Unlocking collaborative potential across teams
leadership development workshop
📆 Friday 20 October, 2023
Building Bridges: Unlocking Collaborative Potential Across Teams
This full-day interactive workshop is tailored specifically for corporate managers seeking to unlock the full potential of inter-team collaboration. Gain valuable insights into the dynamics of collaboration among teams operating in complex organisational settings, drawing on principles from group relations theory and the Relational Coordination Model developed at Brandeis University.
At the completion of this full-day workshop you will have:
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insights into the dynamics of collaboration among teams in complex organisational setting
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expanded your understanding beyond vertical/hierarchical work structures by focusing on interdependent relationships within and between teams
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connected workshop learnings so you can map and analyse real-world collaboration challenges within your organisation
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developed strategies for improving collaborative relationships across teams to make a lasting impact within your organisation.
What’s included in this full-day workshop?
Put theory into practice in an experiential intergroup event designed to simulate real-life group dynamics and intergroup relations. Multiple teams participate, each with a defined task and shared objectives, creating a unique opportunity to explore the dynamics of intergroup relations, power dynamics, communication patterns, and other factors that influence collaboration and cooperation. Participants engage in interactions, negotiations, and decision-making processes within the simulated system, allowing you to gain insights into your own roles, behaviours, and the dynamics that unfold between different groups.
The comprehensive debrief that follows the intergroup event is a valuable opportunity for reflection, learning, and deeper understanding of the underlying dynamics at play.
The day also includes a short seminar in which we outline some intergroup theory and introduce the Relational Coordination Model. Emphasising lateral relationships, we’ll delve into the importance of shared knowledge, shared goals, and mutual respect in fostering effective collaboration.
Through exercises that link intergroup event insights and relational coordination mapping, you’ll gain experience and practical tools to analyse and address current collaboration issues between teams in your organisation.
“The intergroup event was an intense learning experience. I came away knowing how I could be a better team leader, and how to engage with my colleagues in other teams.”
– Rhianna Perkin, Senion Consultant Psychologist
“The intergroup event was an eye-opening experience. I understood more of the barriers to collaboration and what to do to overcome them.”
– Cameron Brooks, Leadership Consultant
Who should attend this immersive workshop?
This workshop is designed for team leaders and managers who are eager to transform collaboration within their organisations. It is particularly beneficial for individuals who are responsible for leading and managing in complex organisational settings, where there are interdependencies amongst teams.
Managers who want to gain a deeper understanding of the dynamics of collaboration among teams will find valuable insights in this workshop. For those who may be familiar with vertical/hierarchical work structures or looking to expand understanding beyond them, this workshop focuses on interdependent relationships within and between teams to unlock the collaborative potential to deliver on shared organisational purpose.
Attend this workshop and gain the knowledge, tools, and strategies to foster effective collaboration, navigate complex organisational settings, and unlock the full potential of inter-team relationships. Become a transformative leader who drives collaboration, achieves shared goals, and makes a lasting impact within your organisation.
Unlocking collaborative potential across teams
Day(s)
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Hour(s)
:
Minute(s)
:
Second(s)
📆 Date
Friday 20 October 2023
⏰ Session Time
9.30 am – 4.30 pm 🇨🇰 Melbourne
11.30 pm – 6.30 am (eek!) 🇬🇧 London
6.30 pm – 1.30 am 🇺🇸 New York
6.30 am – 1.30 pm 🇸🇬 Singapore
💷 For only
AUD $900
Three or more participants from the same organisation for AUD $700 each
👩🏻💻 Location
Bourke Street, Melbourne
Building bridges: Unlocking collaborative potential across teams
leadership development workshop with the following:
Helen McKelvie
Helen has had over 25 years of working in organisations to inform her approach to helping others gain insights into how they take up roles and how to achieve greater alignment with individual, team and organisational purpose. Her own roles as internal planning consultant, policy and project manager, and lawyer in workplaces in both the public and private sectors have provided her with first-hand experience of the complexity and challenges of organisational life.
Helen is an alumnus and now teaches in the Master’s program at the National Institute of Organisation Dynamics Australia (NIODA). She also has a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Melbourne. In addition to her academic qualifications, Helen is an accredited practitioner of PRISM Brain Mapping, an online, neuroscience-based behaviour mapping instrument, and is a registered Analytic-Network Coach. Helen also has training and experience in workplace mediation and yoga teaching qualifications.
