Doing the Business of Group Relations Conferences

Exploring the Discourse

Eliat Aram, Coreen Archer, Rachel Kelly, Gordon Strauss, Joseph Triest, Eliat Aram, Coreen Archer, Rachel Kelly, Gordon Strauss, Joseph Triest

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367001490
• eBook ISBN: 9780429814525
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Group Relations conferences offer opportunities to learn about group, organisational and social dynamics; the exercise of authority and power; the interplay between tradition, innovation and change; and the relationship of organisations to their social, political and economic environments.

This book, the fifth in a series of Tavistock Group Relations Conferences, contains a collection of papers presented at the fifth Belgirate conference, plus three additional papers reflecting on and making sense of several participants' conference experiences. Taken together, these chapters study the discourse of Group Relations conferences as well as reflecting on the changing nature and shifting patterns of this discourse. In Doing the Business of Group Relations Conferences, authors reflect on the vicissitudes of meanings this expression generates.

INTRODUCTION TO SECTION III

Exploring the discourse of business in Group Relations

This section picks up the theme at the Belgirate V conference about “doing the business of Group Relations” (GR). What all of these chapters share is the energy and creativity that “the business of group relations” can engender, including the challenges, the pleasures and the risks.

In the chapter that opens the section, Louisa Diana Brunner invites us to consider not only what we are doing when we conduct a GRC, but more broadly what we are doing in and with GR as an international community. She is clear that what we are not doing is anything that meets her definition of a business. In exploring what she calls “enterprises of passion,” she touches on or introduces themes which show up in many of the other four chapters in this section.

The chapter by Eduardo Acuña and Matías Sanfuentes traces the history and development of GR in Chile during and after the era of the Pinochet dictatorship. The authors illustrate both the role of cooperation as well as the limiting effects of competition within GR. Also to be noted in this chapter are the risks that Acuña and his colleagues ran in putting on GRCs and integrating GR thinking into their business school curriculum in an era of political repression.

The chapter by Seth Harkins and his colleagues gives a detailed and fascinating account of the 2014 GRC held in Beijing, China. First, the development of a new GRC role ‒ the cultural interpreter ‒ represents a true innovation of conference design. However, like many innovations, this one was accompanied by many challenges, most of which played out in the realm of role and task boundaries. The other unique aspect of this chapter are the accounts by several of the authors about how their conference experience as multi-ethnic staff members led them to reflect on the (group) dynamics of multi-ethnicity.

The chapter by Barbara Lagler Özdemir and Hüseyin Özdemir does something all too rare in the GR literature: present the experience and learning from a series of GRCs “in the real business world.” Their focus is on in-house GRCs conducted with their corporate and OD clients, all of whom are top and senior executives. They summarize their work with clients in 11 in-house conferences in six countries over the past 14 years.

The final chapter in this section, by Ugo Merlone and John Wilkes, addresses some of the themes introduced in Louisa Diana Brunner’s section-opening chapter. Why have the number of GRCs fluctuated? Why have the number of GR organizations grown to more than 35 worldwide (see their Table 3.5.1)? What is the role of covert competition? In an effort to examine these questions ‒ couched within a hypothesis based on the Tragedy of the Commons ‒ they devised an experiential learning exercise which they piloted at the A.K. Rice Institute Dialogues meeting earlier in 2015 before using it at Belgirate.

CHAPTER 3.1

Group Relations conferences

Can enterprises with passion become businesses?

Louisa Diana Brunner

Introduction

Nearly 20 years ago I attended my first Leicester Conference as a member. At the time I did not know anything about Group Relations conferences, I had gone to Leicester to train on leadership and authority. It was such a shock to find myself in that unexpected setting. That conference was an epiphany for me, the start of my Group Relations conferences experience as participant and staff, and the approach has become a great passion.

I learned three important things at that Leicester Conference. First of all, always ask yourself why you have been called to do a certain task at a particular moment and in that specific role. Second, work with your own experience. Third, if you formulate and offer a hypothesis, you need to sustain it with thorough evidence.

Turning to the first question, I have asked myself why I was invited to present a keynote in that moment in Belgirate. The first answer I gave myself is that because I am Italian the invitation is in recognition of the land where the Belgirate Conference takes place¹ and of the Italian Group Relations community. We were a very small Group Relations community when we started in 1998, now thanks to all the hard work of many colleagues, we are well established in the international community.

The second answer I gave myself to why me at that particular moment, is that I work mainly in the business world and the word business was in the title of the fifth Belgirate Conference and I could contribute from this perspective.

