What is a Group Relations Conference?

A Group Relations conference is an educational event which is based on learning through experience – the design has been developed by pioneers from the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR) and other Group Relations organisations around the world, for nearly 70 years. The strategic and structural dynamics of organisations can be studied and understood and the knowledge acquired and then applied by working through the conscious and unconscious dynamics of leadership and management in organisations.

We believe that our conference promotes the integration of intellectual capacity and emotional intelligence so producing leaders who have creative visionary potential, enabling them to work more effectively at helping themselves and their employees / colleagues / clients to adapt to and take on future roles.

The conference is an accelerated immersive learning experience. It is designed to enable you to understand, in greater depth, the factors behind the exercise of effective leadership and followership and to develop further your own leadership capacities and the leadership potential of others, by generating management goodwill and employee “buy-in” and understanding and working with your own and your organisation’s resistance to change.

It is a ‘real time’ learning laboratory in the form of a series of reflective spaces where you can analyse your leadership style(s) and experiment creatively in expanding your repertoire of leadership skills. Together with your fellow participants and conference staff, you examine different models of organisational functioning and appraise your own and others’ leadership performance.

Are you:

• wanting long-term inspiration, stimulation, motivation?

• a change agent needing a space to reflect and challenge yourself in a world-class learning environment?

• wanting, considering or taking a promotion? • newly appointed?

• feeling constrained or lacklustre in your role? • wondering which path to take?

For anyone who is interested in how they and their groups / teams / organisations can work better:

Participants are business professionals, team leaders, entrepreneurs, managers, executives, CEOs, MBA alumni, researchers, administrators, HR professionals, activists, academics, students, consultants, coaches, facilitators, therapists, trainers, clinicians, service providers, story-tellers, decision-makers etc.

From the worlds of business, government and local authorities, public services, the arts, law, media, consultancy and the armed forces, emergency services, education, finance and politics, NGOs, co-operatives, health services and social care, justice, religious orders, community groups, lobby groups, agenda-based activisms, trade unions, associations and environmental organisations, etc.

Participants come from all sectors, levels, career stages and backgrounds, and are from all over the world (see lists further on).

What differentiates Tavistock approaches from others is the emphasis we place on unconscious dynamics, including defences against anxiety. That is, to go beneath the surface of tensions and conflicts in order that our deeper fears and aspirations are worked through and participants feel that they are adding value to and having more ownership of the groups they work with, their organisations and the wider communities that they serve.

We believe that this is key to what makes Group Relations conferences influential and unique in the world of leadership training and this is what people say they come to us for.

Paying attention to the potential of the minds of staff gives an organisation that extra competitive edge needed to survive and thrive in today’s turbulent economic climate, including:

• improved strategic thinking across all strata of the organisation;

• more effective management based on understanding people as individuals, as members of groups,

• organisations and the wider society ie in a context;

• increasing capacity to lead, innovate and influence change in an evolving context; and

• a fast-track into effective leadership.

• The conference uses experiential learning (learning through experience) on the grounds that learning is more substantial and lasts longer if all your senses and faculties are involved: through embodying the conference member role. This learning is based on proven Tavistock and other theories.

• It highlights the emotional engagement that comes about through active participation in the events of the conference whilst encouraging subsequent intellectual study.

• It is designed to provide opportunities for learning. By examining, interpreting, reflecting and making sense of experiences in the conference and its events, you develop deeper understanding of your organisation and your role(s) within it.

• You are invited to take up your own authority to accept what proves useful learning and reject what is not. Through this process, you are able to reconsider the way that collaboration is achieved or not, how power is gained or lost and how your authority is exercised or undermined in the various systems.

• The conference helps you link technology and teams to bring out the best in people, mobilising co-operative inter-dependency and creating collaborative sustainability.

• It always deals with a dilemma: how to build organisations and ensure that all the different views are heard. It helps you to explore the creative tension between taking risks and being accountable.

• The conference is concerned with issues of structure and task, and also with the need for participants to use an understanding of themselves in relation to others. Such understanding involves developing a disciplined attention to your own experience, openness to the experience of others, tolerance of uncertainty, understanding and managing resistance to change in yourself and others, and the readiness to interpret what is happening.

• It is intensive and allows you to examine and question the nature of your multiple roles as leader / influential follower and the place of your organisation in its evolving context.

• It aims to produce leaders with creative visionary potential, who are also sensitive to the personal and career ambitions of their managers and employees. It demonstrates how to enable staff/employees to work towards the same vision, modelling leadership, making the theory live.

• The conference facilitates integration of intellectual capacity and emotional intelligence, two major areas of human functioning, thereby enabling leaders to work more efficiently. It provides learning opportunities for a new generation of leaders and managers who seek to improve your skills in developing a vision and fostering creativity in new kinds of collaborative networks.