International Professional
Development Programme
Leading Meaningful Change
A programme combining perspectives from
psychodynamic inquiry, organisation theory & development,
and systems thinking
for
consultants, trainers, managers
and
others active in the management of change
Phase one: January 17-25, 2005
Phase
two: May 30 till June 7, 2005
Phase three:
November 17-25, 2005
The International Professional Development
Programme is founded on five core values. These are:
The purpose of the programme is to
develop a proficiency in understanding and working with psychodynamic processes
taking place when people are engaged in meaningful issues and activities that
affect their lives at work, at home, and in society. The programme is
organised for persons actively involved in handling meaningful change, as
consultants, managers or trainers and who want to optimise organisational
growth and personal development, while creating conditions for the development
of organisations and the communities in which they operate.
The International Professional Development
Programme is organised annually, and consists of three phases delivered over a
period of nine months. The faculty includes professionals trained in clinical
psychology, and specialists in organisation development and theory.
The objectives and
design of the programme are grounded in our explicit belief, based on many
years of active experience, that organisations are not isolated entities but
that they derive their value and meaning from their contributions to the wider
society.
In addition, high
performance organisations excel on a range of different aspects including
economical, technological, communal, socio-political and spiritual dimensions.
The first two are often regarded as the only dimensions that create success or
failure. The other three need some explication. The communal dimension
expresses the kind of community the organisation wants to be - how it wants its
employees to engage and interact with one another. The socio-political
dimension specifies the kind of a citizen the organisation wants to be beyond
satisfying the legitimate expectations of its stakeholders and beyond minimal
compliance with the law. It is the degree to which the organisation
wants to relate to other organisations, private and public, that together
constitutes society. And finally, the spiritual or transcendental dimension
expresses what the organisation wants to mean at a deeper level to those who
work in and do business with it.
Developing
professional consultants and managers to co-create high performance
organisations takes more than training in a set of techniques to increase the
commercial success or improve human relations. Genuine professional development
calls for an integrated approach based on a recognition of the
multi-dimensionality of organisational life and life itself. A professional
consultant or manager therefore, is someone who is educated in being
able to act and live with the consequences of his/her interventions in all five
of the above dimensions.
Professional
development can be seen as consisting of three layers.
·
Mastering a body of knowledge and techniques pertinent to the work of a
professional.
·
The integration of this body of knowledge and techniques in the
personality of the professional.
·
Achieving social responsibility in the professional by linking these two
layers of competence to the broader societal context.
To provide the greatest opportunities for
learning and work in changing conditions, professional development must rely on
different perspectives: psychodynamic inquiry, organisational theory and development, and systems thinking.
These perspectives provide
rich ways to gain an understanding of the normal dynamic processes
people cope with when exposed to uncertainty, ambiguous information and high
expectations, and are most valuable for designing and re-designing work- and
large social systems.
The International Programme is designed
and staffed to develop a proficiency in understanding and working with
psychodynamic processes. These processes emerge when people engage themselves
in meaningful activities that affect their lives at work, at home, and in
society. Change in an organisation or society interferes with the existing
dynamic processes and creates new ones. Working in and with organisations
requires a good enough understanding of these processes to be able to make
conscious choices.
The processes and dynamics are explored at
three different but overlapping levels:
Change at each level includes:
The programme is based on a socio-technical
systems framework for looking at organisations as purposeful entities and on a
conviction that the understanding derived from this framework must be deployed
together with a psychodynamic perspective where structure and unconscious
function overlap.
Since the person is the greatest asset in this kind of work, ample
attention and coaching is provided throughout the programme. Joint
appraisals between participants and staff are scheduled at regular
intervals to monitor professional and personal development. Participants who
meet, at the end of the programme, the behavioural criteria are certified
as proficient in dealing with psychodynamic processes within a combined
approach.
The programme consists of three phases, which
are delivered over a period of nine months.
Phase one: Basic experiences in small and large groups.
Phase one consists
of a nine-day reflective experience of being a member of a Learning Group
and a Learning Community. The learning groups and community meetings
bring the members together to share, compare and find out about individual
experiences and aspirations, whilst studying their own processes of struggling
to engage themselves in meaningful activities.
