Public opinion in the team. Psychological support for personnel management - public opinion and intra-collective traditions

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Public opinion and intra-collective traditions

All of these groups of socio-psychological phenomena are interconnected, but each is characterized by a special essence and in its own way affects the effectiveness of the team. The most significant of them is public opinion. What is the public opinion of the collective and what are the prerequisites for effective management of this socio-psychological phenomenon?

Public opinion- this is an evaluative judgment of a group or collective about any event, fact, phenomenon, which reflects the attitude of the majority of members of the collective to this information. It is not a simple average of the sum of individual judgments divided by the number of team members. Public opinion is always somehow correlated, adjusted, permeated with elements of public morality and professional experience. Once formed, public opinion becomes the leading regulator of the behavior of team members.

It is not enough to state the high importance of public opinion for the life of the team of a company or department. You need to know the mechanism of its formation and, on this basis, learn to actively manage the process of forming public opinion.

Is it possible to identify stages in the formation of public opinion? Yes, you can. Moreover, it is necessary!

In its development, the public opinion of a collective usually goes through three stages. At the first stage, there is an unspoken, confidential discussion of new information in small informal groups that unite employees based on some private interests or sympathies. At this stage, the possible nature of the impact of new information on individual team members or on the unit as a whole is assessed. But, let us repeat once again, this is still a “local” discussion. If the primary information receives reinforcement, then the circle of employees taking part in the discussion of new information expands. The second stage of public opinion formation begins. The discussion takes on the character of an exchange of information between informal groups or individual employees. Often it is discrete and impulsive. Active discussion is replaced by emphasized indifference to the topic, and after a while it “breaks out” again with renewed vigor.

At the third stage, which is characterized by a broad, public exchange of opinions, public opinion is formalized into an official decision of the team. This may be the result of an explanation of the essence of possible changes by the manager, or perhaps a decision of the trade union meeting.

In the practice of managing the process of forming public opinion, the following cannot be ignored. Almost every team has one or more employees who, due to their character or job position, more often than others become “carriers” of new information. By passing it on, they seem to be confirmed in the correctness of their position. Subsequently, when the period of official formation of public opinion begins, the “carriers” of primary information most often retain their original positions and, if they are not recognized at the official level, they become a difficult obstacle to overcome.

What to do? How to prevent the negative impact of this kind of individual value judgments?

To know which of the members of the team, due to the characteristics of their character (ambition, imaginary self-affirmation, tendency to gossip, etc.), strives to be a source of “new” information. Based on such knowledge, limit the possibility of leakage of primary, unprepared and unverified information, primarily through these “unofficial” channels;

Always strive to ensure that the source of information important for the life of the company’s team are officials: the manager, the deputy, each within the scope of his rights and competence.

Along with public opinion, a significant influence on the life of the team is exerted by intra-collective traditions- unwritten customs and rules that have become the norms of behavior for the majority of members of the team of a company or department.

Like no other socio-psychological phenomenon, traditions are rooted in the history of our state. But to the same extent they are always specific and unique. Traditions in any group are similar, but not one is the same, because their bearers are unique individuals. A characteristic feature of any tradition is the impossibility of doing otherwise.

Internal collective traditions are very stable. Once approved and recognized, they are passed on like a relay race and become the rule of behavior for new members of the team.

What is the secret of such strength of any tradition? At the heart of any tradition are two psychological element: a) individual trust in collective experience; b) the predisposition of most people to imitate a more experienced, authoritative person.

This is the essence of any intra-collective tradition as a socio-psychological phenomenon. The question arises: is it possible to manage traditions? Yes, it is possible, but for this you need to know well the essence of each of them registered in the team of a given company or department. What can you see? You can see and feel the traditional nature of relationships, speech, rituals, clothing, gestures, and individual procedures. And this is where tradition management begins.

