National Training Laboratories

NTL Institute was created over 50 years ago, a product of both the vision of its founders and the demands of their times.

The worst war in history had just ended-a war ostensibly fought over the concepts of freedom and democracy. No one understood the dangers and the opportunities of those times more clearly than Kurt Lewin. Having fled the encroaching Holocaust of Nazi Germany in 1932, he knew the potential that humanity had for good and evil, and he firmly believed the social sciences could, and must, be used to address that potential.

While teaching at the University of Iowa, Lewin met Ronald Lippitt, then a graduate student. Over the course of the next 10 years, Lippitt introduced Lewin and his ideas to Kenneth Benne and Leland Bradford. All four men shared a personal and professional interest in the applied behavioral sciences and in the belief that science should be used to integrate democratic values in society. Lippitt, Benne, and Bradford would become the founders of NTL.

In 1946, while serving as director of MIT's new Research Center for Group Dynamics, a group he helped found, Lewin was contacted by the American Jewish Congress Committee on Community Interrelations and the Connecticut Interracial Commission to assist in the training of leaders who would deal with intergroup tensions in their home communities. The training, scheduled that summer in New Britain, Connecticut, was organized by Lewin to include three continuing learning groups, each with a leader and an observer, who was to record interaction among the participants. Lippitt was recruited to lead one of the groups, and he, in turn, recruited Benne and Bradford to lead the other two.

What happened next has become legendary in the annals of NTL and the field of group training.

At the start of one of the early evening observers' sessions, three of the participants asked to be present. Much to the chagrin of the staff, Lewin agreed to this unorthodox request. As the observers reported to the group, one of the participants-a woman-disagreed with the observer on the interpretation of her behavior that day. One other participant agreed with her assertion and a lively discussion ensued about behaviors and their interpretations. Word of the session spread, and by the next night, more than half of the sixty participants were attending the feedback sessions which, indeed became the focus of the conference. Near the conference's end, the vast majority of participants were attending these sessions, which lasted well into the night.

Lewin, Bradford, Benne, and Lippitt knew that something exciting had happened, a new and important method of adult learning had been discovered and needed development. This methodology confirmed Lewin's beliefs that experiences shared by the training group-learning by experience rather than lecture and reading-provided high potential for diagnostic study, evaluation and, most important, for changing behaviors. This was action-research at its best.

Could this process of group building and learning derived from it be used in a variety of organizational and community situations, nationally and cross-culturally? The four men were determined to find out. The Training Group was born.

The Beginning of NTL

Incorporating learning from the first, planning for a second conference began almost immediately. Funding was secured from the Office of Naval Research and the National Education Association (NEA) where Bradford was serving as Director of Adult Education. The planning group was named the National Training Laboratory for GROUP development, later shortened to NTL, and eventually to NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science.

Believing that change could more readily occur if the learning took place some distance from the participant's home environment, Lewin had chosen Bethel, Maine, a mountain community of 2,200 people, as the site, or "cultural island" for the first conference.

Unfortunately, Lewin, the leading theorist of the T-Group, did not live to see the first NTL program enacted. Lewin's death in February of 1947 was a shock; however, the successes of the 1946 conference and the potential of the new methodology was already drawing some of the best and brightest in social psychology to NTL. These included Paul Sheats, R. Freed Bales, Kurt Back, Morton Deutsch, Henry Reicken, and Stanley Schacter.

The success of the 1947 Laboratory was evident to all in attendance, and word of this new concept in training spread rapidly. More than 100 delegates, as participants were called then, participated in the second conference of 1948, and others had to be turned away.

Even in its formative years, NTL was in the foremost of meeting the changes and challenges of its times. Funding support was supplemented by a major grant from the Carnegie Foundation and numerous in-kind services from several major universities. Clinical psychologists were added to the staff to help persons experiencing stress in the training groups (now called T Groups); the number of participants and sessions increased; and a Wives' Group was formed (the feminist movement was still almost two decades down the road, and NTL, while broadly viewed as progressive, still reflected many of the sexist tenets of the time).

