Making such a commitment without the certainty of an immediate product is itself a test for leadership into an uncertain future. This conference is unique among group relations events in offering an intensive two-week programme. This allows the conference participants to explore the changes and developments in organisational culture through a succession of beginnings and endings, in different events and in the conference as a whole. These events may be linked in their learning with the different contexts in which participants exercise authority in their own organisations and working lives. The method of learning is experiential - participants are able to study their own and others' behaviour as it happens in the different events.
Consultancy is offered during each event.
The conference is concerned with understanding the organisation as a system, with issues of task and boundary, and also with the need for the individual to use understanding of oneself in relation to others. This involves disciplined attention to one's own experience, openness to the experience of others, toleration of uncertainty, the readiness to interpret what is happening and the courage to test one's interpretations through communication and action. This includes being alert to both conscious and unconscious aspects of behaviour and ways in which behaviour is shaped by the broader social, political and economic contexts in which one works and lives. The staff of the conference are experienced in taking consulting roles in diverse organisational and institutional settings as well as in group relations conferences. They are drawn from different organisational and professional backgrounds, and from different nationalities, and reflect some of the diversity among participants.