MBA Interpersonal Dynamics Journal Template

Interpersonal Dynamics Journal: [Your name, course and term]

A weekly journal for experiential courses on interpersonal relationships, in the T-group tradition that several leading MBA programmes offer as a leadership elective: notes from group sessions, feedback given and received, the gap between your intent and your impact, feelings named in the moment, a ten-week behaviour tracker, a mid-term and final synthesis, and practice exercises. It is for MBA students in such a course or in an intensive leadership lab, and for anyone working on how they show up with colleagues. Source basis: the T-group laboratory method (Bradford, Gibb and Benne 1964), Bradford and Robin, Connect (2021), the Johari window (Luft and Ingham 1955), psychological safety (Edmondson 1999), the situation-behaviour-impact feedback model associated with the Center for Creative Leadership, and experiential learning (Kolb 1984; Schön 1983), written in original words. The people and entries in the examples are fictional; tracker numbers were computed in Python. Replace every [bracketed] value and every row marked Example. This journal supports learning; it is not therapy or a substitute for professional support.

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Contents

1. Purpose and when to use
2. Where this kind of course comes from
3. Core ideas
4. Giving and receiving feedback
5. Ground rules, safety and confidentiality
6. Weekly journal entry
7. Ten-week behaviour tracker
8. Intent and impact check
9. Mid-term and final synthesis
10. Practice: example B and exercise C
11. Common mistakes
12. Self-test
13. Sources and further reading

1. Purpose and when to use

Most MBA courses teach you about organisations. An interpersonal dynamics course teaches you about yourself in relationship with others: how your words and silences land, what you feel and avoid feeling, how you respond when someone is angry with you, and how to build relationships in which people can tell each other the truth. The learning happens in the room, through unstructured group sessions where the "case" is what members do and feel with one another.

That makes the course powerful and easy to waste. Sessions are intense; insights fade within days; patterns only show up over weeks. A journal turns the experience into learning in three ways: it captures specific moments while they are fresh, it makes you name behaviour, feelings and impact precisely, and it gives you ten weeks of evidence to look back on. Use this journal:

• in an interpersonal dynamics elective or a T-group based leadership lab;
• in a leadership course that uses small-group feedback sessions;
• after the course, as a monthly practice at work.

2. Where this kind of course comes from

The T-group (training group) emerged in the United States in the late 1940s from Kurt Lewin's circle and the National Training Laboratories. Participants found that discussing their own here-and-now interactions, with a trained facilitator and feedback from peers, produced more learning than lectures about groups. Bradford, Gibb and Benne (1964) described the laboratory method and its theory. The format spread to companies and business schools.

Several leading MBA programmes offer courses in this tradition. Stanford Graduate School of Business runs a long-standing elective, OB 374 Interpersonal Dynamics, widely known by its nickname "Touchy Feely". As of October 2026 the official course listing says that learning happens mainly through interactions with other T-group members, that T-groups meet in the evening and at a weekend retreat, that students must pre-qualify before enrolling, and that the course is not a substitute for therapy (check the school's current course listing for format and eligibility). David Bradford and Carole Robin, who taught and developed the course for many years, set out its main ideas for a general audience in Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues (2021). Other schools run similar labs under different names. This journal is independent: it is not any school's course material, and it describes the ideas in original words.

3. Core ideas

1. Intent and impact are different. You know your intent; others experience only your behaviour and its impact on them. Most interpersonal conflict comes from treating our intent as if it were our impact ("I was only trying to help") or treating others' impact on us as proof of their intent ("you wanted to embarrass me").

2. Stay on your side of the net. Bradford and Robin use a tennis image: each person has a side of the net. On your side are your intentions, feelings and the behaviour you observed; on the other person's side are their intentions, motives and feelings. Feedback stays on your side when it reports what you saw and how it affected you. It crosses the net when it claims to know the other person's motives or character ("you are trying to control the group"). Crossing the net invites defence; staying on your side invites curiosity, because nobody can argue with your experience.

3. Feelings are data. Naming a feeling in the moment ("I notice I am getting frustrated") gives the group information it cannot otherwise see and moves an item from the hidden area of the Johari window into the open area (Luft and Ingham 1955). Many professionals have learned to keep feelings out of work; the course asks you to experiment with the opposite, in proportion.

4. Learning happens at the edge of comfort. Too little risk and nothing changes; too much and you shut down. Bradford and Robin suggest stretching a little beyond what feels comfortable, in small steps, and noticing what happens. Track your experiments (Section 7) so you can see the edge move.

