This experiential workshop offers anyone who aspires to lead a team to become an effective working group the opportunity to engage in intensive personal and professional development over a 4-day period.
Participants meet as a group led by Craig Whisker to explore the particular purposes and goals that they identify and come to the workshop to achieve. This process involves self-presentation, interaction, teaching, coaching, supervised practice, making assessments, creating effective interventions, reviewing transcriptions of previous sessions, and involvement in each other’s learning. No previous team leadership experience is necessary
Anyone who aspires to be a group leader of groups of people for any purpose, whether professionally or in voluntary service, in the community or in institutional settings, including trainee and qualified social workers, psychologists, counsellors, psychiatrists, occupational therapists, community workers, youth workers, pastoral carers, and volunteers.
4 days (9am - 5pm)
24 hours
This course aims to equip team leaders with the knowledge and tools necessary to lead team effectively, manage team dynamics, and foster effective working groups that can thrive despite external challenges. The skills that participants will learnt includes:
• How to prepare adequately prior to leading a team or group.
• Learning to recognise when the work of a team or group has began.
• Attending to critical matters in the first few minutes of a team or group session.
• Creating safety in a team or group by providing adequate structure and leadership.
• Making clear statements about the purpose for which the team or group have gathered.
• Working in the 'here-and-now' while maintaining emotional connections with team or group members.
• Promoting interactions between team or group members that promote mutuality.
• Intervening when dynamics restrict the team or group from fulfilling its purposes.
• Dealing with aggression, silence, anxiety, or people who talk too much, etc.
• Working to reduce dependency, pairing, flight, and flight in the team or group.
• Relating everything that happens in the team or group to wider themes or topics.
• Making assessments of when the team or group culture is being altered by effective work.
• Promoting a level of intimacy to create enough safety for real work to occur.
• Use of interactive action methods with teams or groups.
• Modelling and coaching constant attunement with team or group members.
• Avoiding sentimentality and fixing other people as a team or group habit.
• Bringing the team or group meeting to a crisp ending on time.
• Reporting and other note taking on team or group sessions.
• Appreciating how much of the work of a team or group occurs between meetings or sessions.
• Preparation for supervision as a team or group work leader.
• Reflections and preparations for the next team or group meeting or session
Dr. Craig Whisker is a registered clinical social worker and a registered psychotherapist from New Zealand. He currently works as the professional leader of psychotherapy for the Auckland District Health Board and as a family therapist and group work practitioner in private practice. He gained a PhD from La Trobe University in Melbourne in 2021 by completing research on cultural justice in the NZ family therapy movement. He is a clinical family therapist and accredited supervisor through the Australian Association of Family Therapy, and a certified psychodrama practitioner and educator through the Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand Psychodrama Association. Craig has been conducting family therapy and group work training workshops in New Zealand since 2003 and in Singapore from 2006-2011.
NCSS member and MSF-funded Social Service Agencies are able to apply for PCG Funding (Exact funding percentage to be advised)
Each workshop session is audio recorded to gain a record of what occurs in case we want to refer back to particular moments of our work. At the end of each day, the workshop leader transcribes a few minutes of a workshop session from that day and we discuss the resulting transcription during the 3rd session of the following day. The transcription provides a useful medium for reviewing previous work, teaching, and deepening reflection. The workshop leader is also a practitioner researcher who writes and publishes on his practice as a trainer, and the audio recordings may also be used for these purposes on the proviso that participants’ anonymity is maintained and participants have the right to review, edit, or veto any relevant content prior to publication. Audio recordings are securely stored and are not used for other purposes. Participants are asked to sign an informed consent form when registering.
| Course Fee Payable | ||
|---|---|---|
| Original Fee | Before GST | With GST (9%) |
| Course Fee | $1,250.00 | $1,362.50 |