By 1949, NTL was consciously expanding its staff to include scientists and educators from a wide variety of groups and occupations. Similarly, research around the T Groups was conducted at multiple levels, paralleling this variety of disciplines. The concept of sensitivity training emerged as a version of the T Group, and NTL became a quasi-independent organization operating under the aegis of NEA, eventually offering many different program offerings beyond the T Group.

T Group Technology Expands and Gains Credibility

Growth brought along expansion in geographical offerings and training methodology. Regional labs and liaisons were established in Ohio, Colorado, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Washington state, and Pennsylvania. On an international level, between 1954 and 1956, several labs were conducted in Europe, and a program for hospital administrators was conducted in Puerto Rico. Paralleling this growth was the development of different training configurations to supplement the T Group. These included: S Groups (skill development), A Groups (action), C Groups (community leadership), and X Groups (for those not benefiting from T Groups).

A 1949 meeting of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, a division of he American Psychological Association, included a demonstration by Bradford, Lippitt, and others in the use of role playing in the T Groups. The presentation was attended by numerous well-known scientists, including Margaret Mead, friend and former collaborator of Lewin, and drew the attention of a broader community of social scientists to NTL's work. In 1957, NTL formalized its circle of influence with the formation of the NTL network, which included the founders-Benne, Bradford, and Lippitt-as well as others, including Richard Beckhard, Jack Gibb, Murray Horowitz, Gale Jenson, Gordon Lippitt, and Alvin Zander.

The original focus of NTL on leadership training, and its obvious success in this area, attracted the interest of organizations in many areas. For NTL, the drive was to create and develop the skills of "change agents," as they came to be called. For organizational leaders, particularly those in corporate America, the new mechanisms of problem-solving arising from T Group methodology presented new opportunities for addressing growing confrontations in various sectors of society.

Complementing programs at Bethel and the regional sites, programs were condensed on a consulting basis with such organizations like the American Red Cross, Standard Oil of New Jersey (now Exxon), the National Council of Churches, and the Department of Health in Puerto Rico. The work also fit well with NTL's growing work with strategic constituencies, such as the Key Executive Conference in 1957 for presidents and vice presidents (now the Senior Executive's Challenge), and programs dealing with significant conflicts. Indeed, NTL's cadre of leading social scientists strongly contributed to the evolving field of Organizational Development (OD), and had a dynamic effect on administration and management in organizational America.

The Vision and Pain of Success

The growth of NTL in the sixties was phenomenal. Income between 1963 and 1968 had multiplied by five, contracts by nine, and the NTL network had nearly doubled. More specialized labs were being developed for industry, religious and community leaders, as well as for college youth and school executives. In 1965, NTL began publishing The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, capitalizing on and building its credibility within the field. Indeed, through its programs, NTL had itself become a change agent.

With strong revenue projections and the apparent growing interest from many constituencies, the NTL Board began planning for sustained growth. In 1967, after many years as a part of the NEA, the NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science was incorporated with Bradford as executive director and with a vision to develop an NTL University.

As the sixties came to a close, a number of factors, both internal and external, had a profound effect on NTL and its future growth. The rising feminist movement and the demand for transformative socio-political change in the black community found voice in the ranks of NTL members. In the summer of 1968, a Black Caucus of NTL members presented Bradford with a list of demands relating to hiring, governance, and recruiting. Women's groups within NTL had been organizing for several years and in the summer of 1971, the first NTL Women's Caucus was held in Bethel (to date the only project directed towards women was the Wives' T Group). Both groups saw the Board and staff as overwhelmingly white, male, and over 40. The discrimination in the NTL system was exacerbated and exemplified by the Board's suggestion that the proposed NTL University be named the University of Man.