5. Safety is built, not assumed. Groups learn when members believe they can take interpersonal risks without being punished or humiliated: what Edmondson (1999) called psychological safety in work teams. Every member contributes to it by how they respond when someone else takes a risk.

4. Giving and receiving feedback

A usable format combines the situation-behaviour-impact (SBI) model associated with the Center for Creative Leadership with a feeling and a request:

Receiving feedback is the harder half. Thank the person, ask for an example if it is vague, check your understanding ("so when I do X, you feel Y"), and separate the decision about what to change from the moment of hearing it. You do not have to agree with feedback to learn from it: it is accurate information about the other person's experience.

5. Ground rules, safety and confidentiality

Courses of this kind state clearly that they are not therapy. If a session raises distress that does not settle within a few days, talk to the facilitator and use your school's counselling or wellbeing service. Your journal is a learning tool, not a crisis plan.

6. Weekly journal entry

Example entry (fictional, week 4). Moment: Priya told Jonas that his jokes kept the group from going deeper. I laughed at the next joke, then went quiet. Felt: at the time, relieved and slightly guilty; now, curious. Intent: to lighten the tension because it felt unsafe. Impact: Priya said afterwards that my laugh felt like taking Jonas's side against her. The net: I had assumed she was attacking Jonas; I did not ask. Pattern: I use humour to escape conflict at work too. Johari: blind area shrank: I had not seen that my laugh was a vote. Learning: smoothing over tension is not neutral; it has an impact on the person who raised it. Experiment: next time tension rises, I will say what I feel ("I notice I want to make a joke because this feels tense") instead of making the joke.

7. Ten-week behaviour tracker

Track four behaviours each week: feelings named in the moment, feedback given in the behaviour-impact form, feedback asked for, and self-rated comfort with interpersonal risk (1 to 5).

Summary (weeks in rows 2 to 11, behaviours in columns B to E):

Reading (Example): naming feelings rose most. Asking for feedback started lowest and stayed lowest; that is the next edge. The dip in week 6 followed a hard session; one dip is normal and is worth a journal entry, not a verdict.

8. Intent and impact check

Pick a moment. Rate your intent on a simple scale, then ask the people involved how it landed for them on the same scale. The gap is a conversation starter, not a score.

Example (fictional). Nadia summarised a heated discussion "to help the group move on". She rated her intent as helpful, 4.5 on a 1 (unhelpful) to 5 (very helpful) scale. Five members rated the impact 2, 3, 2, 4 and 3: mean 2.8 (=AVERAGE(B2:B6)), gap 1.7 (=4.5-AVERAGE(B2:B6)). In the conversation that followed, two members said the summary felt like closing a topic they had not finished; one said it was a relief. Nadia's learning: ask "are we ready to move on?" before summarising.

9. Mid-term and final synthesis

Kolb (1984) describes learning as a cycle from concrete experience through reflective observation and abstract conceptualisation to active experimentation. The weekly entry covers the first two; the synthesis forces the third (what is my theory of how I behave in groups?) and sets up the fourth.

10. Practice: example B and exercise C

Worked example B (half solved). Rewrite each statement so it stays on your side of the net, using situation, behaviour, feeling and impact.

Exercise C (unsolved). Choose a real working relationship outside the course where something is unsaid. Write the feedback you would give in the four-part format, the reaction you fear, and what you would do if that reaction happened. Then decide whether, when and how to have the conversation, and record what happened in next week's entry.

11. Common mistakes

1. Writing a diary, not a journal. A summary of the session teaches little; one moment in depth teaches a lot.
2. Judgements dressed as feelings. "I feel that you are wrong" is an opinion; feelings are words such as annoyed, hurt, grateful, anxious.
3. Crossing the net. Attributing motives ("you wanted to") instead of reporting your experience.
4. Treating intent as impact. "But I meant well" ends the learning; ask how it landed.
5. Waiting to be safe before taking any risk. Safety grows when members take small risks and are met well.
6. Over-disclosing to prove commitment. Stretch in small steps; pressure to disclose is itself worth discussing.
7. Analysing others instead of yourself. The journal is about your behaviour and your impact.
8. Breaking confidentiality. Sharing others' stories outside the group, even anonymously, damages trust.
9. Stopping after the course. The skills fade without practice; keep a monthly entry at work.
10. Using the course as therapy. It is a learning lab; seek professional support for issues that need it.