The pros and cons of existing traditions are assessed. The emphasis is on the positive, the positive. Undesirable traditions are carefully analyzed. Channels for their possible replacement with new ones that are significant for the life of the team are being thought through. The positions of “ardent” bearers of negative or neutral traditions are studied. Through repeated individual conversations, unobtrusively but persistently, the undesirability of a particular tradition is explained. Confidence is instilled that only “he” and no one else can and should initiate the introduction of a new, significant for the company, department of intra-collective tradition into the life of the team.

Tradition has a cementing influence on the team, so the leader must be extremely attentive to each of them, boldly support and advocate the preservation of good, positive, morally mature traditions in the team.

Opinion is to the public in our time what the soul is to the body, and the study of one naturally leads us to the other. I can already hear the objection that public opinion has existed at all times, while the public in the sense we have established is of rather recent origin. This is true, but we will now see what the meaning of this objection amounts to. What is public opinion? How is it born? What are his personal sources? How is it expressed in its growth and how does it grow in its expression, as is shown by modern ways of expressing it, the universal casting of votes? What is its fruitfulness and its social significance? How is it transformed? And to what common mouth, if any, do its many streams tend? We will try to answer all these questions as best we can.

First of all, it should be noted that in the word opinion two concepts are usually confused, which, it is true, are confused, but which careful analysis must distinguish: opinion in the proper sense of the word - a set of judgments, and the general will - a set of desires. Here we are concerned with opinion taken primarily, but not exclusively, in the first of these two meanings.

No matter how great the importance of public opinion, there is no need to exaggerate its role, despite the fact that in our time it is a flood stream. Let us try to establish the limit of the sphere of his domination. It is not to be confused with the other two factions of the public spirit, which both nourish and limit it, and which are in constant struggle with it from beyond these limits.

One of them is tradition, the accumulated and condensed extract of what constituted the opinion of the dead, the legacy of necessary and salutary prejudices, often painful for the living.

The other is the one that we allow ourselves to call by a collective and abbreviated name - intelligence, meaning by this the relatively rational, though often reckless, personal judgments of a select few who isolate themselves and think and emerge from the general stream to serve as a dam or to direct it. Priests in former times, philosophers, scientists, jurists, councils, universities, judicial institutions - were alternately or simultaneously the embodiment of this stable and guiding reason, which rarely differed from the passionate and herd hobbies of the masses, and from the engines or age-old principles inherent in the depths of the their hearts. I would like to add parliaments, chambers or senates to this list. Are not their members elected precisely in order to decide matters in complete independence and serve to curb the social race? But the actual course of things is far from meeting the ideal.

Before they acquire a common opinion and recognize it as such, the individuals composing a nation are conscious of possessing a common tradition and consciously submitting to the decisions of a reason considered supreme. Thus, of these three branches of the public spirit, opinion begins to develop last, but increases most rapidly, from a certain moment, and it increases to the detriment of the other two. No national institution can withstand its periodic attacks; There is no individual mind that does not tremble and is not embarrassed by its threats or demands. Which of these two rivals does opinion do more harm? It depends on its leaders. When they belong to the intelligent chosen ones, they sometimes manage to make a kind of battering ram out of opinion in order to make a hole in the traditional wall and expand it, destroying it, which is not without danger. But when the leadership in the crowd is given to just anyone, it is easier for them, relying on tradition, to restore opinion against reason, which, however, ultimately triumphs.

Everything would go for the better if opinion were limited to the vulgarization of reason in order to initiate it into tradition. Today's reason would thus become tomorrow's opinion and the day after tomorrow's tradition. But opinion, instead of serving as a link between its two neighbors, loves to take part in their quarrels and, reveling in new fashionable doctrines, destroys customary ideas and institutions before it has the opportunity to replace them, or, under the power of custom, expels or oppresses reasonable innovators , or forcibly forces them to put on a traditional livery, forces them to hypocritically disguise themselves.

