Events

Authority, Leadership & Intersectionality: Creativity @ Work

January 15-19, 2020, Dover, MA

We’re living in a time of rapid change. Businesses and social enterprises must constantly innovate and experiment just to stay afloat. For organizations that hope to thrive in this climate, recognizing intersecting aspects of difference and leveraging them to discover new pathways to progress is critical. Yet understanding the impact of intersectionality on authority and leadership is difficult, and the landscape is only becoming increasingly complex.

This conference explores two primary layers of organizational life – one that we think we see and know, and another that is hidden out of awareness yet driving much of our activity. The ability to exercise leadership, mobilize roles and make decisions is significantly impacted by dynamics that are unconsciously held within groups.

Examining dynamics beneath the surface and learning how they take shape in organizations can lead to the discovery of uncharted possibility and reveal buried challenges. Yet the opportunity to examine the nature of organizational life, what we import into it and our collective influence on it, is rare or non-existent. This conference is your opportunity to creatively explore that work.

Learn more here.
Leadership & Membership In Our Time: Working with Identity, Authority, and Boundaries

January 17-19, 2020, New York

Leadership in this precarious moment is up for grabs. How do we consciously and unconsciously authorize individuals and groups to help us chart a path forward? Membership is a deeply contentious question as we debate who is allowed in and who not. What are the unconscious assumptions about boundaries? Who is authorized to act, and in what manner?

The intersection of our many identities has an impact on group process. In this context, families, groups and organizations are encountering new questions. We are challenged to find effective, inclusive, ethical formats for work, creative expression, personal and family pursuits.

In this experiential 3 day conference, we will create a learning organization. By exploring the boundaries, authority relationships, roles, and the task of understanding our experience, we will uncover some of the conscious and unconscious complexities we encounter as individuals in groups and organizations. Systems, and group-as-a-whole concepts inform our understanding. This learning is invaluable as we take up our roles and tasks in the groups and organizations we belong to and interface with in daily life.

Learn more here.
Training in Group Relations Consulting

January 31-February 2, 2020
Boston College, Boston

For more information contact Evangeline Sarda.
Group Relations International: Silent Retreat

February 12-18, 2020
Bolinas, California

Group Relations International is hosting the Silent Retreat in Bolinas for the 7th year. We will spend five days in silence, starting Wednesday evening (Feb 12) after supper and ending Tuesday morning (Feb 18), with a sharing on Monday evening. External silence, the absence of words and a quiet environment, helps to come closer to an internal silence, one where the racing thoughts slow down and we can really listen to ourselves and be in touch with our environment in different ways. We will try to leave behind what distracts us from internal silence and we will engage what helps foster stillness. Generally speaking, this may mean that we leave behind books, computers and phones and we engage in walks, journal writing, art, meditation, yoga etc. Of course, our individual journeys vary in what helps and hinders our silence.

For many of us it is not easy to be silent and to become still. Paradoxically, practicing silence in groups is easier than doing this alone. Therefore, we will form some kind of a silent community by being in the same house and sharing our meals together. In addition, a couple of times a day there will be an opportunity to spend 30 minutes as a group in silence in the same space, for those who wish. The rest of the journey is an individual one.

Learn more here.
Working Conference “Managing You and Me in Roles and Systems” (MAYUMERS)

February 27-March 4, 2020
Jaipur, India

The MAYUMERS Conference is an invitation to explore and learn about management processes, systems and structures in organisations which are at the core of strategy. MAYUMERS is different from other working conferences offered by IIMA (such as AOSPOR) in two fundamental respects. Here, there is a special emphasis on understanding what it takes to embody roles and on dynamics of working as individuals, in dyads, as couples, within sub-groups, and managing boundaries for inter-group interfaces in organisations. Our focus would be around issues of competition and collaboration, team diversity, teamworking, management of gender equity, diversity, inclusivity, and other complexities around change that affect results and quality of work life.

Learn more here.
Authority, Organization, Strategies and Politics of Relatedness

April 23-29, 2020, Jaipur, India

This Working Conference promotes the integration of intellectual capacity with emotional and cultural intelligence. This is an opportunity to examine different modes of how groups, teams and organizations function and leadership styles. Our emphasis would be on connecting conscious agendas with unconscious dynamics and covert processes that lurk beneath the surface in organizations.

Learn more here.
Small Study Group Training in the Group Relations Tradition

May 1-3, 2020, University of San Diego

The Small Study Group Training is an excellent opportunity to practice group-as-a-whole consulting skills for those who have previously attended a group relations event. Participants rotate between member and consultant roles. Each participant will consult to a Small Study Group. At the end of the session the person receives feedback in public from two senior group relations consultants.

The program is particularly suited for people who:

want to develop their group relations skills

want to learn more about the unconscious in groups

are interested in group-as-a-whole methodology

spend lots of time with groups, for example consultants, trainers, teachers, community organizers.

Learn more here.
Hierarchies of the Collective: Mind | Body | Spirit

October 9-11, 2020, Boston, MA

Hierarchies of the Collective: Mind Body Spirit is a unique Group Relations Conference in the Tavistock tradition that studies the rise, shifts and flow of authority and leadership dynamics through our experience of our collective mind, body, and spirit. Focusing on what is above and below the surface of our consciousness, we will listen to the different perspectives and experiences that our bodies, mind and spirit reveal. Analogous to how our first/second/third person perspectives add depth to our language communication, our spirit/body/mind offer different and sometimes conflicting perspectives that deepen our understanding of community and self. More information forthcoming.