Group Relations Conference in Lithuania 2013
Director’s Report
The fourth 5-day non-residential experiential inductive learning group relations conference in Lithuania was jointly sponsored by the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Vilnius, Lithuania, and by the Group Relations Programme of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, London. The conference, Motivation, Resistance & Change in Organizations & Communities (21st –25th August 2013) included a Progression Sub-conference. The Director and Associate Director of the conference were Mannie Sher and Jolita Buzaityte-Kasalyniene respectively. Additionally, the conference was staffed by an international team of group relations consultants and Lithuanian administrators. 27 people attended the conference including 7 people from abroad.
The experiential group work and application part of the conference involved the study of group behaviour and how individuals take up their roles in groups in different contexts and with different tasks. Historical, social and political dynamics pertaining to the Lithuanian context emerged in the conference events to reveal the unique challenges facing leadership in all organisations and communities in Lithuania today. These dynamics were shown to be influenced by the nation’s changing demographics, World War II, the Holocaust, Soviet domination in the 5 decades following the War and Lithuania’s recent struggle for independence and its integration into Western European commercial and market conditions. Individual and group assumptions were challenged leading to new insights into how people manage themselves in their leadership roles in their communities and in their organisations.
The benefit of the conference for participants lay in increasing their sense of emotional literacy, improving their capacities for managing themselves better in their multiple roles necessary for contemporary leadership, understanding and working with resistance to change in themselves and others in the various conference events and in their own organisations and networks.
Download the full report here.