These three forces differ from each other both in their nature and in their causes and effects. They all act together, but too unevenly and too changeably to constitute the value of things; and value is completely different, depending on whether it is, first of all, a matter of habit, or a matter of fashion, or a matter of reasoning.

Next we will consider that conversation in all times and the main source of conversation in our time - the press - are important factors of opinion, not counting, of course, tradition and reason, which never cease to take part in it and leave their imprint on it. The factors of tradition, in addition to opinion itself, are family upbringing, vocational training and school teaching, at least in what is elementary in them. Reason in those societies where it is cultivated: legal, philosophical, scientific, has as its characteristic sources observation, experience, investigation, or in any case reasoning, conclusion based on texts.

The struggle or union of these three forces, their collision, their mutual mastery of each other, their mutual action, their many and varied relationships - all this constitutes one of the most burning questions of history. There is nothing so organic and fruitful in social life as this long work of resistance and adaptation, often of a bloody nature. Tradition, which always remains national, is more compressed within fixed boundaries, but infinitely deeper and more stable than opinion: it is light and fleeting, like the wind, and, like the wind, capable of expansion, it always strives to become international, just like reason. In general, it can be said that the rocks of tradition are constantly being undermined by the tides of opinion - this sea without ebb. The less strong the tradition, the stronger the opinion, but this does not mean that in this case reason is even less strong.

In the Middle Ages, reason, represented by universities, councils and courts, had a much greater power of resistance to public opinion than at present and was more capable of rejecting it; True, he had much less strength to fight tradition and reform it. The trouble is that modern public opinion has become omnipotent not only against tradition, an element which in itself is very important, but also against reason, judicial reason, scientific reason, legislative reason, or state reason in a certain case. If it does not flood the laboratories of scientists - the only hitherto inviolable refuge - then it floods the courts, drowns parliaments, and there is nothing more alarming than this flood, the imminent end of which nothing makes one foresee.

Having outlined its boundaries, we will try to define it more precisely.

Public opinion - this is the attitude of social groups to phenomena or problems of social life that affect common interests, expressed in the form of certain judgments, ideas and ideas.

It is also essential that each of the persons who are potentially the bearers (or exponents) of a specific opinion, which claims to be public in its significance, has a more or less definite consciousness regarding the identity of the judgments that it holds with the judgments that others hold; if each of them considered itself isolated in its assessment, then none of them would feel or be compressed into a closer association with those like themselves, unconsciously similar. In order for this consciousness of the similarity of ideas to exist among the members of any society, is it not necessary that the cause of this similarity be the proclamation, verbal or written, or with the help of the press, of some idea, first individual, and then gradually transformed into common property? Society owed the transformation of individual opinion into public opinion, into “opinion,” in ancient times and in the Middle Ages to public speech, in our time to the press, but at all times and above all to private conversations.

There are often situations when there are two opinions at the same time about a specific problem that arises. Only one of them quite quickly manages to outshine the other with its faster and brighter radiance or the fact that, despite its smaller distribution, it is noisier.

In every era, even the most barbaric, there was an opinion, but it differs profoundly from what we call by this name. In a clan, in a tribe, in an ancient city, even in a city of the Middle Ages, all people knew each other personally, and when, thanks to private conversations or the speeches of orators, some idea took hold in the minds, it did not seem like something that had fallen from the sky a stone of impersonal origin and, as a result, even more charming; everyone imagined her connected with that timbre of voice, with that face, with that familiar personality from where she came to him, and this gave her a lively physiognomy. For the same reason, it served as a connection only between those people who, meeting and talking with each other every day, were not mistaken about others.

Until the extent of the states passed beyond the walls of the city, or at least beyond the boundaries of the small canton, the opinion thus formed, original and strong, sometimes strong even against tradition itself, and especially against individual reason, played a predominant role in the government of people, the role of the chorus in Greek tragedy, that role which modern opinion of a completely different origin seeks in its turn to conquer in our large states or in our huge ever-growing federations. But during that unusually long interval that separates these two historical phases, the importance of opinion drops terribly, which is explained by its fragmentation into local opinions, not connected by the usual connecting line and ignoring each other.

