Leading at the boundaries of the unknown.

Africa and the world need leadership. But how shall we lead when everything is shifting? When our deepest notions of who we are, how we fit into the world and what we regard as true and just are uncertain and changing?

​Providing leadership in such a context often brings us to the very limits of our in/competence: realizing that our past experience is insufficient for the unfolding situation facing us. But are we merely lost at sea? Or are there ways of being and leading at the boundaries of the unknown that are authentic and reassuring? Not pretending to know when we don’t. Not pretending to be in control when we aren’t.

I invite you to join our 2nd annual residential Group Relations conference in the Tavistock tradition. This methodology, pioneered by the Tavistock Institute since 1957, is fully experiential. This means that, over the course of five days, no content is being presented. Instead, the conference forms a temporary institution that is born during the opening moments, studies its own conscious and unconscious dynamics as these emerge in the here-and-now, and dissolves at the end. There is, to my knowledge, no better way to learn about the complex dynamics of groups and organisations.

This year the conference title is Transformation 2.0 – Leading at the boundaries of the unknown. The primary task of the conference is to provide opportunities to learn, through experience and in the here-and-now, about exercising authority and leadership in the taking up and transformation of roles within the ever-shifting relational context of the conference as a temporary institution.

If the way in which you lead your institution in its shifting African and global context is important to you, join the conference. Together we will create a most unforgettable learning experience.

In anticipation,

Jean Cooper
Conference Director: Transformation 2.0 – Leading at the boundaries of the unknown

Eliat Aram, CEO of the Tavistock Institute, is one of the Associate Directors at the Transformation 2.0 Group Relations conference.

The conference is from 4 – 8 December 2017 at the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science in Johannesburg, South Africa.  More information and the registration form can be found here and if you have any questions, email the Associate Director for Administration, Mrs Thembi Kgengwenyane: thembi@tiltinternational.com