3 – 6 SEPTEMBER 2026 | ONLINE GROUP RELATIONS CONFERENCE
Many of us find ourselves working in territory our familiar maps no longer describe. Polarisation intensifies across every scale: globally through wars and conflicts, within nations where political divisions deepen, in organisations where teams fracture along competing visions, and in personal spheres where conversations about politics, freedom and control, climate, or technology strain relationships. Technologies accelerate beyond our capacity to absorb them—from AI and robotics that promise transformation to deep fakes and social media that make it harder to discern what is real. The speed of societal change means each generation has grown up with fundamentally different perspectives, creating fractures between people now trying to work together.
In our organisations and in our personal lives, these forces are experienced as immediate disruptions—restructures that reshape roles overnight, remote work that shifts how authority operates, and competing demands that pull us in different directions. We find ourselves between stages: no longer where we were, not yet where we might be going, and still required to work, lead, decide, and collaborate. Can we work from uncertainty rather than fight it? Where do we find our authority when structures keep shifting? How do we lead when we cannot predict what comes next? How do we stay engaged with complexity without reaching for false certainty simply to feel stable?
Wilfred Bion wrote that groups often avoid the work they have gathered to do, not because of resistance or lack of motivation, but because the work itself creates anxiety. The edge of learning lies in that uncomfortable place between knowing and not knowing, between holding on and letting go—a threshold that may be difficult, but where real learning can happen.
Why do decisions get made that nobody actually agreed to? Why is culture so hard to change even when everyone says they want to? Why are some voices heard more than others?
This Group Relations Conference puts participants in direct contact with these and other questions through lived experience. Participants and staff form a temporary organisation in which they study what happens among them: how authority is taken up or avoided, how roles are assumed, and how patterns of inclusion and exclusion emerge.
The conference takes place online over four days, with the virtual setting itself becoming available for study as part of the work.
Alongside the conference, two additional learning components extend the learning: a pre-conference introducing some conceptual foundations of Group Relations, and a post-conference designed to consolidate learning and deepen practice.
We invite you to join us in this exploration.
We look forward to working with you,
Marco Valerio, Director
Leila Djemal, Associate Director
About the Conference
Group Relations Conferences do not follow a traditional conference format. There are no presentations, panels, or keynote addresses. Instead, participants and staff, from a wide range of professions, backgrounds, and cultures, together form a temporary learning organisation. The topics and issues that arise are studied as they unfold in real time. The participants’ lived experience becomes the material for learning.
Organisations operate not only according to their stated purposes, but under the influence of group and systemic processes that are both visible and hidden, rational and irrational. These processes shape behaviour and decision-making in ways that are often poorly understood, even by those most affected by them. A Group Relations Conference creates a temporary organisation specifically to study these processes through direct experience.
The learning is modelled after the working conferences developed at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, London. The conference provides frameworks for making sense of experience, but the content arises from what actually happens between people, from the choices made, the roles taken up and the dynamics that develop.
The conference offers learning on two levels. Participants can develop a deeper understanding of how groups function. For example, how authority gets taken up or avoided, how boundaries get negotiated or challenged, how groups develop a life of their own, and how individuals can find themselves drawn into roles they did not consciously choose.
At the same time, participants can observe their own tendencies and behaviours in real time, becoming more aware of how they take up leadership or followership, how they respond to authority, what roles they gravitate towards or resist.
The conference provides opportunities to study these dynamics as they play out in shifting and uncertain conditions; to encounter both the visible and less visible processes that operate in groups of different sizes and structures, and to discover the unspoken feelings and assumptions that are routinely set aside in everyday working life under the pressure to fulfill formal working tasks. It also creates a space to work directly with competition, collaboration, conflict and connectedness.
As a temporary organisation, the conference functions as a microcosm of the wider world. The dynamics that arise often mirror patterns from participants’ organisations, teams, communities, and personal lives. The conference offers an opportunity to examine what emerges and consider its implications beyond the conference itself.
