Seminars for systemic practitioners working in or with organisations in leadership, consulting and organisational development settings
From 9:30 until 16:30
At London - Online - Vienna
£1920
The Systemic Development Partnership / info@systemicdevelopment.eu
Who are the Systemic Organisational Practice Seminars 2025 for?
As a systemic practitioner - leader, consultant and/or clinician - you have an interest and agency to contribute to the development of the organisation you are working in and with. The Systemic Organisatonal Practice Seminars will facilitate your effective positioning and practising in relation to your organisational task, role, team and the wider organisation. Seminars will contribute to your development as systemic leader and consultant and contribute to organisational learning and development. The seminars also facilitate connectedness and exchange in the community of systemic organisational practitioners.
As a participant you will typically hold a diploma or master’s degree in systemic practice and / or have developed an interest in advanced systemic practice in organisational contexts and communities of practising.
Process and content
Each Systemic Organisatonal Practice Seminar will
- facilitate practitioner engagement with systemic theory
- offer possibilities for consultation and supervision in relation to current organisational dilemmas and opportunities
- invite an exchange of experiences and ideas about good practice
- Support agency and resourcefulness in participants.
The seminars are offered as an all-in group booking intended to facilitate the formation of a stable group to continue for a period of a year, with the possibility of continuing as a group thereafter.
Online seminars will be conducted using a professional Zoom account allowing to facilitate work in breakout rooms or facilitated sub-groups.
The booking includes the presentation materials and copies of papers provided in electronic format.
Themes and topics
Every seminar we will be offering a topic that relates to our 2025 theme 'The power of story'. With story as a lens the seminars will focus on systemic leadership and consulting practices and skills to increase the agency of leaders and teams, to facilitate organisational change, to improve orientation and coordination of organisational members, and to enhance processes of learning and knowledge sharing.
Seminar topics
Seminar 1 - Agency: Stories and agency – a dance.
This seminar brings us in touch with the fabric of orientation and agency that facilitates intelligible action and coordination – stories. We ask questions such as: ‘What stories are positioning us in our practice as leaders, consultants and professionals?’, ‘When have these stories emerged and how?’ and ‘What are the stories of prominence for our teams, clients, organisations we work in and with?’.
What is our agency in relation to these stories as story-tellers and story-listeners and how can we practically change them? What opportunities can we seize in relation to story at our workplace?
Seminar 2 - Change: Stories and storying in the service of change.
What are the many roles of stories, story-telling and story-listening in relation to organisational change? What stories do we tell ourselves about the change? What patterns of participation, dialogue, use of power, and control get invited? What stories get disrupted and what new stories get created - and how? How can stories be used to facilitate movement in the future, orientation in the present or coherence with the past?
In this seminar we connect with practical theory, our collective wisdom and situated agency to facilitate organisational change through the stories we are telling and acting into.
Seminar 3 - New Meaning: Developing useful stories.
From what positions can we engage with stories lived and told? What conventional and systemic repertoires can we draw on to create, tell or enact stories that make a useful difference? How can story-work be effectively utilised and embedded in teams and organisations?
This seminar connects us with new meaning and new useful ways of coordinating that emerge through the stories we are able to tell. It also engages us with the meanings that get enacted in the ways we connect with each other as we listen to and co-create these stories.
Seminar 4 - Learning and Knowing: Stories that make us act smarter.
We develop insights, practices and action in relation to leading, sustaining and developing the organisation through processes of knowing and learning.
The questions we will explore include: How can we use stories and story-telling to facilitate and enrich organisational learning processes? What is the role of story in the canon of activities sustaining knowing, learning and eventually decision-making processes? Also, how do forms of inquiry elicit stories that facilitate organisational knowing and learning.
Seminar topics may evolve and develop in response to participants' feedback and preferences.
What participants say
Alison Pearce
I work within the NHS as a Clinical Lead within an acute physical health trust and trained as a systemic psychotherapist. My work involves working in multiple systems and with different roles. I have always appreciated the way that systemic thought allows you to consider the complexities within systems and consider the impact of context but I wanted to think more about how to broaden my use to consider its use at an organisational level. I did not want another formal qualification but instead a place to reflect and learn in a safe, exploratory context.
Chris and Martin's course offered a space to read and consider new ideas within my work as a leader and clinician. The course offered new learning from texts and then discussions with the facilitators and peers. The participants on the course were often working in very different organisations and for me, this was a core value of the course. It allowed me to see commonalities and differences in culture and practices which enabled me to see some our my assumptions working in the NHS which had been taken as "givens".
