What/Who is ?

CGL members and friends

(mail your URL to johnca@cgl.org)

Co-Intelligence Institute -- an NGO exploring and promoting ways of working together (Tom Atlee et al)
Horizons of Change -- group and other consulting services (Kenoli Oleari and Roberta Mcreary)
Rhodes Hileman
John Abbe

CGL Mission Statement

The Center for Group Learning furthers the understanding of groups on both a personal and global level through the open exchange of ideas and experiences

What does CGL do?

We learn and teach about how groups of people work* and how they can work better. CGL has always included a (gradually rotating) group of people who meet regularly -- about once a month for more than five years, with occasional weekend retreats -- often studying our own process.

At various times in the past we have initiated other projects. We organized monthly semi-formal learning potlucks and the Process of the Month series (and several one-time workshops). We published a newsletter for a couple of years, and helped organize and mass-attended conferences. We've talked with a lot of people about a lot of different ideas about groups, and learned a lot experientially in the process. We'll probably start up additional external activities againat at some time in the future.

We organized as a non-profit in 1994. We're based in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA, but most public activities have taken place in the East Bay. The potlucks on various group-related theories and practices were from January 1993 through the summer of 1996, and were often experiential. We organized the Process of the Month series from 1995 to 1997. The second year it was available for credit at the JFK Graduate School of Psychology.

Many of us are involved in organizational development (and transformation etc.), others instead (or also) have been activists, teachers, students, writers, visionaries, office workers, lawyers, housecleaners and more.

CGL decisions are made by consensus, at a consensus group meeting.

* Well, not just how they work, but also how they play, live, fight, begin, break up, and evolve, and even achieve a pleasantly functional dynamic. We also try to understand and teach how individuals can participate more effectively and self-satisfyingly in the various groups that they find themselves in.

Why the focus on groups?

Groups include families, classrooms, workplaces, back-fence get-togethers, bar scenes, gamers, net-chatters, many religious traditions, legislatures...they are everywhere. We spend much of our lives in groups. Groups are important.

There are many useful perspectives on the psychology of groups, and many experiences that an individual or group can go through to learn about groups. Of course, any time you spend with a group you're learning something about groups, but usually it's on a level we don't think about, and sometimes we're just repeating habitual patterns (withdrawal from conflict, assigning blame to a scapegoat, etc.). We all can learn from having some conscious experience with groups. Anyone can learn to pay attention to the dynamics in a group to help us understand how we are in the group and possibly what we can do to help ourselves and the group itself work* better, and to help us understand other groups. The first skills involved are usually listening

There are many organizations studying and/or offering training in a particular group theory or practice. We are dedicated to introducing people to a wide array of them, because we believe that every situation may require a different set of skills and experience. If all you have is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail. We want people to have broad experience to draw from in whatever situation, and in figuring out what kind of guidance a group might need.

Consensus Group

The Consensus Group meets once a month (often the first Sunday of each month). Right now we're training ourselves intensively in a number of group processes/theories, starting with t-groups, dialogue, and tavistock. We are doing this with an attention to the edges of each of these processes, and a consciousness of larger social dynamics and spirituality. Eventually from our experiences we expect to offer some new learning experiences to others.

We are now in a visioning process.

Consensus Group decisions are made by consensus (surprise).

Currently we are:

                     Address                 Official title
                     -------                 --------------
John Abbe            johnca@cgl.org 
Wendy Appel          courcom@aol.com 
Tom Atlee            cii@igc.apc.org 
Kathleen Brown       giraffe@slip.net
Mike Evans           mevans@woodland.net 
Judith Forrest       j4st@earthlink.net 
Dave Kirkpatrick     dkirk@igc.apc.org       Treasurer
Madalyn Knittle      madalynw@aol.com        Secretary
Sue Levy             gnp@slip.net 
Pat Morris           pmorris@well.com 
Kenoli Oleari        kenoli@igc.apc.org      President
Eileen Palmer        eileenap@aol.com

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This page maintained by John Abbe.
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