At the Belgirate Conference, I did not give a traditional lecture, but I presented a PowerPoint presentation which included two videos. This chapter is built on that presentation. Like the presentation in Belgirate, it is a sort of research diary on some themes that have preoccupied me through the years. In preparing the presentation and this chapter, I was inspired, on the one hand, by cummings² (1991) who said ’Let me cordially warn you, at the opening of these so-called lectures, that I haven’t the remotest intention of posing as a lecturer. Lecturing is presumably a form of teaching; and presumably a teacher is somebody who knows. I never did, and still don’t, know. What has always fascinated me is not teaching, but learning…’. So also for me learning from the experience of writing, presenting and from colleagues’ suggestions was the main aim. On the other hand, Erlich-Ginor (2006) suggests that Group Relations conferences are ‘Tools that are useful in creating potential spaces and in the service of generating meaning. Group Relations provide containers for play and exploration in the area of learning about authority, leadership and organization … through playing and creativity.’ So, I positioned the presentation at Belgirate as a playful exploration rather than as an attempt at a definitive theoretical academic exposition.

The presentation and this chapter are not specifically on conference experiences, but about us, as a whole Group Relations community of practice. The initiating idea was that I feel that as Group Relations community and practitioners, we are going through an identity crisis which affects many dimensions of our work:

• Businesswise, on how to position Group Relations conferences in the global and globalized training and consultancy context and market.
• Organisationally, from a hierarchical vertical oedipal to a more lateral egalitarian culture.
• Conceptually, in terms of controversies among the disciplines involved in Group Relations, e.g. psychoanalysis, systemic thinking, organisational studies or others.
• There is a tension about how much to retain from tradition, how much to be open to innovation and to be ‘contaminated’ by other ideas and perspectives (Erlich-Ginor, 2006). Khaleelee and White (2014) argued that the ‘Group Relations model is under development … the tradition is in transition because society is in transition … authority and leadership struggles seem to be at the heart of the world changes’ (Khaleelee and White, 2014, p.424).

As a consequence of all this and of the great changes in society, I feel passionately that we – Group Relations Practitioners or Community – are stuck in an image of ourselves or in an understanding of ourselves which blocks us both in learning and in doing business.

In this chapter I will first describe what I mean by enterprises with passion. Then I will discuss my hypothesis that Group Relations conferences are not business but enterprises with passion and that this does not allow further development especially for new audiences and markets. I will argue that our inability to address openly the experience of competition undermines our potential to move forward. I will present some evidence about this hypothesis from some specific issues: recruitment, international versus national conferences, staffing, and ambivalence and ambiguity in relation to the aim of the Group Relations conferences. I will also suggest that friendships, often deep and intimate and at the same time quite complicated, play an important role in our community and impact our culture and that of our organisation, although we do not acknowledge it publicly. Finally, inspired by the Milan 2015 Universal Expo and its symbol the Tree of Life, I will suggest the need for more understanding and management of the Group Relations community and network as a whole. I will conclude with some considerations on the experience of presenting in Belgirate.

Enterprises with passion

The title of the fifth Belgirate Conference was Doing the Business of Group Relations Conferences: Un/conscious Dynamics, Systems and Ethics. So my first question about Group Relations conferences was: are we really doing business or something else (e.g. enterprising, mission, friendship) – and why? So, I developed the idea that more than businesses, Group Relations conferences are enterprises with passion.

The word enterprise derives from the French entreprendre, and means to undertake (Kets de Vries,1996b, p.856), to begin something. According to Soanes and Stevenson (2006, p.202) an enterprise is a ‘venture, project’, which implies initiative, energy and passion. They (Soanes and Stevenson, 2006, p.70) also suggest that the idea of ‘business’ (in English) is about ‘occupation, trade, craft’ and therefore exchange (e.g. money or buying and selling) and establishment. So the ‘entre-prendre’ dimension is more about action through an energy from inside while the ‘business’ one is about exchange or exchanges. Entreprendre has more to do with the creation of new endeavours while businesses seem more established.

At the conference in Belgirate, I showed a video in which I presented A year of enterprises with passion – November 2014–2015. It shows the sequence of conferences around the world, with their titles, dates and locations. It was the first time that a series of Group Relations conferences had been collected in that way. In preparing the presentation I was led by the hypothesis (see section 1) that all these conferences compete with each other and that this reality is not addressed and discussed sufficiently in our community. We compete quite destructively (rivalry) inside our community instead of collaborating to compete constructively outside to attract new audiences, have better economic returns and a ‘louder voice’.

