Transforming Lives That Transform America
Transforming Lives That Transform America
This three-day group relations conference offers a unique opportunity to study the conscious and unconscious dynamics involved in how groups organize themselves and interact with each other. This conference is not a passive learning event that relies upon lectures. Instead, the learning is experiential. Participants study how leadership, followership, authority, task, boundaries, and roles operate in the different group experiences they enter during the conference. The conference will weave art and other non-verbal forms of expression into the conference events to illuminate unconscious dynamics operating in the system of group interactions that members and staff will create together.
Methodology:
Core Concepts
These are some of the concepts the conference staff might use to make sense of what is happening and to make learning available to members of the conference.
PRIMARY TASK: Activities that must be accomplished for a group to achieve its purpose
AUTHORITY: The right to do work on behalf of self and others; There is formal and
personal authority
LEADERSHIP: Exercised by offering meaningful direction that recognizes the needs of a
group
ROLE: A particular part of the overall task that is assigned to, or taken up by, an
individual or group; there are formal and informal roles
BOUNDARIES: Structure that separates and connects what is inside and outside. This
includes boundaries between groups and their environments, between sub
groups, between the individual and the group, and between the person and
role. There are also boundaries around time and territory.
PROJECTION: Attributing to another or others something one rejects about himself/herself
SCAPEGOATING: One member is used to express all of the given undesirable attitudes for the group/team and then is rejected or ejected because of this