The Conference is a temporary organization with the aim of exploring and learning from experiencing conscious and unconscious processes as they manifest in the “here-and-now”, when authority, leadership and followership are exercised. The intention is to generate new thoughts and new learning and to review our knowledge and values; we have the opportunity to experience ourselves in multiple and different roles. Assistance is provided for an actual and sustainable change in interpreting the different roles in one’s organization and in life, particularly the roles that require an exercise of authority and leadership.

Learning, from the experience of taking up roles in a temporary organisation, the conscious and unconscious dynamics of authority, leadership and followership when restarting from the vortices

For the fifth time the focus is the Mediterranean, as shared matrix of many countries and cultures, as a gathering place or container of many of the individual, group and societal dynamics that we can observe today in the life of organisations, businesses, cultures, in societies and in the relations among countries.

The organization of the Conference and the activities proposed to participants generate an experiential learning. This means learning from its own live experience of group and organizational processes, which promotes self-reflective skills and encourages a spirit of inquiry. Participants, along with the staff, can critically examine different experiences, working behaviours and interpreting the roles of leaders or followers.

This type of training has no therapeutic intent and can sometimes be stressful. For this reason, it is recommended to people at a time of emotional stress or difficulty in their personal lives to postpone their participation to next edition.

Taking part in a Group Relations Conference can be particularly useful for those who work in companies, SMEs, family business, civil sector services and not-for-profit, third and fourth sector organizations, for those who are interested in understanding and managing organizations and group dynamics within complex situations and want to enhance their competence and effectiveness in dealing with them.

All organizational processes include an emotional, irrational, and unconscious dimension. When this component is not recognized and managed, the system’s effectiveness and resilience decrease or comes to a halt, therefore implying both an emotional and financial cost for the organization itself.

Participation in the Conference allows you to observe, recognize and manage this dimension, essential for the functioning of each system and organization.

For this reason the Conference can be particularly effective when two or more members from the same organization register, especially in the case or prospect of prominent changes, crises, mergers, takes-overs, etc.

Therefore, if more people from the same organization participate, each will benefit from a discount.

This edition includes up to a maximum of 10 places reserved for the Training Group (TG): a pathway that helps understanding the processes that develop in the GRC and to deepen one’s competence in knowing how to recognise and manage them.

The TG is aimed to who has already attended at the least two GRC and who is interested to further develop this type of learning and to then apply it in one’s professional life.

A specific programme for the TG is designed that combines the experience with space for reflecting on the experience.

The Conference is bilingual, Italian participants are required to have some knowledge of English; the translation of some parts of the Conference would be made available using the resources available in the system both among the staff and the participants in a spirit of collaboration, focus will be given to the learning of the language of the unconscious, of the emotions and of the non- verbal.

It will not be easy, however based on experience we can confirm that not always rationally understanding the literal translation has helped the experience learning in the Conference.

Directors:

Luca Mingarelli: chairman Foundation Rosa dei Venti. Social entrepreneur, Psychotherapist . Director of Therapeutic Community for adolescents, Organizations consultant. Faculty of Psychosomatics. Associate President Il NODO Group. OPUS member. Creator and co- director of innovative GR events such as “ECW” and “LfA”. Basketball coach. Member of the Order of Journalists. Ambassador of Terzo Paradiso – Michelangelo Pistoletto.

Antonio Samà: university acedemic and organizational consultant. He is a Professional Partner of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. His interests include the role of systemic psychodynamics in university education, action research and complexity and the processes of change in the third sector. He holds roles in Italian and British universities

Administrators

Elena Pini: MD, specialist in psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Medical Director at the Department of Mental Health and Addiction of the ASST Nord Milano and manager of the Double-Diagnosis Area projects. Member of the Board of Mito&Realtà and staff member of innovative Group Relations such as Learning from Action.

Lili Valkó: a clinical psychologist, group analyst psychotherapist from Budapest, Hungary. She has been a colleauge of the therapeutic community of Thalassa Ház since 2007 in varoius forms from a university student volunteer to taking up leading roles. She is an editor of the Hungarian psychotherapist journal “Pszichoterápia” and an active member of CSAKIT (the Hungarian group analysis association). She has been in the staff of LFA in 2016, 2017 and 2019, and in the staff of PCCA in 2018.

The conference starts on Thursday 8th September, at 11 am and ends on Sunday 11th September, at 5 pm. Checkin and Registration: from 10:00 am to 10:50 am on Thursday. Participants are expected to attend the whole programme of the conference, which is residential.

The paid booking fee is refundable (minus administrative and management costs) only in the event of cancellation of the event and/or impediments to participation due to COVID-19 restrictions and/or international travel regulations.