Creative, practical psychotherapy that promotes resilience
and helps you build the life you imagine
Lauren Gonzalez, MA, MFA, LMFT
Licensed in New York, California, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania
Collaborations and Group Consults
What amazing place is this, above? It's Reed's Organic Farm and Animal Sanctuary, in Egg Harbor Township, NJ!
Group dynamics can be tough. A creative team, band, acting troupe, magazine or publishing house, book project team, film crew, non-profit, art collective, activist organization, tech start-up, game company, academic project, or research team are just some of the collectives I've worked with that can benefit from engaged group consultation that focuses on mindfulness and interpersonal effectiveness skills to find the most effective path forward in collaborative, goal-oriented creative and business pursuits.
Getting groups of any type, let alone creative groups with strong personalities, visionaries, and endless ideas, to a place of synchronicity, harmony, and ultimately flow is challenging.
I approach collaboration work by first identifying and attempting to understand motivation, group dynamics, communication styles, goals, and blockages not only in the group as a whole, but in each individual and how they fit within the group. My approach is akin to tuning an instrument. My goal is to teach the instrument (the group) to tune itself. To do so, a group has to identify when it is out of key. Many groups get stuck at the blame, divide, and exclude stage, which ultimately impedes a projects' progress at best, and at worst can lead to a project failure.
You will learn as a group to listen, identify, and accept each contributor's talents as well as challenges so as to understand how all the unique talents fit with the whole. With your goals in mind, we will strategize how your group can best anticipate setbacks given your collaboration's unique circumstances and personalities, and cope ahead for how your team at its best will handle turbulence along the way.
A great album, film, streaming series, video game, book, white paper or start-up has a sort of rhythm to it, something that those on the outside of the project-your audience-can identify and appreciate, leading to support of your work through investment of their time, money and attention. Please visit the Contact Me page to inquire as to how I might be able to help your collaboration.