Group Relations

What is group relations?: A method of studying and understanding group dynamics, leadership, authority and organisational behaviour through experiential learning, rather than through abstract theory.
Where did the group relations methodology start?: It emerged at the first Leicester Conference, organised by the Tavistock Institute in 1957. The conference has run every year since and remains the flagship of group relations conferences worldwide.
What does group relations training cover?: How authority is taken up, the formal and informal roles people assume, and how boundaries of time, space and task affect how a group works, learned through direct experience of group processes as they unfold.

Tavistock group relations thinking starts from the premise that much of what drives behaviour in groups - decision-making, conflict, the pull towards certain roles - is not immediately visible. Projections, transference and unspoken anxieties all shape how groups function, often more powerfully than any formal structure or stated intention.