The conference is based on experiential learning. Participants are invited to learn by doing – by being part of groups, examining what happens in them, and reflecting on these experiences.
Learning emerges through experiencing and reflecting on what happens around us and within us: longing and competition, belonging and exclusion, confusion and clarity. Some of this belongs to what is happening in the room; some carries the weight of personal and collective history. The conference provides space to examine both dimensions, allowing them to be explored and thought about rather than set aside too quickly in an effort to get on with the formal task.
In this conference, the online medium itself becomes part of the learning. What happens to authority when people are present but not physically together? How do groups form across distance? What dynamics surface online that would not appear in-person? Most organisational work now takes place partly or wholly in virtual environments, making these live questions for anyone working, leading or consulting in contemporary organisations.
This conference is for anyone who wants to understand more about how groups function, and to develop greater capacity to lead, contribute, and navigate within them.
Participants come from a wide range of fields: leaders, managers, entrepreneurs, consultants, HR professionals, coaches, facilitators, clinicians, educators, researchers, activists, public sector and non-profit professionals, students, and many others.
The experiential nature of Group Relations Conferences makes them suited to anyone, regardless of their level of experience. Curiosity and a genuine desire to learn are the only requirements.
If you have attended a Group Relations Conference before, returning offers opportunities to deepen your systemic understanding and experiment with new ways of engaging or taking up your role. Each conference is different, shaped by who is present and what emerges between them.
A LEARNING PATHWAY
Pre and Post Conference Learning
The four-day conference sits within a broader learning pathway. Two additional components are available: a pre-conference component offering an introduction to the conceptual foundations of group relations work, and a post-conference component consolidating the learning and exploring small study group dynamics and consultation in greater
Together, the three components complement one another and can be taken either as an integrated pathway or individually, as stand-alone offerings. Whether you are new to this work or an experienced practitioner, and whether you are seeking conceptual grounding or practical consolidation, the programme offers multiple entry points and forms of learning. depth.
Staff
Directorate
Marco Valerio Conference Director
Marco Valerio is Lecturer, Researcher, and Leadership Consultant. He brings a multidisciplinary approach to his work, grounded in a deep interest in the body–mind connection and systems psychodynamics. He has contributed in various roles in both online and in-person Group Relations Conferences across Europe, USA, and Australia, and he is a board member of Il Nodo Group Italy. He is passionate about the relationship between embodiment and the unconscious, and about how authority, leadership, and role impact groups and organisations.
Leila Djemal Associate Director
Leila Djemal is an Organization Development Consultant and Executive Coach. She is Founder and past Co-Director of Touch OFEK Professional Development Courses, where she currently teaches. She has directed Group Relations Conferences and served on numerous staff teams across Europe, the UK, and the USA. She has lived and worked in London, Bangkok, New York, and Tel Aviv. Earlier in her career, she held senior positions in advertising and marketing. Leila is an Associate of the A.K. Rice Institute (USA), a member of OPUS (London), a former Board Member of OFEK (Israel), and a Board Member of PCCA (Germany).
EJ Choi Administrator
EJ Choi is an organisational development practitioner, leadership coach and facilitator whose work sits at the intersection of systems psychodynamics, group relations and human transformation. She brings to the Administrator role a grounded understanding of what it means to hold the boundaries in the spaces we inhabit in the unknown, attending to both the structural and the living dimensions of conference life. EJ works with the belief that what happens in groups is never incidental. Her practice and experience span leadership development, facilitation and experiential learning across cultures and contexts. She holds this role with care, rigour and a genuine commitment to the conditions that make learning at the edge possible.
Bruce McFee Administrator
Bruce McFee developed a keen interest in Group Relations after attending his first GRC in 2015. Since then, he has continued to explore the field, attending in-person and virtual GRCs. He is particularly interested in how boundaries and authority play out in the virtual space and its implications on how we work and connect.
