Learning from the Director's Role: Leadership and Vulnerability*

In 1990, immediately following the A. K. Rice Institute's (AKRI) National Residential Group Relations Conference, the organisation went through significant turmoil resulting in the Board's public firing of the conference director from his contract, with no reasons given. The founder of the organisation, Margaret Rioch, and many other senior people resigned from AKRI in protest. All of the participants in this crisis felt that they were acting ethically and responsibly within a tradition committed to clear boundaries, focus on the primary task, and attention to the potential for the unconscious projective use of an individual by the group. Yet, the damage was considerable.

I was that conference director.

In 1991, one year following these events, I become the Medical Director/Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Austen Riggs Center. That same year, the Board of AKRI elected me as a Fellow. Twenty-five years later, following my retirement from Riggs, the AKRI Board again appointed me to direct their annual International Residential Conferences from 2013–2015.

All of these events provided opportunities to learn about vulnerability, projection, and the importance of clear roles and an agreed upon task. The primary task of group-relations conferences is to “provide opportunities to learn through experience about authority, leadership and organisational life”. This paper reviews some of that learning “from the director's role”. What are the risks and opportunities when the director is publicly vulnerable? What are the applications of group relations conference learning for directing a real world organisation?