Jennifer Burrows
Jennifer brings systems thinking and a socio analytic lens to help organisations and individuals thrive in complex environments. As a consultant and coach, she works collaboratively, holding the tension between leaving space for emergence and achieving the desired outcomes, using the unique situation and presenting needs as the starting point. The co-created results are relevant, immediately applicable and owned by the participants.
Jennifer has extensive experience working in the education sector leading change innovations, as well as with Boards of not-for-profit companies. She holds a Master in Philosophy of Social Innovation (Organisational Analysis & Leadership) through the Grubb School of Organisational Analysis, as well as a Master of Business (Training & Change Management) and other qualifications in education. She is a Board member of a not-for-profit age and disability support organisation, and a Director of Group Relations Australia.
Thomas Mitchell
Over the last several years Thomas has enhanced his extensive professional experience by learning from, and working with, leaders across the executive coaching, group dynamics, and systems psychodynamics fields. A graduate of the NIODA Master of Leadership and Management – Organisation Dynamics, Thomas combines a deep understanding of working in large organisations with a passion for supporting others as they work toward achieving their goals and gaining a deeper awareness of their actions and drivers. Highly skilled in creating a safe environment to support participants explore their roles, Thomas manages the balance between empathy and candour allowing participants to feel secure whilst having their assumptions challenged.
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About NIODA
The National Institute of Organisation Dynamics Australia (NIODA) offers internationally renowned post-graduate education and research in organisation dynamics, and decades of experience consulting with Australian organisations.
The study of organisation dynamics brings together socio-technical and psychoanalytic disciplines to explore the unconscious dynamics that exist in every group, team or organisation. Learning more about these theories, and reflecting on the experience of them, can support leaders and managers to unlock great potential in their organisations, tackling issues through a whole new light.
Get In Touch
Emerging Leadership: cometh the moment, cometh the leader.
Popular literature and human dependence promote the idea of The Leader, someone who can be relied on to show us the way. As if The Leader is always a leader. Some individuals are able to manipulate this wish and convince others that they have some special quality which makes them a person to follow in all circumstances. However, the evidence of history is that successful leadership is always circumstantial, regardless of whether history judges the outcomes to be good or bad. Such circumstances are a combination of the social forces that originate outside the person and the unique capacities that emerge from within the person at the right time.
At this time in Australia, we have a pending referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. We have official ‘leaders’ seeking followership, The Prime Minister (Yes) and the Leader of the Opposition (No). Both the individuals occupying these roles are currently regarded as uninspiring, just playing politics, not really mobilising others to identify with the possibilities of change.
Formally they are regarded as ‘leaders’ but on this issue, they are just politicians. The historical moment, which neither of them can claim to have shaped, is searching for a person or group who/which can connect the historically determined circumstance to the lived experience of those who will decide Yes or No through their vote.
The vacuum of leadership on this issue is not surprising because neither formal ‘leader’ can point to any convincing personal appreciation of what is at stake. Nothing is emerging at the top level; it is all about fixed arguments, ‘righting historical wrongs’ versus ‘threats to the constitution that has served us so well’.
Navigating Ambiguity: The Essence of Emerging Leadership
The notion of ‘emerging leadership’ is that it is a dynamically contingent relationship between what capacity an individual or group can find within themselves and how this speaks to the challenges others experience about which path to follow. We don’t need a leader if the choice is clear; then we only need an administrator or manager who decides the way forward based on some established criterion; a way that is tried and true, efficient, technically feasible, politically correct, evidence-based etc.
The emergent leader actually embraces an ambivalent situation and can look inward to discern an aspect of their being that connects to the deliberation about possibilities; and on the basis of that reflection argues for this way rather than that way, regardless of the formal position they hold, whilst mindful of the values of those they seek to influence.
Emergent leadership can be an everyday occurrence, not necessarily one of national and historical importance.
Discovering Leadership Through Personal Experience
Some years ago, working as an organisational consultant, I was persuaded by an acquaintance to offer assistance to her sister’s small business. Having started a fashion design business from her parent’s garage, this young woman had, with the unpaid help of her husband, achieved enough sales to employ another sister with marketing expertise and then, following further business growth, was needing to hire the first employee from outside the family. She wanted help in conducting the selection process such that this critical decision would enhance her growing enterprise whilst not threatening its family values. She had never used a consultant before, was appropriately dubious about the cost, and asked me if I knew anything about small business. I replied in the negative since all my consulting had been with larger entities.
