Transform Conflict: “Differ With”– Differentiation as an interpersonal, group and individual process

Nick OsborneDecember 3, 2019

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Matrix Leadership- Essentials for Professionals

Every team/group/organisation has an invisible matrix of interpersonal relationships - the health, depth, resilience and quality of the relationships, which make up this matrix, is massively important.

This 4-day in-person course will give you a set of practices to generate a ground of health in the relational matrix and develop individuals’ and teams’ ability to collaborate, work with differences, innovate and unleash their collective intelligence.

Matrix Leadership builds relationships based on: a foundation of trust, open communication, transparency, and accountability.

The additional practices you will gain are: the ability to give and receive feedback, engage with differences as resources and the means to distribute authority and leadership. These capacities liberate motivation, engagement, commitment, collaboration, innovation and collective intelligence which otherwise remain untapped. The intention is to support the health, effectiveness, responsiveness and evolution so needed in organisations today.

The Matrix Leadership Model

In the Matrix Leadership model, a group is seen as a system; a set of relationships/connections between the parts. To support leadership and authority distributing through the system, the connectivity and communication between the individuals (or teams) needs to be attended to and optimised. We re-train ourselves to listen and respond to the needs of the whole while differentiating to become more uniquely ourselves.

This is in the spirit of the perspective of inquiry and action or action inquiry and draws elegantly together first, second and third person perspectives (me, we, it) in a unique, impactful and special way. It will be of value particularly to consultants, coaches and professionals interested in transformation and supporting the evolution of development in individuals, groups and organisations.

Groups become conscious, interconnected, living systems that are:

Free from out-dated norms based in competition and separateness
Resilient and sustainable through times of chaos, growth and change
Highly creative, collaborative and emergent
Connected to a larger Source that serves each individual, our relationships and the Whole.

The Workshop: Matrix Essentials for Professionals, Consultants, Trainers and Facilitators

The 4-day intensive training introduces you to a set of practices that will equip you to form groups as a Matrix Leadership Network™. This course is led by Amina Knowlan, co-founder of the Matrix Leadership framework and author of the forthcoming book about it. In this course you will learn to:

Establish a matrix of person-to-person communication
Build a 'ground of health' in the matrix of relationships
Give and receive in-person feedback: both appreciative feedback and also where there are differences
Recognise and differentiate from habitual or limiting roles, perspectives and emotional fields
Learn to distribute such habitual/limiting roles/perspectives amongst the group
Develop awareness of a group/team as a whole system
Differ "with"– engage in the expression of differences, challenges and "rubs" with multiple pairs of people without need for resolution
Understand conflict as the process of differentiation trying to occur through one pair of individuals (or teams, groups, departments, companies, communities, states or nations)
Recognise polarisations, fragmentation, ally-seeking, scapegoating and as regressive versions of differentiation
Shift from assumptions of external, top-down authority and control to optimising the collective
Learn the Matrix Group Dialogue™process as an alternative to "conflict" that optimises collective intelligence & emergence

Who Should Attend

The Matrix Essentials™ can be applied in any group context, regardless of your role as leader, facilitator or member. This training context is appropriate for consultants, trainers, facilitators, managers, teachers and coaches and other professionals who work in a group context. It is highly experiential and relational.

This workshop is designed for experienced group facilitators, trainers, consultants, managers, teachers and coaches who work in contexts such as organizational development (both internal and external), HR, communications, management, mediation and conflict resolution; and for those who work with personal, community or leadership development. Graduates from the Essentials for Professionals course will have access to an ongoing professional network and learning community who share their applications and foster personal, professional and community development.

Your Facilitation Team

Amina Knowlan, Lead Facilitator

from Matrix Leadership Institute

Amina cofounded Matrix Leadership in 1990. She has been facilitating groups and trainings for over 30 years. She considers herself a social artist and works as a trainer, facilitator and consultant. She also offers team, executive and life coaching to individuals, partnerships and teams. She was a trainer for the Hakomi Institute of Body-Centred Psychotherapy for 15 years and an owner/practitioner in Wellspring, Partners in Health (a holistic medical clinic) for 15 years.