Besides these
self-structuring learning groups and community meetings members have the
opportunity to practice and enrich their competences in coaching other members
with respect to their roles and contributions to the programme itself. For this
purpose small coaching groups are formed.
Lecture-discussions on relevant
topics are held to assist members in deepening their understanding of their
experiences and the psychodynamic processes while working on the task.
In the course of
phase one a first round of joint appraisals is organised, in which each
participant has the opportunity to review his/her professional development with
a staff member and some participants of one’s own choice.
The joint appraisals may lead to personal
recommendations and reading assignments on specific topics. These study
assignments prepare the membership to take an active role around a given
theme in the second phase.
Phase two: Theory
and practice
“It is good to
have a theory” as long as we don’t become blind servants of that theory. We
need to be able to learn from our clients and practices, and even engage in
theory building.
One critical
factor in the quality of professional development is the way in which theory
becomes linked to practice, and practice to theory, and eventually to theory
building. It not only requires space and attention to explore, but also
personal work to integrate experiences from practice and theory.
The practice
is brought into the second phase in three different ways:
·
The roles participants are asked to take in presenting specific
concepts pertinent to their work, and in being a consultant to their
colleagues for at least one day.
·
The study of recorded episodes of phase one to illustrate
concepts and principles, and to explore our understanding of shared
experiences.
·
The discussion of processes within an ongoing project of the
participant's work situation and the learning processes itself in the
Here-and-Now.
Basic theoretical
constructs, along with principles for enriching our understanding and ways of
handling the dynamics at the group and the organisational level, are presented
by the permanent or invited faculty members. These theoretical domains include:
·
The relevance of a psychodynamic perspective for looking at our
work with client systems, and to respect their individuality (concepts like
boundaries, holding and containing, transference, projective identification and
unconscious processes).
·
Gaining an understanding of basic normal processes in relation to
different tasks and settings (like decision making, strategic management and
leading organisational change under conditions of uncertainty).
·
Acquiring a competence in problem definition, making interventions,
developing action-research projects, and in setting up appropriate
strategies and structures to facilitate change (episodic, transitional and
continuous) and the working through of its consequences.
·
Designing effective innovative-, work-, and project-teams; and high
involvement organisations.
Methods and
techniques such as socio-technical systems design, soft systems methodology and
complexity theory thinking are reviewed and introduced.
Participants, either individually or in
pairs, will be asked to present and to discuss with the membership their special
study assignments on a topic relevant to their professional development.
Phase three: The
development of theory and practice in one’s own work
The focus of phase
three is on the transition from professional development in the programme to
the ongoing development in one's practice.
Five elements
characterise this phase:
·
Discussions of key-concepts and issues proper
to the consulting practice.
·
Action-Learning-Researching (ALR), which is a
specific method to facilitate learning from peers about one's own way of
constructing problems, of choosing action and research methods and one's
underlying personal values.
·
Learning Groups, which are formed with a
special focus on how the acquired learning and experiences are affecting the
members and their practices.
·
Review sessions by assigned
members on how the work was carried out.
·
Another joint appraisal between participants and staff to assess
each participant on the following behavioural dimensions:
1.
Capacity to relate, be interested in, and learn from the client.
2.
Self-reflection and understanding of oneself as part of a social system.
3.
Inquiry or the courage and interest to explore the context, history and
aspirations of client-systems, and to test reality.
4.
A capacity to work with an approach that combines a psychodynamic, an
organisational theory & development and a systems thinking perspective.
Accreditation is based on this joint
appraisal. Each participant will be informed about the extent to which he or
she meets these criteria for accreditation, and what could be done to continue
the professional development process. Co-training and intervention
opportunities with qualified professionals are made available on an optional
basis.
The
International Professional Development Programme: Leading Meaningful Change is
organised by the Professional Development Institute, Belgium, together with
Professional Development International, The Netherlands.
The core staff
Leopold S.
