Emptied Egos: The Path to Community Integration

After chaos is a stage where people learn to “empty” themselves of those “ego”-related factors that are preventing their entry into the community. And thus this stage is called Emptiness. It is quite tough to undergo emptiness because it involves the death of a part of the individuals in the group. However, this death is said to be significant since it paves way for the birth of a new concept, True Community; which is also the last stage. Here, the people have empathy with one another.

There is great mutual understanding among the members.

And, although discussions can get heated, they can never get sour, and motives are not questioned. These four stages are actually congruent to Bruce Tuckman’s four stages of group. They are Forming [corresponds to Pseudocommunity], Storming [Chaos], Norming [Emptiness], and Performing [True Community] (Tuckman, 1965; Owen, et al. , 2007). As to my two groups, I think that they are in different stages at present. Based on my assessments, my workplace group has just reached the Emptiness (Norming) stage.

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The people at work did not just realize that we are different from each other. They are now beginning to give way to others, understand and accept their workmates’ personalities and why they were that way. They actually undergo internal changes to improve their relationship with each other. I think this is the death that Peck was talking about. It is unselfish, and I am quite sure that will help us become a better group; or in Peck’s words, a true community.

My other group, on the other hand, is (hopefully I am right) in the True Community stage. I guess I can say this because we now have a very deep understanding of each other’s behaviors. We are not a perfect group. We fight. But we always get past it and we move on. Sure things can get really tough but we are all mature enough and know each other well enough to come out whole. We might get wounded on the process, but we become stronger. I guess time is the greatest why our group endured.