2020 has seen the world go into a spin of anxiety and fear which has led to cancellations, postponements and devastating disruptions. How do you keep your head and heart steady and lead in these times of uncertainty?

It is rare to find leaders who are not afraid to shake things up and who have had the courage to challenge the status quo. Those are the leaders that create change they do not just respond to it. This is where innovation gets its foundations, in the capacity to be effectively and constructively disruptive.

Since 1957 the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations has created learning opportunities, Group Relations Conferences, through which leaders and senior advisers and policy makers can work together and study the impact of uncertainty on organisational life.

We have seen more and more graduates from business development programmes and University management schools stumped when faced with real-world complexity. So how do you know what you don’t know? The so-called “wicked problems” are upon us, and what is often hidden beneath the surface in terms of feelings and emotions at work, can be a resource for creative and generative thinking. But first, we must disrupt the old order.

The Caribbean is coming out of a colonial past and entering a new horizon where its resources, people and culture face a new challenge. Caribbean Group Relations Consulting is hosting this 3rd gathering to explore what the Caribbean leadership could be, and how it can take charge of its destiny in the coming decade.

So if you are a leader in an organisation or service that needs to change its game, and develop a new range of skills and abilities to work effectively with complexity, to sustain performance and to contribute to a more vibrant and sustainable Caribbean, we welcome you.

This conference is unlike any other, it takes courage and creativity to engage fully, but the rewards are a new sense of self and agency in the face of change. Disrupt the old patterns.

I look forward to working with you to discover what “Authority & Role” means in the context of a “Disruptive Caribbean Leadership”.

Dr. Leslie Brissett JP
Conference Director

In a Group Relations Conference, we create a temporary organisation that is set up to study to its own behaviour as it happens. The temporary organisation is headed by a Director and the staff team that is appointed by the Director to work with the members of the organisation.

The staff do not manage the members, they work to provide consultancy in the form of working hypotheses about what may be happening in the conference events. These hypotheses are available for testing and review. In this way, we create a “Working Conference” where members are actively engaged in exploration, not sitting back being filled up with the opinions and findings of speakers, as they are in a traditional “Conference”.

As an active inquirer, members of the organisation will have the opportunity to explore their own assumptions, feelings and attitudes towards leadership in general, and the leadership of this Working Conference in particular.

As a member encounters their own feelings and assumptions during the conference, they are equipped with first-hand experience of the ways that their staff and colleagues in their back-home organisations may encounter them. This insight gained in the working conference provides a platform for transformations in role taking and leadership.

This Conference is for anyone interested in developing a deeper understanding of managerial and leadership processes in organizations. The Conference provides a structured context of different systems and sub-systems in the “here and now”. It explores the dynamics of leadership, presence, authority, change, dissent, collaboration and transformation as they arise and unfold.

Participants may come from private and public organizations and includes Business Leaders, Consultants, CEOs, Managers, Clinicians, Administrators, HR, Marketing, Production and Financial Professionals, National Security. Public Sector Managers, Local Authorities, Political, Diplomatic, NGOs, Religious, Educators, Activists, Researchers, Team Leaders, Medical Professionals.

Benefits to Participants include:

• Identifying personal characteristics while exercising leadership and the effect on others
• Understanding how you influence or are influenced by others and the ensuing
  consequences – intended or unintended
• Locating and managing resistance to change in yourself and others
• Developing skills and sharpening insights into how strategies take shape when
  groups function
• Recognizing how phenomena such as alliance and coalition formation affect the
  understanding of the group, by the group; and how it shapes motives and power bases
• Exploring competition, rivalry and what lies beyond immediate awareness that remain
  hidden in everyday interaction
• Developing a capacity for creativity and interpersonal relationships and building better
  team performers
• Inspiring strategic thinking and improving the capacity to lead in turbulent times

Benefits to Organizations include:

• Increased capacity to lead and manage in a rapidly changing and complex environment
• Enhanced leadership and communication culture, inspiring higher levels of responsibility, accountability, productivity and profitability
• Inspiring healthy interpersonal communication among the leadership and general staff – Assisting department leaders to align their departments’ goals with the macro objectives of the Organization

Authority & Role: Disruptive Caribbean Leadership Working Conference

Dates

29th to 31st October, 2020

Cost

TT$2,800.00 / US$475.00

Discounts
TT$500.00 / US$50.00 book by 9th October, 2020
On registration, payments can be made through bank transfer or cheques.

Payment Information

Remit payment by Bank Transfer to:
Account Name: The Buzz Ltd.
Bank Name: First Citizens Bank Limited
Bank Address: 44-46 Maraval Road, Port of Spain
Bank Account No.: 1654712

Remit payment by Cheque to:
22 DeVerteuil Street,
Woodbrook,
Trinidad and Tobago
Make cheque out to: The Buzz Ltd.

Closing Date for Applications

Wednesday 15th October, 2020

Cancellations

Cancellation incurred before 30th August, 2020: 50%
Cancellation incurred after 15th September, 2020: No refund

Leslie Brissett, JP, PhD

Conference Director

Group Relations Programme Director, TIHR; Magistrate, FE Governor, ISAAC member, BPC; UK

Mary Fullerton, EMBA,TIHR (P3C),TIHR (DBL)

Associate Conference Director

Organizational Consultant; Director of Caribbean Group Relations Consulting Ltd.; Partner of The Buzz Limited; Founder/Director of non-profit ADHD Foundation of Trinidad and Tobago

Patricia Narayansingh FCCA, ACIB

Conference Operations Manager

Financial Consultant, Non Executive Director, Business Woman, Volunteer, Member of the Boards of The Heroes Foundation, The Water and Sewerage Authority, Trinidad Cement Limited

While staff and members are both participants, the conference accords them different roles. The staff members of the conference are allocated to each of the events in the role of consultants or in the role of collective management to work to the primary task of the event and to the task of the conference as a whole. This they do through the offering of working hypotheses and other forms of interventions.

They work by constantly trying to make sense of their own experiences and what is happening for members. It is expected that staff hypotheses and interpretations will also create the possibility for individual members to reflect on what they represent to the group, what they are taking in from the group, and what they are contributing to the group, particularly in terms of what may be happening unconsciously and in ways that are more hidden.