Dear Prospective Participant,

Globally, including in the Caribbean, leadership is now in an unprecedented era of rapid transformation. The environment is unpredictable and complex and the challenges are interconnected. The speed of new technology change, the emergence of generative AI, “born digital” generations, and shifts in social values are now reinventing individuals, organizations, and society. This reinvention provides creative spaces, with unfamiliar terrain and opportunities, which require constant organizational and personal adaption and development.

Caribbean leadership in 2024 is grappling with the collapse of traditional systems, the education system’s effectiveness, within a relationship – oriented culture, the transformation of workplace dynamics, and the change and needs of society. Leadership today is not just about being in authority; it’s about being comfortable in the unknown, fostering growth, empowering others, and creating a shared sense of purpose in a new way.

At this time of accelerated transformation and reinvention, what does the new leadership approach look like? In leading within these complex systems and uncertainty, how can I maintain my role and authority, remain resilient, and manage my anxiety and stress levels while supporting my team? While navigating change and adversity, what are my defenses that get in the way of accomplishing the best results for my organization? What anxieties show up for me in empowering others with diverse skills and knowledge?

Group relations conferences are a way of learning for leadership. It is a methodology that offers an opportunity, to work with the conscious rational part of ourselves and the sometimes-hidden thoughts, feelings, and ideas. These hidden dimensions can get in the way of achieving the goals and aspirations, set out by leaders and their teams.

This working conference is leadership intensive for those who have the courage and keen to develop a deeper understanding of: – Leadership and how to work more skilfully in role, how it is experienced, and what it means in leadership roles in private or public organizations. Authority, its exercise, and how groups affect an individual in role. Deepening the understanding of groups, and how to work with them is vital in working with transformation.

If you are committed to leading for the best effectiveness, join us as we explore Leadership Authority Role, in the context of Organizational and Personal Transformation, for this new time and space.

Mary Fullerton
Director
Caribbean Conference 2024

About

What is Learning in a Group Relations Conference, and what makes it so powerful?

A Group Relations conference is an educational event which is based on learning through experience.

Primary Task

To study the exercise of authority and leadership, through inter-personal, inter-group and institutional relations that develop within the conference as part of its wider context.

The conference design has been developed by pioneers from the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR) and other Group Relations organizations around the world, since 1957. It provides a unique framework within which senior and aspiring leaders can learn about themselves, and the ways that groups and organizations affect them in taking up their roles. The strategic and structural dynamics of organizations can be studied and understood and the knowledge acquired can then be applied. By working through the conscious and unconscious dynamics of leadership and management in organizations members learn by doing, not by being told. The learning is deep and long-lasting.

We believe that our conference promotes the integration of intellectual capacity and emotional intelligence; producing leaders who have creative visionary potential, enabling them to work more effectively at helping themselves and their employees / colleagues / clients, to adapt to and take on future roles.

Learn more about group relations work of the The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and what participants from the A. K. Rice Institute for the Study of Social Systems have to say about their experiences of attending a conference.

Benefits

This Conference is for anyone interested in personal growth and transformation or 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, authority, role, change, dissent, collaboration, and transformation as they arise and unfold.

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

Benefits to participants include:

  • Encountering and managing resistance to change in yourself and others
  • Recognizing managing role boundaries, conflicts, confusion and emotional overload
  • Identifying personal characteristics while exercising leadership and the effect on others
  • 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 remains hidden in everyday interaction.
  • Recognizing diversity, equity and inclusion in collaboration
  • Understanding how you influence or are influenced by others and the ensuing consequences – intended or unintended
  • Developing skills and sharpening insights into how strategies take shape when groups function
  • 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 organisations include:

  • Increased capacity to drive significant changes within organizations, including shift in identity, value systems, and capabilities. Respond swiftly and manage in a rapidly changing and complex environment
  • Enhanced strategic decision-making, mitigating risk, in repositioning core business to seize opportunities for new sources of growth
  • Enhanced effectiveness 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

Registration

Caribbean Group Relations Consulting, The Tavistock Institute & The University of the West Indies present

Leadership Authority Role: Exploring Organizational and Personal Transformation

Note: This is a non-residential conference. For travellers outside of Trinidad, a number of local hotels and venues are available. Contact: mary@caribbeangroupconsulting.com or 868 681 3483

Dates

Thursday 17th – Saturday 19th October, 2024

Venue

Faculty of Social Sciences
The University of the West Indies
St Augustine Campus
St Augustine
Trinidad and Tobago

Cost

TT$3,500.00 / US$514.00

The conference fee includes lunch.