She is passionate about creating new models of leadership and group life in organizations and communities that move beyond hierarchical and mechanistic assumptions of separateness, to realize functional interconnection and support sustainable life on earth. Her recent organizational clients include small, medium and large corporate businesses; healthcare organizations; city governments; schools and non-profits. She also works internationally in partnership with the Institute for Coaching in St. Petersburg, Russia, and in Sydney, Australia with Veldhoen and Company.

In community contexts, she incorporates somatic, energetic and intuitive approaches as well as dance, movement, voice, art and practices of mindfulness into her work. Amina has two adult children and lives in the beautiful mountain foothills of Boulder, Colorado.

Nick Osborne, Assistant Facilitator

from Evolving Organisation

Nick Osborne is an entrepreneur in the business of shifting paradigms; co-founder of Conscious Collaboration, Evolving Organisation and Learning Edge, and Partner with HolacracyOne and Evolution at Work with whom he works as a Trainer, Consultant and Presenter.

With a wide range of experience over 30 years: in private, public and non-profit sectors; employed, freelance, entrepreneur, volunteer; with organisations including Shell, Learning and Skills Improvement Service and the Princes Trust; in the UK, Europe, North and South America. This experience combined with his fascination for and study of how people learn and work together provides Nick with an unusually wide and deep perspective on organisations, management and leadership.

Nick seeks to catalyse the transition to a way of thinking and living which addresses, rather than contributes to, today’s challenges. His work upgrades the way we learn, collaborate and run our organisations to enable better fit for the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous conditions of the 21st century. He sees this as essential for a sustainable human presence on Earth and for evolving templates for healthy human cultures.

Venue

The beautiful Islington Ecology Centre, 191 Drayton Park, London, N5 1PH, nestled in the natural surroundings of Gillespie Park. Gillespie Park, winner of the 'London Conservation Area of the Year' award in London in Bloom 2015, is Islington’s largest nature reserve at 2.8 hectares of ponds, woodland and meadow areas; home to a wealth of wildlife, including 244 species of plants, 94 species of birds and 24 types of butterflies. Lunch is not included, but there are places around to buy food or you can bring food to share.

Module 1	Day 1	-
Unit 1	Introduction to Matrix Leadership
Unit 2	Re-Sourcing: Individual – Interpersonal – Group as a Whole – Transpersonal. Accessing Multiple Intelligences
Unit 3	Formation of Group as Matrix Leadership Network—or—living system
Unit 4	Individual Intentions & Goals
Unit 5	Consciousness of Connection: Shift from I – You (Subject – Object; “Island of Me”) to “We” (Interconnected parts of a Whole)
Unit 6	Awareness of Team Formation
Module 2	Day 2	-
Unit 1	Re-Sourcing
Unit 2	Redefine Feedback Culture: Appreciative Feedback & Asking for Feedback
Unit 3	Identify habitual group roles & perspectives
Unit 4	Transform Conflict: “Differ With”– Differentiation as an interpersonal, group and individual process
Unit 5	Matrix Practice Groups
Module 3	Day 3	-
Unit 1	Re-Sourcing
Unit 2	Differentiating from Habitual or Limiting Group Roles, Perspectives and Fields
Unit 3	Distributing Group Roles, Perspectives & Fields
Unit 4	Attention to Group / Systems level – fields and territories
Unit 5	Matrix Group Dialogue Process™–Tracking Emergent Phenomena
Unit 6	Redefine Feedback Culture: Differentiating Feedback
Unit 7	Matrix Practice Groups
Module 4	Day 4	-
Unit 1	Re-Sourcing
Unit 2	Stage of Transformation–Differentiation from “Island of me,” and from norms of working with separate individuals
Unit 3	Applications & Next Steps
Unit 5	Matrix Practice Groups