In the feudal state in the Middle Ages, each city, each town had its own internal divisions, its own separate policies and streams of ideas, or rather whirlwinds of ideas that swirled in one place in these closed places, as different from each other as they were alien and are indifferent to each other, at least in ordinary times. Not only in these individual localities did local politics absorb all attention, but even when they were mildly interested in national politics, they dealt with it only among themselves, and only had a vague idea of ​​how the same issues were resolved in neighboring cities. There was no “opinion”, but there were thousands of individual opinions that had no permanent connection with each other.

This connection could only be formed first by a book, and then - with much greater force - by a newspaper. The periodical press allowed these initial groups of like-minded individuals to form a secondary and at the same time a higher-order aggregate, the units of which enter into close communication with each other, never seeing or knowing each other (in absentia), votes can only be counted, but not weighed. The press thus unconsciously contributed to the creation forces of quantity and a reduction in strength of character, if not of reason.

With this same blow, she destroyed the conditions that made the absolute power of rulers possible. Indeed, this latter was greatly favored by the fragmentation of opinion by place. Moreover, she found in this her right to exist and her justification.

What is a country like, the various regions of which, cities, towns are not united by a collective consciousness of unity of views? Is this really a nation? Will this not be only a geographical or, at best, a political expression? Yes, it is a nation, but only in the sense that the political subordination of various parts of the state to the same head is already the beginning of nationalization.

When the first parliaments began to be elected, a new step was taken towards the nationalization of the opinions of individual areas and regions. These opinions, similar or dissimilar to each other, were born in each of the deputies, and the whole country, looking at its elected representatives with infinitely less interest than in our days, presented then, as an exception, the spectacle of a nation conscious of itself. But this consciousness, temporary and exceptional, was very vague, very slow and dark. Parliamentary meetings were not public. In any case, due to the lack of a press, speeches were not published, and due to the lack of mail, even letters could not replace this lack of newspapers. In a word, from the news, more or less disfigured, transferred from mouth to mouth after weeks and even months by travelers on foot or on horseback, wandering monks, merchants, it was known that the deputies had assembled and that they were occupied with such and such a subject - that's all.

Let us note that the members of these meetings, during short and rare moments of their communication, themselves formed a local group, a center of intense local opinion, generated by the infection of one person from another, personal relationships, and mutual influences. And it was precisely thanks to this higher local group, temporary, elected, that the lower local groups, permanent, hereditary, consisting of relatives or friends by tradition in cities and destinies, felt united by a temporary connection.

The development of postal relations, which increased first public and then private correspondence; the development of communication routes, which made it possible for people to communicate more frequently; the development of standing troops, allowing soldiers from different provinces to become acquainted and fraternally unite on the same battlefields; finally, the development of court life, which called selected nobles from all parts of the state to the monarchical center of the nation - all this significantly contributed to the development of the public spirit. But it was up to the printing press to bring this great work to the highest degree of development. The press, once it has reached the newspaper stage, makes everything local national, cosmic, everything that in former times, whatever its internal significance, would have remained unknown outside a very limited area.

Let's try to be more precise. In a large society, divided into nationalities and subdivided into provinces, regions, cities, there always existed, even before the press, an international opinion that awoke from time to time; below it are national opinions, also intermittent, but more frequent; Below them are regional and local opinions, almost constant. These are layers of public spirit superimposed on one another. Only the proportion of these different layers in the sense of importance, in the sense of thickness, changed significantly, and it is easy to see in what sense. The further we go into the past, the more local opinion prevails. To nationalize little by little and even gradually to internationalize the public spirit - such was the task of journalism.