We negotiated a sliding scale contract that would limit her risk depending upon the value she determined I was providing. She was really trusting her sister’s recommendation that I would be worth the expenditure. And I was impressed by her practical common sense.
It took two meetings between the sisters and me before I emerged as a leader in this circumstance.
As I reflected on my experience with the two sisters, of what was being said and not said and how this made me feel, I suddenly could not believe that I had told the client and myself that I did not know much about small business. When my conscious mind relaxed enough, I recalled that I had actually grown up in a small business. My father and his brother had started a small business after WWII and run it for 40 years. My whole young life had been shaped by the vicissitudes of a small business but the ‘professional’, adult me had left that all behind. When I got back in touch with my early experience, including memories of all the financial precariousness that my parents had tried to shield us from, of interfamily dynamics, and the direct satisfaction that I saw my father gain from being valued by his customers, I was in a changed state of mind when talking to my small business client.
Navigating Complex Leadership Dynamics: Balancing Intuition and Expertise
I began listening and speaking from a different space. I became a quiet leader whose thoughts and suggestions were amplified by my intuitive understanding of the risks and excitements my client was trying to estimate and choose. She was a talented and ambitious designer, a start-up entrepreneur in a notoriously risky sector and she had young children. Whose needs would prevail? Could it be both/and?
When I undertook that assignment I was already a ‘senior’ in the world of leadership development but obviously still very humanly vulnerable to putting conscious ‘knowing’ ahead of ‘coming to know’ within a particular circumstance. The case revealed that my most relevant resources were in my lived experience rather than my formal knowledge. I had to ‘emerge’ as a leader in the particular circumstance so could I lead my client to articulate what she felt about bringing an outsider into her business; a business that was outgrowing the family.
My sudden remembering of a past I had ‘forgotten’ is what Freud meant by getting in touch with the unconscious. In the consultation I did not need to explore why I had repressed my early experience, it was enough to embrace the creative lead it gave me into the current circumstance. It gave me a voice that was missing up until that point. A voice that was sufficiently authentic for my client to take it seriously.
Cultivating Emerging Leadership: Unveiling Personal Experience for Future Possibilities
Leadership does not belong to a formal role; it finds a voice of its own.
So I now argue that a critical aspect of leadership development is a process of helping individuals to recover the resources that exist within their own experience. This is different from developing an administrator, manager or executive who is rightly expected to have requisite knowledge and skills for the job they are employed to do. Leadership is not a fixed position. The need for leadership emerges and it can be offered by those who have some insight into future possibilities; possibilities that can connect the known to the unknown. We cannot be trained to do that but we can be primed to do it, if we learn to reflect in an intentional way to recall, to recognise and to harvest our past experiences as a resource for the future.*
It is quite possible that neither the Prime Minister nor the Leader of the Opposition have the internal resources to inspire a future for the Indigenous Voice but that does not mean such leadership will not emerge. Leadership does not belong to a formal role; it finds a voice of its own.
*My colleagues at NIODA are offering a leadership development workshop to encourage just this, ‘Embracing your personal history for impactful leadership’, Learn more here.
PO Box 287, Collins Street West,
Melbourne 8007 Australia
+61 (0) 414 529 867
info@nioda.org.au
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Emerging Leadership: cometh the moment, cometh the leader.
Popular literature and human dependence promote the idea of The Leader, someone who can be relied on to show us the way. As if The Leader is always a leader. Some individuals are able to manipulate this wish and convince others that they have some special quality which makes them a person to follow in all circumstances. However, the evidence of history is that successful leadership is always circumstantial, regardless of whether history judges the outcomes to be good or bad. Such circumstances are a combination of the social forces that originate outside the person and the unique capacities that emerge from within the person at the right time.
At this time in Australia, we have a pending referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. We have official ‘leaders’ seeking followership, The Prime Minister (Yes) and the Leader of the Opposition (No). Both the individuals occupying these roles are currently regarded as uninspiring, just playing politics, not really mobilising others to identify with the possibilities of change.
Formally they are regarded as ‘leaders’ but on this issue, they are just politicians. The historical moment, which neither of them can claim to have shaped, is searching for a person or group who/which can connect the historically determined circumstance to the lived experience of those who will decide Yes or No through their vote.
The vacuum of leadership on this issue is not surprising because neither formal ‘leader’ can point to any convincing personal appreciation of what is at stake. Nothing is emerging at the top level; it is all about fixed arguments, ‘righting historical wrongs’ versus ‘threats to the constitution that has served us so well’.
