Lancaster University December 11 & 12, 2002

Intuition and creativity in teams and groups in business settings: The group leader as artist

This workshop is intended to assist participants gain access to the wealth of information and creativity that can be accessed through understanding the symbolic and intuitive aspects of self, group and team. Much of what occurs in groups and teams in the workplace does so at intuitive and feelings-based levels but most business settings value rationality and logic above feelings and intuition. This workshop is intended to enhance participants’ ability to work with intuition and feelings in teams without using language that alienates conventional business groups. 

Artists work mainly from the creative unconscious, and viewers of art respond at first with feelings and intuition. Rationalisation occurs later. Similarly, experienced group leaders work mainly from their intuition and group members responses are guided more by feelings of safety, excitement or perhaps fear than they are by rational, sequential, logical thinking.

…and talking of fear, participants will not be asked to create ‘works of art’. Rather, will be asked to explore their own intuitive functioning in relation to group participation and leadership.

Purpose of and potential outcomes from the workshop

The workshop is intended to enable participants to more readily attune to the unspoken, creative, intuitive and unconscious aspects of their own functioning and the dynamics of groups and teams with which they work. This is in turn expected to enable participants to be more creative and versatile as group leaders and group members.

NB: The two-day workshop is expected to be stimulating and catalytic but is not in itself expected to be sufficient training to enable all participants to work elegantly with intuitive and unconscious processes.

Workshop content

The following is given as an indication of the type of activities and content that will comprise the workshop:

·        Introductions and clarification of purpose and processes

·        Seminar on “Group leaders as artists” led by Martin Ringer, followed by Group responses to the seminar

·        Introduction of pieces of art and group-level work with these pieces

·        Explorations of intuitive and creative personal narratives

·        Group-level sociodramatic exploration of the place of feelings and intuition in business settings

·        Seminar on unconscious processes in groups and teams or other topic chosen by the group.

·        Integration

What you will need to bring:

Recommended reading

Bate, S. P. (1994). Strategies for cultural change. Oxford: Butterworth/Heinemann. (Particularly Chapter 14: leading cultural change

Morgan, G. (1997). Images of organization. (2nd ed.). London: Sage. (Particularly Chapter 7: Exploring Plato’s cave)

Obholzer, A., & Roberts, V. Z. (Eds.). (1994). The unconscious at work: Individual and organisational stress in the human services. London: Routledge.

Ringer, T. M. (2002). Group action: The dynamics of groups in therapeutic, educational and corporate settings. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Note in particular Chapter 12 “Group leaders as artists.”

Venue: to be advised

Date & times: to be advised

Workshop fee: to be advised

For details and enrolment please contact Merv Conroy:-