Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities

by Adam Kahane

This process produced conversations that were utterly banal: “I am feeling flushed and angry after your remark about Mary’s tone of voice.” At the same time the experience was extremely rich, because in this safe classroom space, we got feedback from our classmates that was immediate and straightforward. I learned a lot from these T Group sessions about my own patterns of behavior. At the beginning, I tended to hang back, observing and making smart comments. I was told I came across as distant, closed, and condescending—not at all what I wanted. I realized that I was stuck in a personal version of the apartheid syndrome. I hesitated to speak openly because I was afraid that if I said what I was really thinking, the others would be angry and would distance themselves from me, there would be a conflict, and the group would spin out of control and split apart. But I discovered, to my enormous surprise, that the opposite was true: the more open I was, the closer others felt towards me and the closer our group became.