theory. Every participant in a group arrives with two things at once. A baseline — the position from which they observe the system. What one person sees as obvious, another doesn’t notice, because they’re looking from a different place. And a spectrum — the set of qualities they bring to the work: how they think, which domains they understand, where they have depth, where their blind spots are. Baseline answers the question what do I see. Spectrum answers what can I do.

Group dynamics in the structural sense is how both dimensions overlap. Different baselines meet and cross-check, and from that a full picture emerges that no single participant can see alone. Different spectrums complement each other orthogonally — where one person has a weak frequency, another is strong, and together they cover a range none of them could cover alone. A group is alive when both of these processes — baseline cross-checking and spectrum composition — keep happening continuously, not just once at the start.

Assembling a group is not the same as starting it. It’s like building an engine and never turning the ignition — the parts are all there, but there’s no circulation. A gyrator doesn’t exist statically. It exists in motion, in repeated interactions that close the loop.

This chapter is about how to make sure the loop actually closes. Not through rules and procedures, but through a few simple rituals that make the gyrator visible to the group itself — every day, not once a quarter.

Mandate and rhythm

Before the rituals, two things need to be in place from day one.

A clear mandate. Everyone in the group — and their managers — must understand that participation is legitimate, resourced, and expected. This is not a side project. Not “when there’s time.” A recognized structure with a defined purpose that everyone agrees on. Without this, the group lives in a semi-legal mode and burns out at the first priority conflict.

A regular rhythm. Not daily standups, unless the challenge demands it. But a consistent cadence — weekly or biweekly — where the group comes together, checks its state, surfaces blockers, adjusts course. Rhythm matters more than duration. A group that meets for fifteen minutes every week sees itself better than one that meets for two hours once a month.

The standup as a spectral cross-section

The classic standup is a task list. “What I did yesterday. What I’ll do today. What’s blocking me.” Three questions, one at a time, each person for themselves.

This is not a gyrator standup. These are parallel monologues. The group hears a sum of individual R-processes but doesn’t see itself as a system. If one person doesn’t show up, nothing breaks. If all five show up and report, nothing composes into a whole either.

A gyrator standup asks a different question. Not “what did I do” but “where are we as a group, relative to our baseline and goal, this week.”

This shifts the focus from individual reporting to the state of the system. In practice it might look like this:

Where are we on the trajectory? — The goal you defined at the start — are you closer or further? By how much? Why?

What interactions happened this week — and of what quality? — Not a list — examples. Who actually collaborated with whom. Where circulation was smooth, where it stumbled. Where there was gratitude, where there were excuses.

Where is the spectrum thin this week? — Which quality is sagging? Maybe someone is overloaded, and the part of the spectrum they cover is temporarily weak. You need to see this before it becomes a problem.

What’s visible from your baseline that others might have missed? — This brings the homocentrism principle into daily practice. Every person in the group has their own observation position. The standup is the moment when those positions get cross-checked.

Four questions instead of three. A different result entirely. The group sees itself as a system, not as a collection of reports. And if someone doesn’t show up, you notice immediately — because their baseline is missing.

Peer evaluation as a living practice

In chapter 6 I described peer evaluation as a tool that makes the invisible visible. There it was framed as a periodic procedure — once a month or once per cycle.

Inside a group, it’s worth doing it more often and more lightly. Not as a survey, but as part of the end-of-cycle reflection. Twenty minutes at the end of a two-week sprint. The same four questions from chapter 6. Answers anonymous, results visible to the whole group.

The goal is not to “rate the participants.” The goal is to see how the group reads itself. If all four questions name the same person as a load-bearing element — maybe they’re burning out. If nobody names someone at all — maybe their baseline doesn’t fit the current challenge, and that’s a conversation, not a verdict.

The honesty dilemma from chapter 6 shows up more softly here, because the group is small. But it doesn’t disappear. If participants start answering strategically, the whole practice loses its meaning within a week. Keep it in “a mirror for us” mode, not “a report for the manager” mode.

The lifecycle of the group

A gyrator group is temporary by design. It exists for a specific challenge. It’s not a permanent department. And this is not a flaw — it’s a property.

Every system goes through three phases: formation, stability, saturation. The group is no exception. When it’s in formation — lots of energy, everything new, rhythm still settling. When in stability — circulation is smooth, results flow. When in saturation — the same things become repetitive, energy drops, the challenge is no longer fresh. And this is a signal, not a problem.

The group should monitor its own state as part of the rhythm. A few questions to ask itself once a month:

Are we still turning resources into value at the same rate? — If the pace has noticeably dropped, that’s not necessarily bad. Maybe the challenge has changed. Maybe you’ve achieved most of what you could. But it needs to be named.

Has the challenge evolved? — Often what a group assembled for transforms in the process. A group that doesn’t notice this keeps solving the old problem, which is no longer relevant.

Do we need different qualities now than at the start? — The spectrum that was right at the beginning may stop matching once the challenge shifts. Time to bring in new people or release those whose baseline is no longer needed.

Is saturation approaching? — Have you done everything this configuration can do? If so — better to dissolve the group now than drag it on for two more months by inertia.

Three possible lifecycle outcomes:

Goal achieved. Celebrate and dissolve. Capture what was learned. Participants return to their departments with new experience — that’s value too, and it circulates onward.

Saturation without the goal. Restructure. Change the composition. Redefine the baseline. Or acknowledge that the challenge is bigger than you initially thought, and escalate it to a level where there are more resources and more authority.

Challenge disappeared. It happens — external conditions shifted, priorities moved, the problem solved itself. Dissolve without regret. The group served its function, even if the outcome wasn’t what was planned.

Why not all the details

None of what’s written here is an instruction. It’s a form that the group fills with its own content. Frequency of standups, exact questions, format of evaluation — all of this needs to be adapted to the specific challenge and the specific people.

What matters is not the format, but whether the group does these three things regularly: sees itself as a system, reads the patterns of interaction in motion, is aware of its phase. Everything else is secondary.

A group that does this — is alive. A group that doesn’t — is a formal structure that may still produce output, but is not a gyrator.

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