Effective School Management

particularly difficult problems on which agreement to work on could not be
obtained.
The exercise proves more valuable if carried out in a congenial setting
where it can be followed by informal social intercourse between members of
the two groups – for example, in the bar of a residential centre. In such a
setting, the ‘ogres’ become more like us, taking on a human face, and this
lends credence to the facilitator’s suggestion in Step 1, that the source of
intergroup problems is usually structural.
A similar exercise can be carried out when three or more groups are
involved, but if this gives rise to unwieldy numbers, it can be combined with
a  ‘fish-bowl’ approach, in which the key representatives (for example,
managers) carry out Steps 3, 5 and 6, with an outer circle of the remaining