Join us to explore conflict, difference and dialogue in professional communities, reflecting on social responsibility, professional values,

Conflict, Difference and Dialogue in Professional Communities

Exploring Social Responsibility, Professional Values, Rupture and Repair

Friday 27 November 2026

1:30pm for a 2pm start – 5pm

Hilton DoubleTree Ealing | Followed by drinks and networking at Metanoia Institute (from 5pm)

How can professional communities engage constructively with disagreement, particularly when the issues involved matter deeply to those taking part?

We would like to invite you to the next session in our Meaningful Conversations series, where we will explore conflict, difference, rupture and the possibilities for dialogue and repair within the psychotherapy and counselling professions.

Psychotherapy and counselling are professions in which questions of care, ethics, identity, social responsibility and professional values matter deeply. As a result, disagreement may sometimes carry considerable emotional and relational significance. Different understandings of professional responsibility, social justice, advocacy, activism, institutional responsibility and ethical practice can bring important issues into view, while also creating tensions that can be difficult for individuals, organisations and professional communities to navigate.

This Meaningful Conversations session will draw on organisational psychology, systems thinking and relational perspectives to explore conflict without assuming that disagreement itself represents failure. Instead, we will consider what disagreement may reveal about differing experiences, values, responsibilities, interests and understandings within a professional community.

We will explore questions including how power and context influence whose perspectives are heard; how strongly held ethical or social commitments can be expressed while remaining open to dialogue; and how organisations and professional communities can respond when trust has been challenged or different accounts of events and responsibilities coexist.

The session will also consider how individuals and systems respond under pressure. At times, uncertainty or conflict can lead people towards defensiveness, avoidance, certainty or simplified accounts of complex situations. Equally, disagreement and challenge can provide important opportunities for reflection, accountability, learning and change. Our aim will be to approach these dynamics with curiosity rather than judgement and without reducing legitimate differences of perspective to psychological explanations.

Particular attention will be given to the relationship between professional responsibility and wider social engagement, including activism and advocacy. Rather than assuming a single view about the place these should occupy within the psychological professions, the session will create space to consider different perspectives on the responsibilities, opportunities and boundaries involved.

Throughout the afternoon, we will ask what enables professional communities to remain in meaningful relationship when agreement cannot readily be reached. We will consider the conditions that support respectful challenge, careful listening, accountability, reflection and, where possible, repair.

The emphasis will be on developing our collective capacity to:

engage with disagreement without immediately polarising positions;

distinguish challenge and critique from personal attack;

recognise the influence of power, role and institutional context;

remain curious about perspectives and experiences different from our own;

acknowledge harm or difficulty without prematurely determining a single interpretation;

hold professional values alongside openness to scrutiny and challenge;

sustain thoughtful dialogue even where significant differences remain.

Meaningful Conversations does not seek to remove disagreement or require consensus. Instead, it offers a space to consider how, as psychological professionals and professional communities, we might engage with complexity, difference and responsibility in ways that support learning, ethical practice and respectful relationships.

Attendance at this event will provide 3 CPD hours.

Book your ticket to join the conversation

What are Meaningful Conversations?

Metanoia Institute’s ‘Meaningful Conversations’ series builds on the success of our 40th anniversary lecture series, which brought together thought leaders and practitioners to explore psychotherapy and counselling in dialogue with society’s most pressing issues. What began as a celebration has grown into an ongoing commitment: to create space for conversations that matter, where therapeutic practice meets questions of justice, equity, and social change.

These conversations recognise that psychotherapy cannot be separated from the cultural and systemic forces shaping people’s lives. By bringing together diverse voices, we seek not only to reflect but to challenge, to questi

Description supplied by the event organiser.