Vansina, Ph.D. is professor emeritus at the Catholic University of Leuven, and
Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. He now heads the Professional Development Institute
from which he continues his consulting and research activities with a focus on
the professional development of organisation consultants and persons in
leadership positions. His experiences in group dynamics (N.T.L. Institute,
U.S.A. 1959-72, and the Tavistock Institute, UK) and his postgraduate training
in psychoanalysis became an integrated part of his extensive consulting
practice in national and international organisations all over the world. He is
a member of the International Association of Psychology, The Academy of
Management, the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of
Organisations, and the Tavistock Institute Association.
Sandra Schruijer, Ph.D., is professor of Organisational
Psychology at the University of Tilburg, the Netherlands. She received her
Ph.D. in psychology from the same university. Her research interests include
multiparty collaboration, group diversity and intergroup relations. She teaches
at Tias Business School, Tilburg, the Netherlands and at different Business
Schools in Europe. Sandra Schruijer heads Professional Development
International.
Marie-Jeanne
Vansina-Cobbaert, Ph.D. in Psychology from the Catholic University of
Leuven, Belgium. She studied Clinical Psychology at Yale University, U.S.A. and
was trained in group dynamics by E.I.T. She is a full member of the Belgian
Psychoanalytic Society and the International Psychoanalytic Association.
Marie-Jeanne terminated her work as a psychoanalyst at the University Clinic,
but continues her practice as a group consultant, group psychotherapist and
psychoanalyst at the Professional Development Institute. Her publications are
mostly in the field of group psychotherapy, the development of thinking about
such techniques in group work and individual psychoanalysis.
Gilles Amado, Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, D.E.A. in
Management, I.T.P. Harvard, is professor of Organisational Psychology, Hautes
Etudes Commerciales, Jouy-en-Josas, France. He is a founding member of the
International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organisations and the
Centre International de Recherche, Formation et Intervention
Psychosociologiques, a member of the Société Française de Psychothérapie
Psychoanalytique de Groupe and a member of the Professional Development
Institute.
Derek Raffaelli, is a free-lance organisational consultant and
psychoanalytical psychotherapist. He also works independently with the Scottish
Institute for Human Relations and the Bayswater Institute, London. He is
involved with both public and private organisations sectors focussing on the
change process on the individual, group and organisational level. Recent work
includes developing cross-cultural competence within Pacificorp, USA, and
mentoring a group of newly appointed consultant doctors.
Tharsi Taillieu, Ph.D. from Carnegie-Mellon University,
U.S.A., is professor at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, where he
teaches Organisational Behaviour. He is actively engaged in the executive
programmes at the Tias Business School, Tilburg, the Netherlands. Tharsi is a
member of the Professional Development Institute.
And other professionals to be invited.
Participants have a university degree or equivalent
knowledge acquired through experience. Participants are sufficiently fluent in
English. Participants are already working with groups or are active in the
domain of organisational consulting, training or the management of change.
Admission
Interested persons will be asked to fill out a
questionnaire on their educational background, work experiences and
professional interests. Upon admission, participants are asked to pay the
enrolment fee of € 7.500. Persons registering before November 1, 2004 through payment will receive a discount of
10%. The staff is sponsoring two bursaries for individuals who cannot finance
the enrolment fee, but have demonstrated interests and competence to become
more professional in this domain of work.
Confirmed
registrants who cancel within 30 days of the start of the programme are subject
to a service charge of € 2.000.
Place
The programme will be held at the
Ferme Libert, Bévercé, Malmedy, Belgium (+32 80 33 02 47). Hotel costs (full
board) are approximately € 95 per day to be paid to the hotel upon departure.
Phase
one: January 17-25, 2005
Phase
two: May 30 till June 7, 2005
Phase
three: November 17-25, 2005
Further information about the programme can be
obtained from either:
the Professional Development Institute,
Ltd.
161 Oude Baan, B-3360 Korbeek-Lo, Belgium
phone: + 32 16 46 03 94
fax: + 32 16 46 39 50
e-mail: leopold.vansina@skynet.be
or
Professional Development International
Administrative Office IPDP
Volkerak 8a, 5032 TN Tilburg, the Netherlands
phone: + 31 13 46 77 505
e-mail: schruijer@yahoo.com