If you’ve been paying attention to your emails from AKRI or looking at the AKRI calendar on the website, you’ve noticed that we’re offering a Whole Systems Consulting weekend workshop this November. It’s actually our fourth Whole Systems Consulting event, and the second weekend workshop led by René Molenkamp and Mark Kiel. These events have been remarkably successful and we believe that they reflect a demand in the GR community for additional training events focused on application. I’d like to briefly describe the backstory and the “why” behind these events, as well as some reasons I think they’re quite special.
There’s always been widespread awareness of the difference between Group Relations Conference (GRC) consulting and professional roles that involve consulting. The AKRI membership has its share of the latter—whether full-time OD practitioners, or those whose professional roles involve consulting to the realities of their system (e.g., managerial, clinical, administrative, pastoral, or leadership roles). But while AKRI offered formal training to become a GRC consultant, it offered nothing formal to develop the applied consulting skills in the world.