Journalism is a suction and pumping pump of information, which, being received every morning from all points of the globe, is disseminated on the same day to all points of the globe, because it is interesting or seems interesting to the journalist, taking into account the purpose that he pursues , and the party whose voice he is. His information, indeed, little by little becomes an irresistible suggestion.

The newspapers began by expressing opinion, at first purely local, the opinion of privileged groups, the court, parliament, the capital, reproducing their talk, their conversations, their quarrels; They ended up actually directing and changing opinions at their own discretion, imposing most of their daily subjects on speeches and conversations.

No one knows, no one can ever imagine how much the newspaper has modified, enriched and at the same time leveled, united in space And gave variety in time the conversations of individuals, even those who do not read newspapers, but who, chatting with newspaper readers, are forced to adhere to the track of their borrowed thoughts. One pen is enough to set millions of languages ​​in motion.

Parliaments before the press differed so deeply from parliaments after the press appeared, that it seems as if both have only a common name. They differ in their origin, in the nature of their powers, in their functions, in their area and in the strength of their action.

Before the press, members of various parliaments could not express opinions that did not already exist; they expressed only local opinions, which, as we know, have a completely different character, or national traditions. In these meetings, nothing more than a simple, without any connection, comparison of heterogeneous opinions was carried out, which concerned private issues that had nothing in common with each other; here for the first time they learned to realize whether it was possible or impossible to harmonize these opinions. Mixed with these local opinions was thus an idea of ​​each other - again purely local, confined within a narrow framework or showing some intensity only in the city where these meetings took place. When this city was a capital, like London or Paris, its municipal council could consider itself entitled to rival in importance the Chamber of National Deputies; This explains even the monstrous claims of the Paris Commune during the French Revolution, when it attacked or tried to subjugate the constituent assembly, the national assembly, the convention. The reason was that the press of the day, deprived of the enormous wings attached to it later by railways and telegraphs, could bring Parliament into rapid and intense communication only with Parisian opinion.

At present, every European parliament, thanks to the maturity of the press, has the opportunity to constantly and instantly come into contact, and be in a living mutual relationship of action and reverse action with the opinion of not only one big city, but the whole country; in relation to the latter, it simultaneously serves as one of the main elements of manifestation and excitement; it is a convex mirror and an incendiary mirror. Instead of placing local and dissimilar manifestations of the spirit side by side, he forces numerous expressions, changing facets of the same national spirit, to penetrate each other.

Previous parliaments were groups of heterogeneous powers relating to various interests, rights, principles; The newest parliaments represent groups of homogeneous powers even when they contradict one another, because they relate to concerns that are identical and conscious of their identity. In addition, the former deputies did not resemble each other in the peculiar features of the methods of their election, which were entirely based on the principle of electoral inequality and dissimilarity of different individuals, on the purely personal nature of the right to vote. The power of numbers was not yet born or recognized as legitimate: for this very reason, in the deliberations of assemblies elected in this way, no one considered a simple numerical majority to be a legitimate force.

In the most “backward” states, unanimity was mandatory, and the will of all deputies, except one, was stopped by the opposition of this single dissenting person (the so-called right of “veto”). Thus, neither in the recruitment of representatives, nor in the performance of their functions, the law of the majority was and could not be understood before the flowering of the press and before the nationalization of opinion. After its flowering, any other law seems unthinkable; universal suffrage, in spite of all the dangers and absurdities which it carries in itself, is accepted everywhere step by step in the hope that it contains in itself the power of reform; and in spite of strong objections, it is accepted that all must bow to a very important decision, voted by a majority of only one vote.

Universal suffrage and the omnipotence of majorities in parliaments were made possible only by the continued and steady action of the press, the condition of the great leveling democracy (of course, we are not talking here about a small limited democracy within the walls of a Greek city or a Swiss canton).

