Exploring Role and Identity in the COVID-19 era – online Group Relations workshop.

As leaders, managers or consultants, therapists or teachers we are facing a lot of challenges in managing online groups. This workshop is run by Group Relations Russia and is sponsored by the Tavistock Institute. The workshop is already fully booked.

The workshop taking place on Zoom is for those who have some Group Relations experience – the participants are people who want and need to have better insight into the dynamics of online groups in a digital global world. It offers a further springboard for studying group dynamics in groups and teams.

The workshop asks these questions:

• How to manage and lead online groups and teams?
• How to build trust and relationships online?
• How to be a part of online organisations as a leader as well as a team member?
• Where are the groups’ and organisational boundaries now?
• How does online work influence your leadership position and role?
• What is the phenomenon of work with online groups?

This workshop includes specific online experiential events and a new digital experience:

Small Study Group: In small groups, participants will have opportunities to study the shifting patterns of relations in the group and their own part in what happens in the here-and-now in relatedness to the themes.

Review and Application Group: In Review mode, participants will have opportunities to review and reflect on the meaning of their experiences of the various roles they take or find themselves in within the workshop. In Application mode, participants will have opportunities to relate these experiences to the roles they will be resuming in their professional, organizational and personal lives outside the temporary workshop institution.

The Social Dreaming Matrix: The primary task of the SDM is to provide opportunities to discover the social meaning of dreams. This is done through participants providing dreams to the matrix and free-associating to them. Making links among the dreams and association will provide the systemic “unthought-known” meaning of the dreams. It is the dream, not the dreamer that is the focus of the work of the Social Dreaming Matrix. It is a unique opportunity to explore what’s going on in online group relating to the overall theme and to reflect on how it might be connected to one’s own organisation in times of COVID.

The Organisational Event: This provides opportunities to study and experience the relationships and relatedness between the participants and the staff in this temporary workshop institution, as a fractal of our larger organisations and society. How do we understand the dynamics and processes that are at play? How were they formed? How are they part of collective unconscious processes? What function are they serving for us? What roles do we play in them? And who ends up acting them out on our behalf? How do we find and take up our authority, what is our experience of leadership and identity?

The workshop is taking place between 2-4 September and is already full.

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