Consultants
Brigid O’Brien Consultant-In-Training
Brigid O’Brien is Chair and Director of Communications at Group Relations Australia. She recently completed a Masters (Organisation Dynamics) with NIODA, and her interest in group relations has been deepened through attendance at two group relations conferences: a NIODA conference and the Leicester Conference with The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. Brigid is also the Tech Advisory Service Line Director (APAC) at Thoughtworks, where she partners with senior leadership
teams to modernise how organisations operate. Her systems psychodynamic
approach informs the way she integrates the human and technological dimensions of organisational transformation.
Leslie Brissett Consultant
Leslie Brissett is an Advisory Board Member, Eco-Leadership Institute. Board Secretary to the International Psychoanalytical Association. Group Relations Programme Director (2018-2023), Company Secretary and Principal Consultant Researcher (2013- 2023), Operations Manager (2012-2013) at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, London. Director of 7 Leicester Conferences, directed the first Tavistock Conferences in China and the Caribbean. Member of UK Judiciary. Board Member, PCCA.
Wojtek Materka Consultant
Wojtek Materka is an Adjunct Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD, where he directs experiential leadership programmes grounded in systems psychodynamics. He teaches in executive education and the MBA, and works with leaders and teams on how they construct meaning in their organisations. He is particularly interested in how individuals and groups take up authority and sustain thought and creativity amidst uncertainty. He holds a PhD and an MBA, has lived in six countries, and carries a long-standing curiosity about the unconscious life of groups. When not teaching he paints, photographs, and rides adventure motorbikes. Polish-Australian.
About
Group Relations Australia
Group Relations Australia (GRA) is a professional association dedicated to advancing the understanding and practice of group relations, systems psychodynamics, and organisational dynamics across Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. GRA holds a variety of activities including Group Relations Conferences, experiential learning programmes, professional development workshops and seminars. For more information visit www.grouprelations.org.au or contact administrator@grouprelations.org.au
Registration
Fees and Options
All fees are in Australian dollars (AUD).
Bundle Options (Conference + Learning Components)
Early Bird Price (until 5 July 2026):
Pre-Conference + Conference + Post-Conference Bundle: $1,580 AUD
Standard Price (from 6 July 2026):
Pre-Conference + Conference + Post-Conference Bundle: $1,760 AUD
Group Discount:
$100 AUD per person for 3 or more registrations from the same organisation (bundle registrations only).
Conference Only
Early Bird Price (until 5 July 2026):
GRA Member: $660 AUD
Regular: $780 AUD
Standard Price (from 6 July 2026):
GRA Member: $790 AUD
Regular: $910 AUD
Reduced Fee:
We are committed to making this conference accessible. If you have limited resources and would benefit from fee support, please contact us at conference@grouprelations.org.au to discuss options.
Learning Components Only
Pre-Conference Component only: $550 AUD
Post-Conference Component only: $620 AUD
Pre + Post Components Bundle: $1,050 AUD
What’s Included
Conference registration includes full participation in the conference. Bundle registrations include all selected components of the learning pathway.
Registration Process REGISTER NOW
Last date for registration:
-
- For the Pre-Conference Component: Friday 21 August 2026
- For the Conference: Wednesday 26 August 2026
- For the Post-Conference Component: Friday 2 October 2026
Registration will take effect once payment has been made
Cancellation Policy
Cancellations made more than four weeks before the start date of the first component booked will receive a full refund minus a 7% administrative fee to cover processing costs.
Cancellations made between two and four weeks before the start date will receive a 50% refund.
No refund is available for cancellations made less than two weeks before the start date.
Registrations may be transferred to another participant at no additional cost, provided you notify us a week before the start date.
If you have any questions about registration or would like to have a conversation about your participation before you register, please contact us at conference@grouprelations.org.au.
GROUP RELATIONS
AUSTRALIA INC
PO Box 529,
Yarra Glen Victoria 3775 Australia