The differences that we have just noted also explain the sovereignty of parliaments that arose with time of press appearance - sovereignty to which parliaments before the existence of the press They didn’t even think about applying. They could become equal to the king, then superior to him only when they embodied the national consciousness as well as the king, and then better than him, emphasized the already emerging common opinion and general will, expressing them, introducing them, so to speak, to their own decisions, and began to live with them in such close unity that the monarch could not insist on being called their only or most perfect representative.

Until these conditions were fulfilled - and they were fulfilled in the era of great states only from the advent of journalism - assemblies, which were of the highest degree popular in character, did not, even during revolutions, go so far as to convince the people or convince themselves that they have the supreme power, and at the sight of the unarmed, defeated king, they respectfully entered into a peace agreement with him, considered it lucky to receive from him, from someone, for example, John the Landless, a charter of liberties, thus recognizing not the power of prejudice, and by virtue of reason, by virtue of the rationality of deep and hidden social logic, the necessity of its prerogative.

Monarchies before the press could and should have been more or less absolute, inviolable and sacred, because they represented the entire national unity; with the advent of the press they can no longer be so, because national unity is achieved outside them and better than through them. Meanwhile, they can exist, but differing as much from previous monarchies as modern parliaments differ from parliaments of the past. The highest merit of the former monarch was that he installed unity and consciousness of the nation; the present monarch has a right to exist only in the sense that he expresses it is a unity established outside it by means of a constant national opinion, conscious of itself, and applied or adapted to it, without submitting to it.

To conclude the conversation about the social role of the press, we note that to the great progress of the periodical press we mainly owe a clearer and more extensive demarcation, a new and more strongly expressed sense of nationalities, which characterizes our modern era in a political sense. Was it not the press that, along with our internationalism, nurtured our nationalism, which seems to be its negation and could only be its complement? If increasing nationalism, instead of decreasing loyalty, has become the new form of our patriotism, should not this phenomenon be attributed to the same terrible and fruitful force?

One cannot help but marvel at the fact that, as states mingle with each other, imitate each other, assimilate and morally unite with each other, the differentiation of nationalities deepens, and their contradictions seem irreconcilable.

At first glance, one cannot understand this contrast between the nationalist 19th century. with the cosmopolitanism of the previous century. But this result, seemingly paradoxical, is the most logical. While the exchange of goods, ideas, and examples of all kinds between neighboring or distant peoples accelerated and multiplied, the exchange of ideas, in particular, progressed even faster, thanks to newspapers, among individuals of each nation speaking the same language. How much has this reduced absolute the difference between nations, so increased their relative and conscious difference.

Let us note that the geographical boundaries of nationalities in our time tend to merge more and more with the boundaries of the main languages. There are states where the struggle of languages ​​and the struggle of nationalities have merged into one. The reason for this is that the national feeling has been revived thanks to journalism, and the power of light of newspapers ceases at the boundaries of the dialect in which they are written.

The influence of the book, which preceded the influence of the newspaper, and which in the 18th century, as in the 17th, was predominant, could not produce the same consequences: the book also made everyone who read it in the same language feel philological identity , but this was not about topical issues that simultaneously arouse common passions. National existence is largely attested to by literature, but only newspapers spark the national life, raise the aggregate movements of minds and desires with their daily grandiose current.

Instead of, like a newspaper, exhausting its interest in the specific topicality of its messages, the book tries to interest, first of all, general and the abstract nature of the ideas it offers. This means that, as the literature of the 18th century did, it is more capable of causing a universal human movement than a national or even international movement. International and universal are two different things: the European federation, in the form in which our internationalists can form a definite idea of ​​it, has nothing in common with the “humanity” deified by the encyclopedists, whose ideas on this issue were dogmatized by Auguste Comte. Consequently, we have reason to think that the cosmopolitan and abstract character of the tendencies of the public spirit at the moment when the revolution of 1789 broke out is associated with the predominance of the book over the newspaper as an educator of public opinion.

