If you care to, come and join us.
Do you care? As organisational consultants is caring part of our role? Definitions of the verb to care include to feel concern or interest; to attach importance to something; the process of protecting someone or something and providing what that person or thing needs: to look after and provide for the needs of. It is now more than 6 weeks since the Tavistock Institute’s 70th Birthday Festival and the notion of ‘care’ has stayed with me.
In the final event of the Festival I took part in an Ambient Jam led by Entelechy Arts. People of different abilities and backgrounds worked together, without words. We worked with sound, smell, sight and touch. It was impossible to know what would happen next, no one seemed in charge. The pace was slow then fast; sometimes quiet sometimes noisy; coherent and random; people followed and people led; there was awkwardness and grace, inhibition and expression, sadness and anger, joy and despair. Pretty much like organisational life with possibly a significant difference – it was full of care. I enjoyed it and it wasn’t easy. It raised powerful and conflicting feelings. I felt incompetent, I didn’t know how or whether to get involved, what I needed to let go of in order to join in.
It made me think about caring as a consultant. How do we know or decide what is important to care about? How do we ‘look after’ without smothering, or taking over? What if people don’t want our care? If we take care of something does it free others up to pay attention to something else? Can we allow others to care? How do we care for ourselves? For me these questions raise issues of power; dependence, independence and interdependence; identity and role; boundaries; purpose and task.
The Practitioner Certificate in Consulting and Change (P3C) programme provides time and space to consider such issues. Drawing on our rich body of applied theory and practice there are opportunities to debate, experiment, apply, integrate and let go in order to deeply develop your own consultancy practice.
Finally ‘without words’ was important in the Ambient Jam, it allowed different resources to become available to the group. Increasingly we are incorporating non-verbal creative approaches into P3C with consequent increased wealth and depth.
Anne Benson
Principal Consultant / Researcher
We are now recruiting for the 2018 intake beginning in February. If you care to, do come and join us. For a brochure with full details including outline, fee, venue and module dates or if you have any questions, please contact Rachel Kelly, Programme Administrator:
The closing date for applications is 2 January 2018.