Discounted Fees

Early Registration
TT$3,100.00 / US$441.00,
if booked by 15th August, 2024

Past Participant
TT$2,500.00 / US$370.00

Closing Date for Applications

Wednesday 5th October, 2024

Register Now

Payment Options

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.

Refunds & Cancellations

50% Refund for cancellations made before 5th October, 2024


No Refunds for cancellations made after 5th October, 2024

Please note: We suggest that if you are living through particular personal difficulties that you consider postponing your attendance to next year as the conference is designed as a learning event and is not a substitute for personal psychotherapy.

Conference Staff

Conference Directorate

Mary Fullerton

Mary Fullerton,
EMBA

Conference Director

Certified Change Consultant (P3C), & Dynamics at Board Level by The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR), UK. Director/Consultant at Caribbean Group Relations Consulting Ltd; Organizational Consultant/ Accredited Leadership Coach; Managing Director at The Buzz Limited; Founder /Director of nonprofit The ADHD Foundation of Trinidad and Tobago

Keith Lequay,
PhD

Associate Conference Director

Organisational Psychologist, Lecturer, and Leadership Coach; A certified Group Relations Consultant (USA), he explores the impact of the colonial mis-educational experience on inter alia, contemporary challenges of self-authorisation, personal boundaries, dependency, group process and its dynamics. Keith is also passionate about facilitating psychologically healthy organisations through their sensemaking process.

Sharon Mangroo,
MSc, Dip ED, BSc

Conference Operations Manager

CEO, Catholic Education Board of Management; Former Chief Education Officer, Ministry of Education Professional experience in primary and secondary levels of the school system as well as teacher education, educational administration, and assessment and examinations

Consultant Staff

Dr. Leslie B. Brissett, JP

Advisory Board member Eco-Leadership Institute and Partners for Confronting Collective Atrocities (PCCA) and Management Board Socioanalysis Journal, Australia. Former Group Relations Programme Director at Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, UK.

Camilla Child, MSc, MA

Principal Consultant and Company Secretary at The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR), UK; Co-Director of the Practitioner Certificate in Consultancy and Change (P3C) Programme, Co-Director Dynamics at Board Level, TIHR; Accredited Mediator; Organisational Development Consultant and Group Relations Consultant

Mary Fullerton

Mary Fullerton, EMBA

Director of Caribbean Group Relations Consulting Ltd; Organisational Consultant/ Accredited Leadership Coach, Partner of The Buzz Limited; Founder/Director of non-profit ADHD Foundation of Trinidad and Tobago

Urban Hudlin, OP, MSc, MA,

Certified Change Consultant (P3C) & Dynamics at Board Level by The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR), UK. Director/Consultant at Caribbean Group Relations Consulting Ltd; Analytic Psychotherapist in private practice. Principal Consultant Veritas Consultancy, Trinidad, Dominican Priest

Keith Lequay, PhD

Organisational Psychologist, Lecturer, and Leadership Coach; A certified Group Relations Consultant (USA), he explores the impact of the colonial mis-educational experience on inter alia, contemporary challenges of self-authorisation, personal boundaries, dependency, group process and its dynamics. Keith is also passionate about facilitating psychologically healthy organisations through their sensemaking process.

Kathleen Stroud, MA, Dip Ed, BA

Organizational Analyst. Principal Consultant/ Director at Leadership Core Ltd. Organizational Development and Change Leadership Practitioner.

How Staff Work in the Conference

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.

