A core leadership capacity is the ability to navigate work and team dynamics by authentically adapting to a diversity of membership, contexts and agendas. This requires… 

• Deep awareness of one’s personal presence and impact. 
• Relational intelligence to connect and partner with others. 
• A solid grasp of team dynamics and styles. 

Have you lost ground in the pandemic? Are there new rules for relationships? What skills do you need now to flourish in your career and personal life? 

The Human Interaction Lab is an opportunity to explore these questions and uncover your path to greater personal effectiveness and enhanced understanding of yourself and your interactions.

In this program, participants will grow their ability to understand emotions, boundaries and needs, how these impact others, and how to pivot toward more effective interactions, collaborations and partnerships.

What is the Human Interaction Lab?

The Human Interaction Lab unfolds over 6 days. Through highly interactive sessions, the lab creates safe opportunities to … 

• Understand yourself and others. 
• Grow your leadership and team effectiveness. 
• Enhance inclusive behaviors in a diverse, multicultural environment. 
• Deepen knowledge of group dynamics and your patterns in teams. 
• Give and receive transformative feedback. 
• Safely express generative emotions. 
• Acknowledge and resolve conflict. 
• Augment listening powers to include whole person messaging. 
• Embrace new wisdom about your impact on others. 
• Build self-reflective practices. 

Take the leap into a lab experience that will propel your leadership and personal interactional competencies.

How does a Human Interaction Lab support personal change?

The Human Interaction Lab fosters your personal and professional development through an interactive learning experience working in both small groups and large community learning sessions. As a participant, you will have opportunities to experience the impact of your communication style on other participants. Each day includes a combination of small groups, learning pairs, individual reflection, and community sessions for exploring theory and participating in experiential learning exercises.

Who should attend?

This lab is designed for people who want to better appreciate their unique interaction patterns to engage more intentionally in service of self, others, and the wider contexts in which they are imbedded. Learning how best to give and receive feedback to create more effective human partnerships will be part of the journey in this lab. 

Participants will likely come from a broad range of backgrounds and positions in the fields of business, industry, health and social services, government, education, religious institutions, and the volunteer sector. All participants will be encouraged to identify areas of personal growth and development they wish to pursue in this lab. The lab will offer participants unique understandings into how groups and teams function; build on and maximize their competence in working with people; increase their awareness about interpersonal dynamics and communication skills; and increase their effectiveness in giving and receiving feedback. Individuals will need to be open and willing to work on themselves and on the ways in which they relate to others.

What is the schedule?

The HI Lab will begin on Sunday at 1:00pm and end at 12:30pm on Friday. Most days will start at 9:00am and continue through 6:30pm, with a break for lunch. The daily schedule will consist of 1-2 plenary sessions with the full group to learn concepts together and substantial time in small group sessions.

Some plenary sessions will be jointly held with participants in the Developing the Organizational and Personal Self advanced workshop happening concurrently. This will afford HI Lab participants an opportunity to hear from and interact with a broader group that is also focused on growth and development.

This is a foundational-level personal and professional growth program. The following are requirements for people wishing to participate:

• A desire to learn more about themselves and how they see and organize their interactions with others.
• The ability and willingness to be in full-time attendance in the program. Should a participant need to miss a day or an activity, it is the responsibility of the participant to inform the facilitators of the reason for the absence.

Other information to consider:

• Participants freely and willingly attend the lab; they do not attend out of obligation to an organization or some other entity.  
• Participants should be sufficiently familiar with the nature of a personal growth learning laboratory in order to make an informed decision about attendance.
• Participants are aware that laboratory experiences of this nature may be stressful at times. During our history of offering these programs, a very small percentage of participants have experienced significant stress. There is no effective means of predicting such reactions, screening out or otherwise identifying those predisposed to such reactions based on their prior medical history or any present emotional challenges that may have been identified. It is important, therefore, that participants take full responsibility for "self-screening" in this matter. When in doubt, attendance should be discussed with appropriate professionals, including medical doctors or psychotherapists. Responsibility for obtaining this recommendation rests entirely with the participant. 
• Participants may discontinue the lab at any time and by so doing choose to forego completion of the lab. In instances where individuals miss sessions with reason, it will be up to the facilitators to determine whether the individual has participated sufficiently in the essential processes of the lab to warrant a certificate of completion.

Not sure if this program is for you? 

If you hace questions, please contact us at chrcs@concordia.ca

As well, for those who have previously participated in a multi-day personal and professional growth experience, we are concurrently offering Developing the Organizational and Personal Self, a 5-day advanced-level workshop ideal.