Groups, like individuals, have an unconscious life. 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.

At the heart of this work is an exploration of authority, leadership and role. How is authority taken up, resisted or redistributed? What informal roles do people assume, and what does this reveal about the group’s identity and purpose? Equally important are the boundaries within which a group operates - boundaries of time, space and task - whose clarity or blurring has a direct bearing on how effectively a group can work.

Tavistock thinking also views the group as part of a wider system, where changes in one part affect the whole. Rather than offering theory in the abstract, group relations work invites participants to learn directly from experience, observing and reflecting on group processes as they unfold in real time. It is this combination of depth, systemic perspective and experiential learning that makes the approach so distinctive.

Applications

The Tavistock approach to understanding group relations is frequently used in organisational consulting, helping leaders and teams understand the deeper, often hidden dynamics that affect their work.

The Tavistock Group Relations model has influenced various fields, including organisational development, psychotherapy, and social psychology, providing a framework for understanding complex human dynamics in group settings.

Since our founding in 1947, the Tavistock Institute has generated leading-edge thinking and research on how we humans behave in groups and organisations. The ground-breaking group relations methodology for learning about leadership emerged at the first Leicester Conference in 1957, and now there is a lively and dynamic global community of activity exploring and developing group relations and its application.

The Leicester Conference has taken place every year since 1957 and remains the flagship of Group Relations Conferences (GRCs) and institutions around the world and the home of learning by experience.

During the last two decades, we have continued to share group relations and experiential learning in new and creative ways, taking the work further into the global east and south whilst building on our western and northern historic heartland.