WHAT IS A GROUP RELATIONS CONFERENCE?

1. WHAT IS A GROUPRELATIONS CONFERENCE? www.igro.ie

2. Index of contents • Warning • What is likely to happen in a Group Relation Conference? • The Primary Task • Is the Conference for You? • What is a Group Relations Conference? • Organisations today • What can you get from a Conference? • Benefits to Organisations • Method • What’s the Model behind? • Group Relations Conference Worldwide • Contacts • The beginning

3. Warning ! • Thispresentationgivesyou a general idea of what a Group Relations Conference is. • However, youhaveonlyone way to knowwhatreallyhappensin the nextGroup Relations Conference.. ..experienceit

4. What is likely to happenin a Group Relation Conference? • You live residentially • With 15 to 50 otherMembers and up to 10 Consultants • In a Learning Organisation with a Primary Task…

5. The Primary Task You practice and study the development and exercise of Power, Authority, Leadership… ..through the inter-personal and inter-group relations that develop within the Conference as an Organisation.. ..in the context of Change of a real life experience..

6. Is the Conference for You? Itis for Everybody: • Leaders and Followers • Individuals and Organisations • Profit, Nonprofit, Public Organisations, NGOs • Workers and Unemployed • From any culture, age and faith, from all over the world You don’t need any specific knowledge or skills to attend it Learning from Diversity

7. What is a Group Relations Conference? • An accelerated learning experience • Highly professional staff • Unforgettable: you can learn from it for the rest of your life • An experiential event in which to reflect on the life of organisations and the participants’ roles within it • Where many knowledges live together: arts, roleplay, spirituality, social studies, psychology,management… • A residential workshop in a dedicated venue

8. Organisations today Leadership is: Anticipating new realities. Finding new ways to excite managers and employees. Managing a complex network of partnerships with other branches and organisations, locally, nationally and internationally. Management is: Implementing leaders’ vision. Work and organisations change quickly. It can’t be taken for granted that leaders and managers share the same visions. Hierarchies oftendisappear, replaced by matrixes and temporary work teams, held together by short-term aims. New leadership and management capabilities are crucial. ‘The Thinking Organisation’ The main assets today are the psychological and emotional capacities of the major role holders and clear relationships between them.

9. What can you get from a Conference? Leadership • Analyse your leadership styles and performance • Experience a wider repertoire of leadership skills • Lead effectively Organisation • Examine different models of organisational functioning Network • Add local and international high profile contacts to your network Power • Better understanding of the management of Power Dynamics in any formal or informal organisation, any hierarchical level you are • Knowledge of underlying dynamics that impact on people and groups • Be more effective, integrating feelings, values and beliefs with your intellect Change • Know your resistance to change

10. Benefits to Organisations include.. • Effective management, understanding people as individuals, members of groups, organisations and the society • Developing others’ leadership potential, by generating management goodwill and employee “buy-in” • Improved Creativity • Dedicated Small Groups where members from an organisation can reflect on their organisations‘ life and the participants’ roles within it • Power Relations better understanding • Improved Strategic Thinking • Leading and managing in changing environments Attention to the potential of staff’s minds, gives an organisation an extra competitive edge that helps in being successful today

11. Elaboration of conscious and unconscious dynamics of leadership and management in organisations Experiential and Theoretical methods of learning Method Emotional engagement, intellectual study

12. What’s the Model behind? The basis: groups move in and out of focusing on their task and some defensive positions based on unarticulated group Phantasy. Group Relations Conference: grounded in a Scientific Model. Systems Theory another milestone Always updating: in every Conference you can find something new Wilfred Bion developed models of group work and group behaviour Developed by the TavistockInstituteof Londonsince the 1950’s: social scientists and psychodynamically-oriented psychiatrists Based on the Intensive Experiential Learning that had sprung from Kurt Lewin’s work The first group relations conference in 1965 More about the Theory

13. Group Relations Conference Worldwide Great BritainGermanyBelgium France IsraelBrazilIreland Finland  Denmark Australia South Africa Norway Spain IsraelItalyPeru MexicoSweden Netherland United States Find out more

14. Contacts • Next Group Relations Conferences in Ireland:www.igro.ie • The Tavistock Institute of London: www.tavinstitute.org • Group relations: www.grouprelations.com

15. Group Relations ConferenceWhere you experience what other courses talk about. www.igro.ie