In one of Diderot's letters to Necker in 1775 we can find the following very correct definition: “Opinion, this engine, whose power for both good and evil is well known to us, has its origin only in a small number of people who say , after they have thought, and which constantly form educational centers in various points of society, from where thoughtful errors and truths gradually disperse to the very last limits of the city, where they are established as dogmas of faith."

If people did not talk to each other, newspapers could appear as much as they wanted (although, on such a hypothesis, their appearance would be incomprehensible), and they would not have a lasting and deep influence on the minds; they would be like a vibrating string without a harmonic decks; on the contrary, in the absence of newspapers and even speeches, conversation, if it were able to progress without this food, which is also difficult to admit, could in time replace to a certain extent the social role of the tribune and the press as a formulator of opinion.

REVIEW QUESTIONS

1. The team as a socially specific concept.

2. Basic psychological characteristics of the team.

3. Large and small groups.

4. A system of concepts describing the position of an individual in a group.

5. Basic parameters of the group.

6. Sociometric structure of the group.

7. Communicative structure of the group.

8. The structure of social power in a small group.

9. Social norms and value orientations in the group.

10. Management and leadership in the group.

11. Types of leadership.

12. Group processes.

13. The phenomenon of conformism.

14. Types of groups.

15. Types of interpersonal relationships in a group.

16. The nature of relationships in a group depending on its level of development.

17. The concept of the psychological climate of the team.

The ideological attitudes of the team have a decisive influence on the formation of public opinion, moods and relationships within it, which together constitute the socio-psychological climate. His capacity depends on them. The origins of healthy opinions, moods, and relationships in military groups should be sought in the level of educational work carried out at school. The military leader must have certain information about the nature of the structural components of the psychology of the team.

Public opinion, being a system of rational evaluations shared by members of the team, has normative influence and significant motivating power. Credibility, publicity, emotionality, continuity, and demanding public opinion began to influence the mind, feelings and will of everyone (give an example)

The military leader, in the interests of uniting the team, increasing the educational forces of its socio-psychological climate, always strives to ensure that public opinion is ideologically and morally consistent. In order to direct the process of forming public opinion in the wrong direction, the military commander relies on his conviction and knowledge of his business.

Moods are emotional and evaluative group reactions of a team to the behavior of people, events, phenomena, facts. The favorable general mood of the team stimulates working energy in soldiers or students, increases their activity, and also affects their mood. Therefore, military instructors, in words and by personal example, always strive to maintain a high emotional state among their subordinates and students, and try to prevent the emergence of passive moods.

Traditions are important in the structure of the psychological climate of the team and in its unity. Each warrior, having joined the military team, becomes the heirs and continuer of its traditions. Traditions are very diverse in their content, areas of occurrence and affiliation, but their mobilizing and educational influence is always enormous. The active use of traditions in the educational process contributes to the growth of the ideological maturity of personnel, their combat prowess, the strengthening of military discipline, team unity, and the prevention of the emergence of negative phenomena.

Relationships between people are an indicator of their cohesion, firstly, because they record the nature of objective, socially conditioned interpersonal connections (give an example).

In the structure of relationships, several spheres are usually distinguished: service, socio-political, interpersonal, psychological relations.

Service and socio-political relations are the basis for the interaction of personnel in the performance of official duties. These relationships are enshrined in the organizational structure of any military team, in general military regulations, and manuals. They act as prescribed rules and norms of behavior that encourage warrior and volitional mobilization; self-control in actions, self-order, making demands on oneself.

Interpersonal psychological relationships (friendship and hostility, sympathy and antipathy, etc.) develop mainly spontaneously, they are not formalized organizationally, and are less visible than official ones. These circumstances are often the reason for underestimating their significance. In fact, interpersonal psychological relationships play a significant role in the life of a team and require the closest attention and constant study.

More on the topic The role of public opinion in the military collective:

1. Psychological features of relationships in military groups
2. Principles of formation of military teams and units
3. Negative leadership in primary military groups