[OSList] 12-15 people: the dynamics

[Dan Mezick]

I am writing the community to find out if you have seen this pattern 
with smaller Open Space meetings. I am asking because I am 2 for 2 with 
this pattern, when the group is less than 16 people.

1. They play along at the Open
2. They look at the marketplace and notice it is all mostly one subject
3. They all decide to meet for this 'one big session' (self organizing)
4. It starts to zoom in on authority, and have a tone of 
challenging/questioning the formal authority, usually the Director/ Team 
Lead role
5. It causes some anxiety, mixed feelings/a problem for the facilitator
6. What happens next is anyone's guess

Questions:

1. Have you seen this
2. Is this a commonly understood pattern
3. If you have experienced this, when you experience it, what do you 
do... in that spot
4. If I ad facilitator judge the situation  as "tipping into chaos", is 
it bad form to intervene

Staying out of it is more than a little difficult to do. A range of 
feeling comes up as facilitator...

Summary:

They self-organize, into one big session. They just all decide to do 
this, (so far, looks OK per OST ground rules...) then it takes on this 
dump-on-authority tone. The tone can be considered insubordinate to some 
observers and participants. The "discussion" is usually well within the 
stated theme for the OST meeting.

This appears to be a small-group pattern. I have no idea what the upper 
end of the range might be, I have seen it in groups up to 16 people.

Your wise counsel is requested, if you have directly experienced this.

Regards,
Dan