Managing Group Diversity: Communologue Training

Are you a supervisor, leader, or teacher looking for a more conscious way to facilitate groups? Do you want to learn a dynamic way of improving your consulting abilities? The Imago-based Communologue process may be just what you’re looking for.

PC&CC/The Imago Center is sponsoring a two-day Communologue training with world-renowned Imago therapist Orli Wahrman next month. Communologue is a powerful tool for applying Imago Relationship principles in a group context. Rebecca Sears (pictured at right, with Wahrman) is a strong believer in the Communologue process.

“It can be used for conflict resolution, healthy decision making in large/diverse groups by utilizing the skills of dialogue, pre-validation, and safety for all perspectives. It becomes a process of not just cognitive learning but actually having everyone mirrored with no crosstalk,” she explains. The program “will invite participants into a very powerful sense of self and leadership, while also offering amazing personal learning about how to manage a diverse group and teach these skills.”

At Communologue’s core is safety and respect for the other person’s point of view. “As the process unfolds, and with the skill of the leader, the process deepens due to increased safety to speak, be heard fully and learning how powerful it is to mirror another very different perspective,” Sears adds. She has employed Communologue in group situations. “I have used Communologue several times during faculty meetings with heated topics to get the ‘stuff out’ safely in the group,” Sears recalls.

“The group agrees to be facilitated, timed, coached to speak from their experience [and] no one is required to speak, all will be mirrored. The process goes in rounds, [with] each going a bit deeper as the group hears what others have said. Like with our couples, this may not lead to a resolution or final outcome, but without this type of understanding and process there will not be a group buy-in or understanding of one another.”

Part of the training will include in-depth discussion of two of Wahrman’s successful Communologue projects: the Palestinian/Israeli Imago Project and the Jewish-Arab co-existence group. She lives in Israel and runs a private psychotherapy practice that incorporates Imago and Communologue to work with couples. She also is an Imago workshop presenter, clinical supervisor, and Imago International faculty member.

The training will take place June 10-11, from 9am-5pm, at Washington Theological Union in Takoma Park, DC. Attendees will leave with a confident beginner’s ability to facilitate Communologue. Participants enrolling prior to May 27 will pay $300, and the cost increases to $350 after that date. For more information or to register, please contact PC&CC/The Imago Center Executive Director Carl Siegel.