Leicester Conference 2017
The Leicester Conference has provided opportunities to understand the nature of role taking since the 1950s. As a learning methodology, the living laboratory of the conference allows participants to turn their eye in on itself. Studying your behaviour in real-time provides a deeper level of insight and understanding that has replicated itself in one form or another in many of the self-help or personal development approaches taught across the world.
There is something very profound about making sense of what it means to take a role in a system. Understanding that “who you think you are” is not just a collection or residue of past emotional memories, deeply ingrained habits or preferred ways of behaviour, can be liberating and provide energy and vigour to live a fuller life.
The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations has pioneered the notion of Group-As-a- Whole, as a way of seeing and understanding the behaviour of people in systems. This perspective, when experienced, provides access to a way of seeing that is both profound and enduring. Moreover, this insight provides you with an ability to make informed choices about how you take up roles in the various systems that you belong to.
Many people have attended Group Relations Conferences in the Tavistock tradition in various parts of the world, and attending the Leicester Conference is something many people have thought about for a long time.
2017 marks the beginning of the 8th Decade of the Tavistock Institute and the 71st Leicester Conference is the right time to make the move and attend.
As the world’s brands are increasingly demonstrating inter-dependence: mergers and acquisitions lead to global Brands that exist more as mental constructs than actual time-tested products, and confusion in the mind of shoppers is often the result. However, the Tavistock Leicester Conference, with all its innovations, is as recognisable today as it was in 1957 (the first conference).
The leaders and followers in organisations and communities today and in the future need a learning that is robust and has stood the test of time – one rooted in experience. Many business schools graduates are struggling as they realise the toolkits and checklists they have paid for, do not serve them so well in the complexity of the current working landscape.
A Tavistock friend, the late Professor Anthony Hopwood, Dean of Said Business School at Oxford University used to say, “business is so interesting, most business schools are so boring”. I think a change in attitude towards organisational dilemmas is coming and the need for a new type of learning, so more people are returning to Tavistock methodology of learning about humans in systems, and group relations in particular.
As Warren Buffet said “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who has been swimming naked.”
What are you wearing?
Leslie Brissett
Director, Leicester conference 2017
More information about the conference can be found here. For a brochure or if you have any questions, please contact Rachel Kelly, Conference Administrator. A £500 Early Bird discount is available at the moment.
e: r.kelly@tavinstitute.org
t: +44 (0)20 7457 3927