Other problems within the membership had been developing over a number of years. The NTL Network was divided into three levels of membership-fellows, associates, and affiliates-which created a strong impression of elitism, particularly among younger minority and female members who were sorely underrepresented in NTL's governance. The sheer size of the Network, now numbering 400, was creating accreditation problems for the organization. Even the burgeoning OD movement had created a new constituency of entrepreneurial members and participants, who looked to NTL for training, credentials, and contracts and then successfully competed with NTL for contracts. For longtime NTL members, these developments represented a major alteration and abuse of the organization's original mission.

Externally, the economy was entering a recession. At NTL, the Department of Defense cancelled major training contracts; the Board's plan for the proposed NTL University ended abruptly when the site selected was reappraised and found to be too expensive; and the organization incurred a large debt to finance a sorely needed renovation of the Bethel facility. All these issues came to a head as Leland Bradford, NTL's only director since it's inception, announced that he would retire in 1970. Entering the 1970's, NTL faced a membership disillusioned by the growing image of an organization in decline. Paradoxically, NTL was facing changes and difficulties in its own organization that it had helped other organizations to solve. The Board focused on changing governance, dissolving the Network, increasing financial stability, and basing membership on qualifications. However, by 1975, the debt remained unpaid, the Board was essentially the same gender-racial makeup of its predecessors, and the network stood dissolved. With contingency plans for bankruptcy in hand, the Board formed a committee determined to save NTL. Called the Four Horsepersons, the committee consisted of Barbara Bunker, Hal Kellner, Edith Seashore, and Peter Vaill. In November of 1975, the Four Horsepersons presented the Board with the names of 65 past NTL network members willing to give two weeks of unpaid work over the next two years, and a reorganization plan to reconstitute the Board with one-third white males, one-third women, and one-third minorities. The Board accepted the plan and NTL set out again to become a viable organization of consequence.

NTL's Evolution and Learning Continues

The 1975 reorganization of NTL was a turning point for the organization and set the stage for its continued evolution.

In governance, Elsie Cross was elected as Chair of the Board, the first African-American and the first woman to hold that post; Edith Seashore became the first President of NTL; and the reconstituted Board put in place a "cohort system," NTL's institutional commitment to diversity ensuring that the Board, committees, program staffs, and member recruitment equally represent women of color, men of color, white men, and white women.

Financially, NTL was able to pay its debts by 1979. In programs, labs in Bethel were thriving; the organization was again developing programs for individual, group, and organizational development; and in 1981, NTL, in collaboration with American University, initiated a Master's Program in Human Resource Development (now a Master's in Organizational Development).

By recognizing and embracing the diversity of its members in the sweeping reforms of the mid-seventies, NTL not only learned the value that differences can bring to an organization's internal workings, but studied and shared these practices in its approach to individual, group, and organization change.

Over the last decade, NTL has struggled and succeeded in advancing the method, practice, and theory initiatives of its founders by seizing the potential for democracy in educational and organizational settings. The character of the NTL membership reflects broader diversity and mastery of disciplines than ever imagined, and is drawn together by core values and authentic colleague-ship. NTL's renowned Journal of Applied Behavioral Science contributes a body of knowledge to the field that increases our understanding of change processes and outcomes; and the publication continues to grow in reputation and prestige around the world. Human Interaction labs are still the most popular, the most replicated, and simply the most effective programs ever for changing human attitudes and behaviors. And new applications of experiential learning have emerged to represent the most current and cutting edge programs in the fields of change management, human resources, organizational development, training, and diversity.

NTL's vision of the next fifty years includes a membership dedicated to the personal and professional advancement of each individual and organization whom we touch; an organization stimulated by research and inquiry seeking the continuous renewal of NTL members through our learning community; and NTL programs, products, and services that are of the highest quality providing discovery and application of knowledge in group dynamics, organizational change, and societal change.

The founders of NTL and the many who have followed them did not set out to change the world. But, their influence and contributions undeniably transformed the field of Applied Behavioral Science. The "exciting adventure into the unknown" continues.

See also

• Tavistock Institute
• Sensitivity training

External links

• Official NTL website