Sociometry for Teams: Making the Invisible Visible
Every team has an official structure. And then there is the structure that actually shapes how work gets done: who trusts whom, who influences the group, who people turn to, whose contribution is overlooked, where alliances form and where communication gets blocked. Problems that appear structural may sometimes arise from tensions between formal roles and informal relationships.
Sociometry, developed by J. L. Moreno, is a potent method for making these patterns visible and working with the team as a relational system. It helps us understand not only how people relate, but how those relationships affect participation, decision-making, problem-solving and the team’s ability to do its work.
Sociometry can be used in simple and joyful ways to help people connect, participate and discover common ground. It can also open up more honest conversations about trust, influence, power and exclusion. Sociometric interventions can make agreement and disagreement quickly visible, broaden whom people turn to, and bring previously overlooked contributions into the group. They can help a team move beyond established patterns and develop new roles, relationships and ways of working.
The skill lies in designing interventions that serve the group’s goals. This requires knowing what to ask, how far to go, what the facilitator has the authority to explore, and how to work responsibly with what emerges.
The programme is designed for leaders, HR leaders, HR consultants, OD consultants, coaches and facilitators who work with teams.
Participants will learn to
Use sociometry as a way of understanding and working with teams
Design purposeful sociometric questions and interventions
Strengthen judgement about risk and appropriate levels of disclosure
Help teams surface patterns of trust, influence, connection and exclusion
Work responsibly with choices and perceptions that emerge
Turn sociometric insight into increased participation, connection and collaboration
About the Facilitator
Aruna Gopakumar is the Founder-Director of The School of You and a Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst in the psychotherapy field (TSTA-P). She is a psychotherapist, trainer and organisational consultant with over 33 years of experience, integrating Transactional Analysis, psychodrama and autobiographical storytelling into both her leadership development and psychotherapeutic work. She is the co-author of And How Do You Feel About That? (Penguin, 2022), has published in the Transactional Analysis Journal and contributed a Springer chapter on psychodrama supervision. An engineer and IIM Bangalore alumna, Aruna previously founded the leadership-development firm Navgati and has also served as President of the South Asian Association of Transactional Analysts.
