Other aspects of peolpe's influence on the group

We have seen the convergence of ideas and interest (and the conflict when there are pros and cons) as well as involmement and withdrawal. Two other aspects concern people: the level of awareness of what is going on and the different coordination tasks.

The level of awareness of what is going on in the group varies. It can happen that no one is aware of a particular phenomenon. Nevertheless it doesn't prevent cooperation. Thus, stigmergy is a shape of auto-organization used in particular by social insects as ants or termites for which communication is made by the tracks left - not necessarily consciously - by others. If the coordinator becomes aware of what takes place in the group, then he can act to favor some balances (convergence/difference, size of the group, the level of involvement). But if members themselves become aware of what is taking place, then they can act on many more little things than one or several managers can. The ideal is to reach a level of collective consciousness, i.e. that not only members are conscious.
No group is completely aware and still, there is always even a phenomena that everyone ignores. But the purpose of the coordinator is to favor the maximum of individual and collective awareness. On the contrary any aggression, voluntary or not, aware or not, opened or hidden, causes fear or anger and brings the group back to a very low level of conscience. The coordinator's job must be a permanent fight to bring back more awareness in the group... by minimizing at most his own fears and angers in order to avoid becoming unaware himself.

There are multiple tasks of coordination. Some are turned towards people (making involvement easy, helping convergence or divergence, boosting exchanges), others towards group itself (defining objectives, preserving the history of the group, identifying the tasks to be made and the critical tasks, giving the members an overall view of the group and the diversity of ideas) and others are aimed towards environment (value what has been done). Some tasks can be done in a centralized way - by the group's coordinator or by a group of nominees – or in a decentralized way. It depends on the group and of its level of developement (definition of goals, one of the first tasks which can be decentralized).
But in all cases, the tools of coordination must remain the coordinator's tools and not replace him in order to prevent him from discarding his responsability.

Very often, we try to drive the group with a specific intention. If this is relevent for aspects specific to the group (size, vocation...), it is no longer when you expect the members to get involved or to take initiatives. It is not wise either to manage the impact of environment on the group because we do not always have great possibilities for action. In this special case, it is important to drive the group with care and not with an idea in mind. That means that we must keep aware to what occurs and know how to adapt by seizing opportunities. It is even necessary to accept a small dose of incoherence to allow the group to solve problems insoluble otherwise...