Promoting mentalizing in organisations through learning operative groups

Abstract

Current and pressing scientific and technological changes are producing drastic transformations within organisations, creating anxiety and uncertainty and inhibiting the reflective function of the workers who experience conditions of senselessness and estrangement from their work. This article presents a case study from learning operative group training sessions aimed to promote the identity work through the (re)activation of the reflective function towards the definition of new shared meanings. As part of a broader organisational development process, group training sessions based on learning operative groups were arranged in order to offer participants a group reflective space in which each of them could share her or his thoughts and feelings. Organisational changes require workers to face the challenge of constantly developing new professional skills, thereby threatening personal identity and separating it from the professional function and leading to a situation of “identity ambiguity” which becomes difficult to maintain. The learning operative group setting allowed a critical reflection within the organisational development process and promoted mutual trust, empathy, and perspective taking, that, in turn, fed reflective practices in support of individual identities.