A group breaks up into people

Collective hostility looks like a solid wall. In one-to-one contact the wall sometimes breaks up into individual people, each of them less certain than the group as a whole.

A person may go along with the general tone because he does not want to stand out, has heard only one version, assumes the others know more, barely knows the target of the hostility, and is afraid of becoming a target himself.

Individual contact can change the picture. There is no need to persuade anyone. A normal piece of joint work is enough, in which people see each other outside the group storyline.

This is not a universal remedy. Some groups really are held together by a lasting conflict, by competition or by prejudice. One friendly conversation will not cancel a structure that rewards hostility.

Where there is serious bullying or discrimination, the task must not be dumped entirely on the person the group is set against. He is under no obligation to charm every participant in turn.

Still, it is worth remembering: “everyone is against me” sometimes means a few active people, a few passive ones, and a majority that has not decided what is going on at all.

A group speaks loudly. Not every member of it speaks in that voice.

Joint work does more than explanations. A new foreman met warily by the shift is unlikely to change anything with a speech about his intentions. It changes on the night shift, when a machine goes down and it becomes visible who stays to the end. A week later it turns out that “the shift is against him” consisted of two men whose place he took, and everyone else, who had no opinion. They had no opinion before the machine went down either; there was simply nobody to ask, and no reason to.

A group front rests on how cheap participation is: going along with the general tone costs nothing, while stepping out of it is already an act. So it falls apart where a shared job appears that demands specific actions from specific people.