Navigating Ambiguity: The Essence of Emerging Leadership
The notion of ‘emerging leadership’ is that it is a dynamically contingent relationship between what capacity an individual or group can find within themselves and how this speaks to the challenges others experience about which path to follow. We don’t need a leader if the choice is clear; then we only need an administrator or manager who decides the way forward based on some established criterion; a way that is tried and true, efficient, technically feasible, politically correct, evidence-based etc.
The emergent leader actually embraces an ambivalent situation and can look inward to discern an aspect of their being that connects to the deliberation about possibilities; and on the basis of that reflection argues for this way rather than that way, regardless of the formal position they hold, whilst mindful of the values of those they seek to influence.
Emergent leadership can be an everyday occurrence, not necessarily one of national and historical importance.
Discovering Leadership Through Personal Experience
Some years ago, working as an organisational consultant, I was persuaded by an acquaintance to offer assistance to her sister’s small business. Having started a fashion design business from her parent’s garage, this young woman had, with the unpaid help of her husband, achieved enough sales to employ another sister with marketing expertise and then, following further business growth, was needing to hire the first employee from outside the family. She wanted help in conducting the selection process such that this critical decision would enhance her growing enterprise whilst not threatening its family values. She had never used a consultant before, was appropriately dubious about the cost, and asked me if I knew anything about small business. I replied in the negative since all my consulting had been with larger entities.
We negotiated a sliding scale contract that would limit her risk depending upon the value she determined I was providing. She was really trusting her sister’s recommendation that I would be worth the expenditure. And I was impressed by her practical common sense.
It took two meetings between the sisters and me before I emerged as a leader in this circumstance.
As I reflected on my experience with the two sisters, of what was being said and not said and how this made me feel, I suddenly could not believe that I had told the client and myself that I did not know much about small business. When my conscious mind relaxed enough, I recalled that I had actually grown up in a small business. My father and his brother had started a small business after WWII and run it for 40 years. My whole young life had been shaped by the vicissitudes of a small business but the ‘professional’, adult me had left that all behind. When I got back in touch with my early experience, including memories of all the financial precariousness that my parents had tried to shield us from, of interfamily dynamics, and the direct satisfaction that I saw my father gain from being valued by his customers, I was in a changed state of mind when talking to my small business client.
Navigating Complex Leadership Dynamics: Balancing Intuition and Expertise
I began listening and speaking from a different space. I became a quiet leader whose thoughts and suggestions were amplified by my intuitive understanding of the risks and excitements my client was trying to estimate and choose. She was a talented and ambitious designer, a start-up entrepreneur in a notoriously risky sector and she had young children. Whose needs would prevail? Could it be both/and?
When I undertook that assignment I was already a ‘senior’ in the world of leadership development but obviously still very humanly vulnerable to putting conscious ‘knowing’ ahead of ‘coming to know’ within a particular circumstance. The case revealed that my most relevant resources were in my lived experience rather than my formal knowledge. I had to ‘emerge’ as a leader in the particular circumstance so could I lead my client to articulate what she felt about bringing an outsider into her business; a business that was outgrowing the family.
My sudden remembering of a past I had ‘forgotten’ is what Freud meant by getting in touch with the unconscious. In the consultation I did not need to explore why I had repressed my early experience, it was enough to embrace the creative lead it gave me into the current circumstance. It gave me a voice that was missing up until that point. A voice that was sufficiently authentic for my client to take it seriously.
Cultivating Emerging Leadership: Unveiling Personal Experience for Future Possibilities
Leadership does not belong to a formal role; it finds a voice of its own.
So I now argue that a critical aspect of leadership development is a process of helping individuals to recover the resources that exist within their own experience. This is different from developing an administrator, manager or executive who is rightly expected to have requisite knowledge and skills for the job they are employed to do. Leadership is not a fixed position. The need for leadership emerges and it can be offered by those who have some insight into future possibilities; possibilities that can connect the known to the unknown. We cannot be trained to do that but we can be primed to do it, if we learn to reflect in an intentional way to recall, to recognise and to harvest our past experiences as a resource for the future.*
It is quite possible that neither the Prime Minister nor the Leader of the Opposition have the internal resources to inspire a future for the Indigenous Voice but that does not mean such leadership will not emerge. Leadership does not belong to a formal role; it finds a voice of its own.
*My colleagues at NIODA are offering a leadership development workshop to encourage just this, ‘Embracing your personal history for impactful leadership’. Learn more here.