The Organisation Development Company

Tele

Tele was first identified by JL Moreno as the flow of feeling from one person to another. Tele has qualities of attraction, drawing people closer together; rejection, moving away from; or neutral, where there is no movement.

Tele is both a fact and a concept, and can be measured using distance, and can be displayed by using lines; arrows to indicate direction, and colours or symbols to indicate movement.

Tele is a two-way flow of feeling, having both an outgoing flow and a retrojective flow received from the other. For groups to work well, there needs to be a number of mutually positive relationships amongst group members.

The psycho-social networks formed by the tele relationships of attraction, repulsion and neutrality, can be mapped and made visible to group members. These networks form the emotional and psychological geography of a community and greatly influence what occurs in families, and within and between groups, organisations and societies.

The term tele is from sociometry, the science and art of measuring relationships within and between people and groups. The concept of tele enables us to focus on the nature relationships between people and entities: teams, business units, organisations and customers, and make the invisible, visible.

How does tele work?

Where there is a strong positive mutual tele, the two people are likely be emotionally close, and be significant to one another whether they are geograhpically close in life or not. If there is a strong mutual negative tele relationship, this creates (emotional) distance between the two.

How do we apply the principle of tele in organisations?

Firstly, positive mutual relationships are at the basis of good working relationships. e.g. people choose each other to problem solve, to consult with one another, or to lead in a project, or be led by. When there are strong negative telic relationships, the work grinds to a halt, one or more individuals become isolated within the group, and the 'work' then becomes the rebuilding of positive relationships.

Another example: Let's identify three groups in a company, sales, production and corporate finance. Sales is positive to corporate finance, corporate finance is positive to sales and has a neutral relationship with production. Sales has a weak positive relationship with production however production has a negative relationship with sales. We might also be aware that sales tends to sell more than production can produce creating problems between customers and the production team.

This assessment assists us to decide what is now needed to have better working relationships between sales and production, to better meet the company's goals and ensuring greater satisfaction for both customers, and those within the company.

When there are strong positive relationships between people, work flows and teams are productive. When there are negative working relationships between specific team members, the work of the team tends to grind to a halt. The new work becomes the rebuilding of relationships in line with the purpose of the team.

Sociometrists map these relationships. Mapping the telic relationships shows us the informal network of relationships between people and teams. These informal networks connect people; they are the glue within groups. Mapping and exploring informal networks assists people and groups identify unproductive rifts between people. New behaviours and new role relationships are relevant to enable new solutions to old problems.

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