Working with groups: consulting, advocating, mediating and negotiating

Although many interactions with clients are one-to-one, few practitioners in the health professions work entirely on their own. Particularly in institutional settings, it is common to practise as a member of a team, either small or large. Your working group or team is likely to consist of health practitioners and colleagues with a wide range of different but complementary skills and knowledge. You may be a member of a number of formal and informal groups. Specific individual and group responsibilities (such as tasks and actions to pursue between meetings) must be clearly determined, whereas many general group responsibilities (such as following the group 'rules' of behaviour) will be progressively established, both explicitly and implicitly, as the group sets up its norms and patterns of working together.