Peer Learning
Consultant Peer Learning Networks
Peer Learning at Group Relations Australia (GRA) provides structured, professionally held spaces for consultants to reflect on their practice, their roles, and the systems they work within. Grounded in group relations and systems-psychodynamic thinking, learning takes place through experience, dialogue, and collective inquiry, rather than instruction or supervision.
Peer Learning supports consultants to think deeply about their work, particularly where complexity, uncertainty, authority, and relational dynamics are present.
GRA offers two Peer Learning Networks, designed to support consultants at different stages of professional development:
- Emerging Consultants Peer Learning Network (eCPLN)
- Consultants Peer Learning Network (CPLN)
Both networks share a common ethos and discipline, while responding to distinct developmental tasks and learning needs.
Emerging Consultants Peer Learning Network (eCPLN)
The Emerging Consultants Peer Learning Network (eCPLN) is designed for practitioners who are in the early stages of their consulting journey or transitioning into consulting roles.
This network supports participants who are:
- New to consulting or newly establishing themselves as consultants
- Developing their consulting identity, confidence, and professional authority
- Navigating early client relationships, boundaries, and role clarity
- Seeking a reflective peer space with others facing similar developmental questions
The eCPLN provides a contained and supportive learning environment in which emerging consultants can think about their experiences, explore challenges, and build reflective capacity alongside peers.
Consultants Peer Learning Network (CPLN)
The Consultants Peer Learning Network (CPLN) is designed for established consultants with ongoing consulting practice and experience working with organisational and system complexity.
This network supports participants who are:
- Actively consulting and working with live organisational systems
- Engaging with higher levels of complexity, authority, and leadership dynamics
- Interested in deepening their capacity to read and intervene in systems
- Seeking peer challenge, mutual learning, and reflective depth
The CPLN offers a more complex learning field, where participants bring current consulting work and engage with advanced group and system dynamics in a professionally held peer setting.
About Participation
Participation in either the eCPLN or CPLN is guided by developmental readiness rather than seniority alone. Placement is informed by experience, current consulting practice, and learning needs.
Where there is uncertainty about the most appropriate network, a conversation with the convenor supports thoughtful placement and protects the integrity of each learning space.
The convenors would welcome contact from anyone interested in hearing more. For CPLN email Joanne Fitzgerald at joanne@designedinterventions.com.au. For eCPLN email Andrea Foot, Andrea.Foot@leaflogic.biz.
Why Peer Learning?
Peer Learning Networks at GRA offer consultants:
- A reflective space outside of client systems
- Opportunities to think with others who understand consulting work
- Learning through experience rather than advice or problem-solving
- Professional containment in the face of complexity, ambiguity, and anxiety
These networks are not training programmes or supervision groups. They are peer-based learning spaces, held within the discipline of group relations.
About the Convenors
In 2026, the convenors – Joanne Fitzgerald and Rob Ryan for CPLN, and Andrea Foot and Michael Hauger for eCPLN– and continuing members of the 2025 group, hope to welcome new members into this group. Joanne is a GRA member, Past President and the representative who will work as the CPLN convenor for the purpose of establishing and containing this work, creating the conditions for the group to happen. Rob is also a GRA member of long standing, a Regional ISPSO Leader and works with Joanne as a co-convenor.
Andrea Foot is a GRA member, and past GRA Directorate and the representative who will work as the eCPLN convenor for the purpose of establishing and containing this work, creating the conditions for the group to happen. Michael is also a GRA member, and consultant, and works with Joanne as a co-convenor.
Methodology
The membership of the group (up to 10 of us in total) would be consistent for the semester of sessions to which each member would commit. Group meetings occur three-weekly for two (2) hours as a ‘closed group’, allowing a higher degree of trust, confidentiality and deeper learning to be established.
The sessions for 2026 are framed as:
Semester One:
- An Exploratory session to introduce more deeply the group and its methodology. This is an information and exploration meeting open to all, and for which no commitment is needed.
- Six working sessions in which various learning methodologies are employed. A commitment to all 6 sessions (and the review session) for this group and semester is expected.
- One group meeting to Review and Reflect on the first semester. A commitment to semester 2 would be decided after this meeting.
