Dr. James Conklin: Invited lecture and networking event

Balancing Acts: Planning and Implementing Interventions into Human Systems

In this presentation, Dr. Conklin will pull together 12 years of research and 28 years of practical experience on planning and implementing interventions into human systems. He will offer his perspective on the process consulting stance and on the dilemmas that often arise when a consultant intervenes in complex social systems. Conklin will suggest that the skilled intervener engages in four critical balancing acts:

1. Balancing the need to challenge and at times push the client toward success with the need to create safety and to show compassion for the client. The intervener is confrontational and compassionate.
2. Balancing the need to engage in planned and intentional activity with the need to be open to the emergent and unexpected. The intervener stays the course and changes course.
3. Balancing the need to become part of the client system with the need to remain distinct and apart. The intervener participates and observes.
4. Balancing the inclination to tell the client the solution to client problems with the need to create the conditions in which members of the client system can discover the answers for themselves. The intervener asserts and inquires.
   

The evening will allow participants to consider the strengths and opportunities that await those who wish to become more conscious and effective facilitators of social change.