Management Perspective: Sensitivity Training: The Current State of the Question

Abstract

For years, it has been suggested that increases in interpersonal competence significantly improve organizational performance. Ideally , each member achieves a high degree of self-acceptance. Bach is able to create conditions such that acceptance of self and others increases. This tends to lower external dependency. Members are free to accept new ideas and thoughts. This leads to increased experimentation and risk taking with new thoughts. Such patterns of behavior aid the organization in keeping pace with today's fast moving economic and technological developments. Measured both in organizational and individual well-being, these outcomes have been considered by many difficult to obtain but desirable. Clearly, all is not so easy. One proposed solution in widespread use has been sensitivity training or education. Not education in the ordinary sense, sensitivity training is process oriented rather than content oriented. It is concerned with the process of human relations through actual emotional experiences. Sensitivity training is also structured around the trainee. He, not the trainer, is the focal point. Leadership and rewards and penalties are largely controlled by the trainees. The trainees are supposed to learn new modes of “authentic” interpersonal behavior through interaction and “non-evaluative” feedback in partially unstructured situations.