Previous Participants

National Participants

  • Agricultural Development Bank of Trinidad and Tobago – T&T
  • Antilles Episcopal Conference – T&T
  • Archdiocese of Port of Spain – T&T
  • C.F. International Marketing – T&T
  • Caribbean Telecommunications Union – T&T
  • Catholic Education Board of Management – T&T
  • Catholic Religious Education Development Institute – T&T
  • COTT – T&T
  • Eastern Antilles Interdiocesan Tribunal – T&T
  • Erica Ashton – T&T
  • First Line Securities, T&T
  • FT Farfan Ltd – T&T
  • Guardian Shared Services Ltd – T&T
  • Heritage Petroleum Company Limited – T&T
  • Institute of International Relations – T&T
  • iTutortt – T&T
  • Lonsdale Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising Limited – T&T
  • Ministry of Education – T&T
  • Ministry of Gender and Child Affairs – T&T
  • Odyssey Consulting Limited – T&T
  • Office of the Prime Minister – T&T
  • Office of Youth Ministry – T&T
  • Piarco Air Services Limited – T&T
  • Providence Girls’ Catholic School – T&T
  • Ryu Dan Empowerment Foundation – T&T
  • Sandstone Consulting Limited – T&T
  • Society of African Missions – Afrikahuis
  • Society of St Vincent de Paul – T&T
  • St Anns Hospital – T&T
  • St Joseph’s Convent, San Fernando – T&T
  • St Joseph’s Convent, St. Joseph – T&T
  • TECU Credit Union Co-operative Society Limited – T&T
  • The Buzz Ltd – T&T
  • The Nursing Council of Trinidad & Tobago – T&T
  • The University of Trinidad and Tobago – T&T
  • Therapy and Beyond – T&T
  • Trinidad & Tobago Association of Psychologists – T&T
  • TRINRE Insurance Company Limited – T&T
  • UWI – Arthur Lok Jack GSB – T&T
  • UWI School of Business and Applied Studies Limited – T&T

International Participants

  • ACNJ – UK
  • A. K. Rice Institute – USA
  • Arrow Group – Abu Dhabi
  • Beijing Jiaotong University, Counselling Center – China
  • Broadcasting Commission – Jamaica
  • Caribbean Catalyst Inc. – Barbados
  • City of Toronto – Canada
  • Consultation and Coaching Services – USA
  • Dr. Bob LLC – USA
  • Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland – Finland
  • IMSITSAI – USA
  • Independent Researcher/ Consultant – UK
  • Jacobs & Jacobs – Peru
  • Jasmine Victoria LLC – Puerto Rico
  • New York University – USA
  • Olly Potts Leadership Consulting – UK
  • PARC – Canada
  • Prins in Communicatie – The Netherlands
  • Private Practice – USA / T&T
  • RMC Counselling – USA
  • RtL Consultancy – Hungary
  • Schenectady City School District – USA
  • Society of African Missions – Afrikahuis
  • Synapse Psychological Services Inc. – Barbados
  • Tavistock Clinic – UK
  • The Second Chair – UK
  • Tigh-na-Fios Consulting, – Scotland, UK
  • University of Central Missouri – USA
  • University of Pennsylvania – USA
  • University of Richmond – USA
  • University of South Africa – South Africa

Sponsoring Institutions

Caribbean Group Relations Consulting Ltd.

Caribbean Group Relations Consulting Ltd. was created to
provide services in the areas of consulting, organizational change and transformation to organizations in public and private sectors. Our members work as Consultants, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists, and Organizational Psychologists. Caribbean Group Relations Consulting Ltd., is working to develop and apply the field of Group Relations and Systems Psychodynamics in the Caribbean.

caribbeangroupconsulting.com

The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations

The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations is a not-for-profit, UK based organization that applies social science to contemporary issues and prob- lems. It was formally founded as a registered charity in 1947 although its work started before the War, together with the Tavistock Clinic. The Institute is engaged with evaluation and action research, organizational development and change consultancy, executive coaching and professional development all in service of supporting sustainable change and ongoing learning.

tavinstitute.org