Semester Two:
- An Exploratory session (if new members are to be invited) to introduce more deeply the group and its methodology. This is an information and exploration meeting open to all, and for which no commitment is needed.
- Six working sessions in which various learning methodologies are employed. A commitment to all 6 sessions (and the review sessions) for the group this semester is expected.
- One group meeting to Review and Reflect on the second semester.
Working Sessions
The framework envisaged for each of the three-weekly working sessions is:
- Check in – for each and all members
- The emergence of a member to take the role of observer of the group’s dynamics #
- The emergence of a presenter for the evening’s work
- Establishment of the presenter’s chosen approach to exploration and learning for the evening. *
- Reflection of the individual and group experience and closure.
# For each working session one member – who is not then the ‘presenter’ – will take up a role to attend to the functioning of the group itself as it works on the presenter’s material. They may also be an active member in the evening’s discussions, sharing from their unique observational role.
* There are several exploration methodologies to assist the learning of this group – the consulting skills model; ‘consulting clinics’; Balint methodology; plus one and observer methods; presentation and discussion – to name just a few. At each session the identified ‘presenter’ can deeply explore a current consulting challenge in their chosen methodology for the session.
In this way the group of experienced consultants is being supported to be self-organising in each of the working sessions where the work in focus will emerge in the initial discussion.
Practicalities
All group sessions will be conducted on Zoom and the times stated are Melbourne, Australia, times.
Participants
The convenors are interested in receiving responses to this invitation from experienced members and associates of GRA and other non-GRA members who describe themselves and their work as:
- Working in the role as consultant to client organisations or within an organisation
- Working with system psychodynamics wherever enabled
2026 Price
CPLN $300 members and $400 non-members per series
eCPLN $200 members and $300 non-members per series
2026 Dates
CPLN – Online Autumn Series – Tuesday Evenings
Semester One
Exploratory session: 10th February 2026 6.00pm – 7.30pm Melbourne time
Six working sessions utilising various learning methodologies: 6.00 – 8.00pm
17th Feb. 10th March. 31st March. 21st April. 12th May. 2nd June.
The Review & Reflection meeting to review and reflect on the first semester.
6.00 – 7.30pm on 16th June
Semester Two
Exploratory session: 28th July 2026 6.00pm – 7.30pm AET
Six working sessions utilising various learning methodologies: 6.00 – 8.00pm
4th August. 25th August. 15th Sept. 6th October. 27th October. 17th Nov.
The Review & Reflection meeting for the second semester.
6.00 – 7.30pm on 8th December.
For CPLN contact Joanne Fitzgerald at joanne@designedinterventions.com.au.
eCPLN – Online Autumn Series – Tuesday evenings
Semester One
Exploratory session: Wednesday 4th February 2026, 6.00pm – 7.30pm Melbourne time
Six working sessions utilising various learning methodologies: 6.00 – 8.00pm
24th Feb, 17th March, 14th April, 28th April, 19th May and 9th June.
The Review & Reflection meeting to review and reflect on the first semester.
6.00 – 7.30pm on 23rd June
Semester Two
Exploratory session: 21st July 2026, 6.00pm – 7.30pm AET
Six working sessions utilising various learning methodologies: 6.00 – 8.00pm
11th August, 1st Sept, 22nd Sept, 13th October, 3rd Nov, 24th Nov.
The Review & Reflection meeting for the second semester
6.00 – 7.30pm on 8th December.
The convenors would welcome contact from anyone interested in hearing more about eCPLN with a view to becoming a new member.
For eCPLN contact Andrea Foot Andrea.Foot@leaflogic.biz.
The GRA Consulting Peer Learning Network (CPLN), has provided me with a rare and valuable space to meet with peers who share interest in Group Relations thinking and who work to make use of Group Relations in their working roles. Being a part of this group, as it has worked together over the past few semesters, has helped me to continue to develop as a consultant through the generous and open connection created by this group of peers. We have been open to working with whatever emerges from the group in the moment and I always come away with new ideas to think about. The group has created a sense of support that exists both in the individual meetings and beyond to include members who are able to attend and who were not able to. I especially welcome a sense of playfulness that has let us co-create/curate methods of enquiry to support the cases presented by members. From a member of the CPLN.
