ABSTRACT
Group relations conferences have always been profound experiences for members, and for staff, which clearly affect how participants return to their organizations and begin to behave in new ways in the workplace. The development began in 1968 when we launched the 'Behaviour in the Working Environment' conference, an extended six-month, non-residential course designed to give participants time to become familiar with previously unfamiliar ideas and to apply them while in continuing contact with staff and fellow members. The focus of work is on the client's description of their relatedness to their working organization drawn from their experience of their day to day working relations and the meaning they attach to them. A role in our thinking is a mental regulating principle, based on a person's lived experience of the complex interaction of feelings, ideas, and motivations, aroused in working to the aim of a system, integrated consciously and unconsciously and expressed in purposive behaviour.
