We want to offer to you another perspective that we think will help you do some diagnostic work about the team or groups that you're currently operating in. And this perspective is known as BART. BART grows out of work from Tavistock, which was a movement in England that's become a worldwide way of thinking about groups and teams that emphasizes psychodynamic processes. BART stands for boundaries, authority, roles, and task. We're going to elucidate each of these a little bit as a way to help you think about how these are happening in the teams that you're on. >> All right, so let's start with boundaries. Boundaries refer to physical, psychological, or time boundaries. And these can be in a continuum. These can be very rigid, just right, or loose. So let's dive back to part two of the scenario we just saw. Let's talk about time boundaries. Now, this was a team that had very loose time boundaries. Their meetings didn't start on time, they didn't respect the time limit for the meeting. They kept interrupting, they went and check mail, took calls. So this can refer to many things. And why a team chooses to adhere to or violate a boundary, and in this case a time boundary, can be very important diagnostic information to understanding what's happening in here. So for example, perhaps time boundary, in this group, is a cultural norm. In many cultures, commencing a meeting on time is considered very important, and in some ways, a trademark of being very professional at work. In some other cultures, they're very lenient. It's okay to start a meeting 15 minutes later than the scheduled time, so it can be a cultural thing. Perhaps the team does not value boundaries, perhaps they see no reason in following boundaries. So it can be many things, and analyzing this or diagnosing the way the team interprets, adheres to or violates boundaries can be very important diagnostic information. >> BART is a tremendously powerful concept, and if you want to read more, it's there in your resources. So do go ahead and read this. Now, we listen to boundaries and how boundaries are perceived, how boundaries are adhered to, how boundaries are signaled. There's a lot of symbolism, if you will, in that, so is authority. How is the team reacting to authority? Who wields authority, who has formal authority, who has informal authority? Now, for instance, one of the examples is one of the clients that I was coaching. I noticed, in a team meeting, that the client who was the leader, designated leader, formally invested as a leader, was not the actual leader. The actual leader was another team member who was the subject matter expert. So that makes you think that who is considered to be an authority in the context? And that makes you think about the rules, doesn't it, Dana? >> Mm-hm, and just like with authority, we have formal and informal authority. And you have formal and informal roles in a team. And it's important to think about what roles are part of the teams that you're working in. For example, in a recent team that I worked with, one of the members was seen and designated as the contrarian. And so every point that was made, he felt called upon to disagree with, contradict, argue about. And the team sort of crowned him and supported him in that role. So it was not something that they just disagreed with. He was really their critical thinking partner, in a way, so that turned out to be positive. There are also roles in teams that can be very negative. But we want you to think about not so much the person and why the person has that role, but what the role says about the group or team and how you can understand that. And Alan, maybe you can talk a little bit about task. >> Sure, so we have boundaries, we have authority, we have roles, that brings us to tasks. There are at least 2 tasks in these organization structures, groups, and teams. One is clearly the work task, what is it that we're assigned to do? What is our purpose, what is our given assignment, if you will, our task, our work task? But the other is our survival task. Wilfred Bion talks about any group or team having a sort of a survival task. How do we sustain ourselves, how do we continue our activity? And oftentimes, these groups get confused between what they're doing, or their attention is spent on their survival, as opposed to their assignment or their work. So this is an issue in many, many groups and teams. And we suspect you'll see this difference, and you'll see these two tasks in your teams.