12. Self-test

1. What is a T-group, and where did the method come from?
2. Explain "staying on your side of the net" in two sentences.
3. Give the four parts of the feedback format in Section 4.
4. Why is naming a feeling in the moment useful to the group, in Johari window terms?
5. What is psychological safety, and who first measured it in work teams?
6. In the tracker example, which behaviour changed most between the first and second halves, and by how much?
7. A member rates his intent at 4.0; four members rate impact 3, 2, 3 and 2. Compute the mean impact and the gap.
8. Name the four stages of Kolb's (1984) learning cycle and say which part of this journal covers each.
9. Why is "you are too aggressive" weak feedback, and how would you rewrite it?
10. When should a participant seek support outside the course?

13. Sources and further reading

• Bradford, L. P., Gibb, J. R., and Benne, K. D. (eds.) (1964). T-Group Theory and Laboratory Method: Innovation in Re-education. Wiley.
• Bradford, D. L., and Robin, C. (2021). Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues. Currency.
• Luft, J., and Ingham, H. (1955). The Johari window, a graphic model of interpersonal awareness. Proceedings of the Western Training Laboratory in Group Development. University of California, Los Angeles.
• Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383.
• Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Prentice Hall.
• Schön, D. A. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Basic Books.
• Stone, D., and Heen, S. (2014). Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well. Viking.
• Center for Creative Leadership, public resources on the situation-behaviour-impact feedback model, https://www.ccl.org
• Stanford University, ExploreCourses listing for OB 374: Interpersonal Dynamics (checked 2026-10-28): https://explorecourses.stanford.edu/search?q=OB374
• Textbooks, by name only: Robbins, S. P., and Judge, T. A., Organizational Behavior (Pearson). Open resource: OpenStax, Organizational Behavior (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), https://openstax.org/details/books/organizational-behavior.

Answer key

Example B. FB-02: "When I said your summary missed my point, you replied straight away with three reasons it did not. I felt unheard and stopped explaining." FB-03: "When you corrected the facilitator's numbers twice today, I felt a bit intimidated and less willing to share half-formed ideas." FB-04: "In our pair exercise you kept your answers to one or two words. I felt distant from you and unsure whether you wanted to be there." (Speak only for yourself, never for "everyone".)

Self-test.

1. A small, unstructured training group in which members learn from feedback about their here-and-now interactions, with a trained facilitator. It came from Kurt Lewin's circle and the National Training Laboratories in the late 1940s (Bradford, Gibb and Benne 1964).
2. Your side holds your intentions, feelings and what you observed; the other side holds their motives and feelings. Report your side, and ask rather than assert about theirs.
3. Situation, behaviour, feeling and impact, request or question.
4. It moves information from your hidden area into the open area, so others understand the effect of the interaction and can respond to it.
5. A shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking; Edmondson (1999) measured it in work teams and linked it to learning behaviour.
6. Feelings named: from a mean of 1.4 to 4.0 per session, +2.6 (=AVERAGE(B7:B11)-AVERAGE(B2:B6)).
7. Mean impact 2.5 (=AVERAGE(3,2,3,2)), gap 1.5 (=4-2.5).
8. Concrete experience (the session and the "moment" field), reflective observation ("felt", "intent", "impact", "the net"), abstract conceptualisation ("pattern", "learning", the synthesis), active experimentation ("experiment").
9. It judges character and crosses the net, so it invites defence. Rewrite: "When you raised your voice and pointed at me during the vote, I felt intimidated and agreed to something I did not support."
10. When distress does not settle within a few days, affects sleep, study or work, or touches issues beyond the course's purpose: talk to the facilitator and use the school's counselling or wellbeing service.

Revision history

Standard and licence note

Based on the T-group laboratory method (Bradford, Gibb and Benne 1964), the ideas in Bradford and Robin (2021), the Johari window (Luft and Ingham 1955), psychological safety (Edmondson 1999), the situation-behaviour-impact feedback model associated with the Center for Creative Leadership, and experiential learning (Kolb 1984; Schön 1983), as cited above. The text, journal structure, tracker, examples and questions are original; no course material or book text is copied. Stanford Graduate School of Business is named only to describe a public course accurately; this journal is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by Stanford University, any other school, the authors or the Center for Creative Leadership. Check the current course description of your own programme. Template licence: MIT.