National Training Labs NTL
NTL Institute: Learn It. Live It.™
NTL Institute delivers powerful learning solutions for organizations, leaders and practitioners who have a clear stake in accelerating individual, team and organization effectiveness. For 65 years, NTL Institute has provided training and learning to tens of thousands of individuals and organizations around the world. Our NTL global member faculty includes over 300 members who are leading consultants, practitioners and researchers at the forefront of innovation in organization and leadership development, interpersonal skills and human development, group dynamics, and diversity and inclusion.
This is from the front page of their site.
NTL Mission Statement and Values
Vision
NTL’s vision is people empowered to create just and compassionate organizations and societies in an interdependent world.
MissionThe mission of the NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science is to advance Applied Behavioral Science (ABS) in the service of social justice, oppression-free societies, and healthy individuals, groups and organizations in the world. We do this through:
NTL is a community of members and staff guided by the following values:
Kurt Lewin, founder of modern social psychology, designed an experiment in group relations in the 1940s. That experiment provided the scientific basis for NTL Institute’s approach to learning. This approach achieves increased awareness of self and others through facilitated group dialogue that advocates open-minded appreciation and inclusion of differences
From the very beginning, much of the theory and practice that presently underlies the professional field of organization development was created and has been taught around the world by NTL members. Founded in 1947, NTL Institute, headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, is a not-for-profit educational association of members and staff whose purpose is to advance Applied Behavior Science (ABS) in the service of social justice, oppression free societies and healthy individuals, groups, and organizations.
The NTL Institute Learning ExperienceThere are tens of thousands of NTL Institute alumni who, through NTL Institute learning, have constructively influenced their organizations, getting the best from themselves and the people they lead or serve. The NTL Institute learning experience is a contemporary curriculum of programs that reflects the most current thinking and practice to guide leaders of organizations toward discovering imaginative approaches to organization challenges and complex issues in the workplace.
Learning for IndividualsNTL Institute offers an extensive yearly schedule of learning programs for today’s business professional, trainer, consultant, or change agent. NTL Institute offers open-enrollment programs for individuals in seven areas: change management, diversity, leadership development, organization development, professional and personal development, team development, and training for trainers. All programs are designed and delivered by NTL Institute faculty who must meet rigid standards for NTL Institute membership before they can design and lead a program. All programs are lead by a team, so participants receive the benefit of the combined expertise of NTL members with extensive backgrounds, practical experience, and advanced degrees to ensure the highest level of professional competency.
Customized SolutionsNTL Institute’s Customized Solutions offers consulting services and training solutions. Putting NTL Institute’s expertise to work, professional member/consultants work with all sectors, using a systemic analysis of a situation to build collaborative solutions to critical business issues. Consulting services are offered in executive coaching, strategic planning, change management, diversity initiatives, team effectiveness, leadership change, coaching and performance management, consulting skills and positive change approaches. In addition to consulting services, NTL Institute’s Customized Solutions builds capacity to achieve competitive advantage through training in: change management, diversity management, leadership development, organization development, appreciative inquiry and team development. NTL’s Customized Solutions partners with an organization to provide consulting and learning solutions that support an organization’s mission and build competitive advantage.
Certificate ProgramsNTL Institute offers certificate programs targeted to the mid to senior-level professional in three areas of concentration: appreciative inquiry, diversity leadership, and organization development. Each certificate track consists of required and/or elective courses that follow a suggested sequence. Throughout the certificate track, each participant is matched with an NTL member who serves as a learning mentor, guide, and counselor to ensure maximum exploration for the selected area of concentration. NTL Institute’s Human Interaction Lab is the basic requirement for the appreciative inquiry and OD certificate tracks.
And here it is... its beginnings and history
65 Years of SuccessProven Success: For 65 years, NTL has transformed the field of Applied Behavioral Science and has contributed to the professional advancement of tens of thousands of individuals and organizations. NTL's programs are the most popular, the most replicated, and simply the most effective programs for changing human attitudes and behaviors.
The Vision: NTL's history began with the vision of Kurt Lewin, founder of modern social psychology. In 1946, Lewin, then Director of MIT's Research Center for Group Dynamics, concluded from his experiences that increased awareness of self and others could be accomplished through facilitated group dialogue in Training Groups (or T-Groups) that advocates open-minded appreciation and inclusion of differences. Lewin also concluded that T-Groups who learned by experience, rather than lecture and reading, provided high potential for diagnostic study, evaluation and, most important, for changing behaviors. His conclusions formed the basis for the NTL Learning Experience.
The Beginnings of NTL: In 1946, the United States Office of Naval Research and the National Education Association (NEA) funded a planning group named the National Training Laboratory for Group Development (which was later changed 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 chose Bethel, Maine as the site or "cultural island" for the first NTL experiential human relations conference in 1947. The success of this first 1947 conference and the potential of the new methodology drew some of the best and brightest in social psychology to NTL, including Paul Sheats, R. Freed Bales, Kurt Back, Morton Deutsch, Henry Reicken, and Stanley Schacter.
From this early success, NTL grew and received a major grant from the Carnegie Foundation and numerous in-kind services from several major universities. By 1949, NTL expanded 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: A 1949 meeting of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, a division of the American Psychological Association, included a demonstration 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.
During the 1950's, NTL continued to promote the creation and development of "change agent" skills 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.
Continued Growth: 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.
During the 1960's, NTL experienced phenomenal growth. More specialized labs were developed for industry, religious and community leaders, as well as for college youth and executives.
Creation of The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science: In 1965, NTL began publishing The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, which has become a renowned publication contributing a body of knowledge to the field that increases our understanding of change processes and outcomes.
Incorporation of NTL: In 1967, after having been part of National Education Association for many years, the NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science was incorporated.
Embracing Diversity and Inclusion: In 1975, NTL announced its institutional commitment to racial and gender diversity for its Board, committees, program staff, and member recruitment. By recognizing and embracing the diversity of its members, 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.
Customized Solutions Group: In 2000, NTL Institute began offering custom programs to customers and clients in business, education, government, NGOs and not-for-profits.
Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa: In 2008, NTL Institute partnered with the prestigious Telfer School of Management in Ottawa, Canada to offer a Certificate in Organization Development to practitioners and change agents working in Canada's government and private sector.
Modern Social Psychiatry according to an article in Wikipedia is... " Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others " The scietific study method would be empiricle. This means quanitifable qualifiable stuff... measurable. Now how would one mesure feeling and such? Simple math equation here (E), B = f(P, E) " Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the interaction of mental states and immediate social situations. In Kurt Lewin's conceptual formula, behavior (B) can be viewed as a function (f) of the person (P) in the environment (E), B = f(P, E)" They figure that even when noone else is around we will react to "social influence" (presumably that someone is there to interact with) even when alone while watching a favorite TV show or perhaps even praying or meditating.
This copany seems to specialize in that kind of watching of us watching the world around us and paarticipating in it. The seems to have their fingers in a lot of different pies. But the question begs, is this a good thing or a bad thing?