The word ‘competition’ comes from late Latin competere – cum (with) – petere (directed to, searching). It means to meet, to contend – a race, act of competing, encounter. It implies a direction, a purpose to compete for. The word conflict, on the other hand, derives from the Latin – conflictum – fight, crash, battle, contrast, rivalry.

Family business is a reference point for me intellectually and emotionally, since it is an area where I have worked and researched for many years. As I will argue in section 4, I would not say that the Group Relations community is similar to a family business. Nevertheless, I want to quote Miller and Rice (1988) on competition in family business because it seems relevant to my hypothesis. On the one hand, ‘The driving force of industry and commerce in a capitalist economy is competition: competition for capital for investment and competition for customers…’ (Miller and Rice, 1988, p.199). These authors also suggest that in such a competitive environment external enemies are used by groups to keep them together. Although it is not openly acknowledged, competition reverberates inside the organisations through ‘competition for jobs, for wages and salaries, for status and power’ (Miller and Rice, 1988, p.199). Cooperation can be a means for coping in such a competitive context. On the other hand, Miller and Rice (1988, p.199) suggest that in ‘contrast, the driving force in a family is its unity – unity based on repression or denial of internal conflict … Competition between members must be kept low’ (Miller and Rice, 1988, p.199). In a family business often, the internal needs of wellbeing and emotional support of the family are not compatible with the competitive demands of the market. This can be managed quite easily when the company is profitable and the external conditions allow it, and a ‘family business sometimes can afford to ignore its competitors …’ (Miller and Rice, 1988, pp.199–200) but ‘… any reduction in business success may jeopardize the fragile defence against conflict…’. For a long time Group Relations conferences were successful, but I feel that now Group Relations conferences are in a challenging phase, for example in terms of recruitment of members since nowadays there are more opportunities to attend Group Relations conferences, as will be discussed in section 3.1. Our community is in quite a vulnerable place and defences against internal conflict are used.

From a psycho-dynamic perspective, therefore, it seems to me that, on the one hand, as a community we oscillate between a basic assumption and work group ‘pairing’ mentality (French and Simpson, 2010)³ of the enterprising dimension in conceiving, designing and launching the conferences. On the other hand, we are infused with a me-ness/one-ness culture (Lawrence, Bain, and Gould, 1996) that also leads to the narcissism of the small differences symptom (Freud, 1917). For example in some conversations we name a conference according the director’s name or as my conference. Or some intense discussions take place on who has devised an event or has offered a hypothesis or tiny differences in the design of the Conferences. I feel that there is a shortage of real collaborative experience among conferences and sponsoring organisations, beyond co-branding which in most cases seems more a marketing feature than deep cooperation. De Gooijer, in Chapte 2.1, outlines the challenges of such collaborative experiences. Furthermore, beyond the opportunity offered by the Belgirate Conferences, I feel that there is a lack of real common endeavours and related structures in order to move from an enterprises with passion culture to a more business-like one. I will discuss this further in section 5.

Evidence of competition

To support my hypothesis, I will present further evidence about competition in our community from four different perspectives, which are:

• Recruitment
• International versus national
• Motivation to be on the staff of Group Relations conferences
• Ambiguity and ambivalence about the primary task

Recruitment

Membership recruitment is the prerequisite to run a Group Relations conference. Without members a conference cannot take place.

My impression is that we are all competing inside our community for members: we are all fish in the same pond. This internal-intra competition can contribute to our losing sight of what people in the market really want and need in a changing global context. The following vignette clearly illustrates the competition between conferences.

One morning in May 2015 I was working on the Belgirate presentation. I had in front of me the printed list of the Group Relations conferences from the Tavistock Institute website. A potential member, Nick (the name is a pseudonym to preserve anonymity) called to say that he could not go to the AKRI conference in Boston nor could he go to Ireland in June and wanted to know where he could go to a Group Relations c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• About the Editors and Contributors
• Foreword
• Introduction
• INTRODUCTION TO SECTION I: EXPLORING THE DISCOURSE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS IN GROUP RELATIONS
• INTRODUCTION TO SECTION II: EXPLORING THE DISCOURSE OF ORGANIZATION (B-A-R-T) IN GROUP RELATIONS
• INTRODUCTION TO SECTION III: EXPLORING THE DISCOURSE OF BUSINESS IN GROUP RELATIONS
• INTRODUCTION TO SECTION IV: POST-CONFERENCE REFLECTIONS
• INDEX