Understanding Group and Leader (UGL på engelska)

Understanding Group and Leader

UGL (Group Dynamics and Leadership Development) is a course originally created by the Swedish Defence in the beginning of the 80s. The Defence owns the rights to the course and the facilitators are trained and licensed through a 5 weeks program.

The FIRO model

The course is based on the FIRO model. During the Vietnam War, a large amount of American officers were shot in the back by their own men. William Schutz, a psychologist from San Fransisco, was asked to look in to the severe lack of cooperation within the teams and between teams and leaders. He had since 1955 worked with the USA Navy and his research, also based on his work with NASA, IBM and Coca Cola, resulted in the FIRO model.
The model explains the processes within a team and the different phases a group might experience. It also shows different ways of helping a team develop.

The background

In the early 80's, the Swedish Defence decided to add more training in teamwork and leadership to the studies at the War Colleges. After meeting Will Schutz in USA and getting introduced to FIRO, they decided to create a course based on this model.
The course was called UGL ( Developing Groups and Leaders ) and is, since 1981, compulsory within the Defence. 10 years later, it also became compulsory for officers of the Police Force and the Fire Brigade.
Due to the originality of this course and the positive response from participants, the course was introduced on the Swedish market about 12 years ago.

UGL today

Today, we estimate that around 50.000 persons have participated in a UGL course. It is being used as management training at Volvo, Ericsson, Skanska and several other companies and communities. Recently the course has also been introduced in Norway, Denmark and Finland. The demand from big companies to run international management programs including UGL was growing larger. The English version has therefore been highly appreciated and is today being used by for example Skanska.

Managers and employees at all levels whithin the organization.

- The course is being run during 5 days with accommodation.
- The group is to consist of between 8 and 12 participants.
- The participants should not know each other well and should preferably not work
together.
- Participants are not allowed to leave and return at a later stage of the course. If
someone leaves and wishes to participate in a forthcoming course, he must start
from the beginning again.
- No activities outside the course must be planned since the course will continue all
through the evenings.
- The trainers must be licensed by the Swedish Defence.

The overall goal is to become more efficient as a leader, an instructor and a team member. Also to
- gain more self awareness and self confidence
- understand the needs of different leadership methods
- discern different phases in the development of a group
- be able to give and receive feed back
- be able to use direct communication
- be able to notice and handle conflicts
- get knowledge of experience based learning
- get experience of group dynamic situations and an understanding of the different roles.

The pedagogy of the course combined with special exercises allows a group to move forward in the FIRO model, starting with forming a completely new team with unknown persons and ending with the possibility of becoming a fully efficient and mature team.
As the only course on the Swedish market, UGL offers the unique opportunity to experience the development of a team as one in the group. Where most courses use examples, models, lectures and written material, UGL mainly concentrates on
learning by experiences. The participants draw their own conclusions through exercises, discussions and tests and so the lectures and models just add tools to increase the understanding. The participants are expected to take responsibility for their own learning and the trainers function more as coaches than teachers.
Since we all use different ways of learning, UGL incorporates the four different learning styles in order to meet every participant's needs.

Course fee: 23 200 sek

Full board: 10 200sek