The Four Flows Model

The Grove’s Facilitation Model is built on a framework called “The Four Flows,” inspired by Arthur M. Young’s Process Theory. Following is an illustration of the model, linked to the key questions in the Drexler/Sibbet Team Performance Model (also inspired by Process Theory). It illustrates what a facilitator needs to attend to while the group is focusing on things like purpose, trust, goals, commitments and the like.

The four levels provide an archetypal way of thinking about the four ways we humans relate to things. Since we are creatures that live upright on the Earth, and ground is down, we illustrate the most constrained level, the “Operational” level of group process as on “the ground.” The least constrained and freest way we relate is through our consciousness and attention. This is illustrated as the top level. In between is our experience of “energy”—meaning the movement, dynamics, and emotional body of a group— and “information,” referring to human’s ability to think symbolically in words, pictures and numbers. In ancient times these levels might have been called “spirit,” “soul,” “mind,” and “body.” These “flow” also resonate with what Carl Jung called intuition, feeling, thinking, and sensing.

This kind of conceptual model is a type of map aimed at visualizing the complete span of considerations needed, stated at a general level of abstraction. However it is not the “territory” itself—the actual situation of any specific group, where all these things happen together. This why we believe the workshop can’t just be about ideas, must actually create the realities we deal with experientially.