As facilitators, Chris and Martin offered insights to clinical situations and developed the ideas from articles. I have been able to come back to my work with different ideas and tools that I have shared with my team. Within an extremely busy work context, this course was a welcome pause to reflect on how to work productively and creatively.
Stephanie Peckham
I work in many different types of organisations in the private sector as a coach and learning facilitator – my aim was to work additionally in the organisational development space, using a systemic approach.
I started attending the Seminars after completing the Diploma in Systemic Leadership and Organisational Consulting - to deepen my knowledge and continue learning about Systemic Practice.
Not only has the content of the seminars enriched my understanding and knowledge, with a perfect combination of theory and practical application, doors have been opened for different types of work and different conversations with my clients, helping them look at themselves, their personal development and their organisations from a systemic perspective. I am finding that this is particularly helpful in developing agency in teams and at the most senior levels in organisations, where conversations can be very narrowly focused; by looking at the wider system and understanding what is happening there, leaders can gain clarity and develop narratives and strategies that move the organisation forward.
I feel personally enriched from the wonderful connections I have made with people who work in very different contexts to my own. I often described my attendance on the seminars as “nourishment”.
Richard Clarke
When searching CPD, I was intrigued when I came across the Systemic Development Partnership, run by Christine and Martin, as their offer met my interest to continue my development as a systemic and family psychotherapist. Their courses offer a focus on the organisational context and practice, an area that is often overlooked within the systemic and family therapy world.
Christine and Martin bring very different backgrounds in terms of their gender, approach and professional lives (a mixture of core commercial business and NHS and statutory contexts). I liked the way they had set up their training programmes, there was a blend of new content relevant to organisational working and a safe environment for learning (Christine’s background as a group analyst is evident here). I could make good use of the course in my own work, this was facilitated by continual and pragmatic use of systemic theory, the practice in the training itself and the examples from Chris’ and Martin’s work with organisations.
I enjoyed being part of a group of people with different backgrounds connected by a shared interest in working professionally with systemic ideas and making sense of these in their professional worlds. The Seminars offer a truly supportive environment, I felt met with interest in me as a person and in the dilemmas I am tackling in my work. Whether you are a manager and want to explore how to navigate the organisational context, or a supervisor, who needs to connect with your supervisee's organisational dilemmas, or are just interested in learning more about organisations, I highly recommend you consider the Systemic Organisational Practice Seminars.
Dates
The Systemic Organisatonal Practice Seminars 2025 will comprise four two-day workshops, each from 9:30 – 16:30. In case the seminar group size exceeded 12 participants the timing would be 9:00 - 16:30. Seminar dates are
- Seminar 1 February 24 & 25 London*
- Seminar 2 May 19 & 20 Online
- Seminar 3 September 1 & 2 Online
- Seminar 4 November 17 & 18 Vienna*
(*) We appreciate the opportunities to meet and work face-2-face. However, if for health or personal reasons it is not possible to join in person, it is also possible to join online.
The maximum group size is 16, the minimum number of participants is 6.
Facilitators
Dr Christine Oliver |
Dr Martin Miksits |
Venues
Seminar 1 will be in person at a London location, seminar 4 will be in Vienna. Seminars 2 and 3 will be online. Participants require a laptop, PC or notebook with a stable internet connection.
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the course team reserves the right to move seminar 1 and 4 to online formats, if this is deemed necessary considering travel restrictions, the safety of participants, or to comply with government regulations.
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Registration and fee
The cost for four seminars with a total of eight workshop days is 1920 pounds (excl. VAT).
- registration possible as of now
- confirmed place on the program as of registration
- payment within 14 days from registration
The fee includes the provision of seminar rooms in London and Vienna. Coffee and tea in breaks. Travel and stay in London and Vienna are not included.
The above fee does not include VAT. We have a limited possibility to provide the course VAT exempt (without VAT) which we offer for self-paying individuals and charities that are not registered for VAT.
Organisational buyers such as businesses, local government and governmental organisations, universities and the NHS, registered for VAT, will be billed the full course cost plus VAT. In case the course start has to be cancelled or deferred for any reasons participants will be reimbursed whatever they have paid.
Cancellation fee: 30% of fee up to 10 weeks before the first workshop, 80% up to 4 weeks before the first workshop, thereafter 100%.
Contact Information
Email info@systemicdevelopment.eu
Continue below to register for The Systemic Organisational Practice Seminars.