MATRIX ESSENTIALS
Building Groups & Teams
As Living Systems
2-9 September, 2026
Overview
Matrix Leadership Essentials + Nature Immersion in the Swedish Wilderness
Transformational relational skills, embodied practice, and deep connection with land and community.
Something is asking to emerge.
In organisations, communities, and teams, we sense that the old ways of working—built on hierarchy, command, and control—no longer serve what's needed. The complexity of our times calls for something different: adaptive, collaborative leadership that emerges through connection rather than position.
This training is an invitation to experience and embody that shift—together, in kinship with one another and with the more-than-human world.
A Different Kind of Leadership & Facilitation Training
Here, leadership isn't about individual charisma or climbing hierarchies. It's about building the relational infrastructure that allows groups to function as interconnected, adaptive living systems.
Research from Google, MIT and others shows that how groups work together matters more than who the individual members are. Matrix Leadership provides the practical skills and embodied practices to transform groups from collections of separate individuals into true Matrix Leadership Networks—teams that think, decide, and act together with collective intelligence.
This is leadership as a property of the network, not the individual.
Learning by Doing, in Relationship
Over eight days, we'll work, learn, and live together at Bjärkan in northern Sweden, in ongoing relationship with the land that holds us.
This is an adapted version of the Matrix Leadership Essentials training, designed specifically for this setting. Four full days of intensive Matrix training are spread across six days, creating space for the learning to settle and integrate. The extended time allows for nature connection, reflection, and the kind of deep relational work that only happens when we slow down.
Between sessions, we'll walk, swim in the lake, sit in sauna and hot tub, forage, and allow the wilderness to become part of our learning container. The land itself becomes a teacher.
A Training Ground for Relational Leadership
This is not a retreat or escape.
It is a training space for those who want to learn how to form groups with genuine relational infrastructure, transform feedback into investment in relationships and results, engage with differences as creative resources rather than sources of conflict, distribute leadership, roles, and perspectives through the whole group, and facilitate the emergence of collective intelligence.
You'll leave with embodied skills you can apply immediately—in your team, organisation, community, or family.
An Invitation
If you're ready to move beyond theories about collaboration toward lived, relational, embodied practice—this training may be the threshold worth crossing.
What This Training Offers
This training introduces the Matrix Essentials™—a framework of communication and leadership practices that support groups to function with their full collective intelligence and heart.
Rather than lecture-based learning, this is experiential and participatory. You'll learn through structured exercises, facilitated practice groups, and real-time application with feedback.
Formation of a Matrix Leadership Network™
Experience and learn the sequential application of the eight Matrix Essentials™ Communication and Leadership skills that form the group with a Relational Infrastructure™. The group then builds the capacity to function as a living system—an interconnected Matrix Leadership Network™.
You'll learn to:
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Form a Matrix of Person-to-Person Communication in the "eyes and ears" of the whole group
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Build a Ground of Health—trust and resilience as the foundation for sustainable collaboration
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Embody Presence—accessing the intelligence of body, mind, heart, and spirit
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Cultivate Consciousness of the Whole—with responsibility for inclusion and awareness of the "voice of the Whole" emerging
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Establish Appreciative and Differentiating Feedback as a norm—redefining feedback as investment in relationships and results
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Distribute and Diversify Roles, Perspectives and Leadership—gaining freedom from habitual patterns
The Process and Stage of Differentiation
Experience the Matrix map of differentiation as an alternative to models of control, competition, and conflict. Shifting from a top-down, power-over paradigm to one in which engaging with differences becomes the path to growth and evolution.
You'll learn to:
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Engage in Differences—"Differ With"—expressing and staying in connection with differences as creative, synergistic resources
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Utilise differentiating feedback to let go of behaviours, beliefs, and practices that no longer serve the relationships or the Whole
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Understand conflict as differentiation trying to occur
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Recognise polarisations, fragmentation, and scapegoating as regressive versions of differentiation
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Shift from assumptions of top-down authority to optimising collective intelligence
The Matrix Group Dialogue™ Process
Experience the Matrix Group Dialogue™ process that transforms conflict into multi-perspective, multi-stakeholder, emergent collaboration.
The five stages—Urge, Merge, Diverge, Emerge, Converge—provide a map for:
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Facilitating toward the expression of differences through multiple pairs of people
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Tracking and following emergent collective intelligence
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Converging into action and aligned next steps
Nature Connection & Integration
The extended and residential format at Bjärkan creates space for something that intensive trainings rarely offer—time for the learning to settle into the body.
Between sessions, you'll have the opportunity for:
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Walking and hiking in the surrounding wilderness
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Swimming in the lake
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Wood-fired Sauna next to a cold mountain stream
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Wood-fired hot tub with a stunning view
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Journaling and personal reflection
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Foraging and connecting with the land
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Unstructured time in community
Who Is This For?
This training is for people who sense that the old models of leadership and teamwork aren't working—and who want to develop real skills for creating something different.
You may be a business owner, team leader, manager, or organisational development professional seeking to shift your team's culture. You might be a facilitator, coach, or consultant wanting to embed these practices with your own clients. Or you may be someone already engaged in community projects, social enterprises, or collaborative initiatives who wants practical tools for working together better.
This training is particularly suited for those who want to:
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Build teams that function as adaptive, self-organising systems
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Transform feedback culture from evaluation to investment
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Navigate differences and conflict as resources rather than threats
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Develop distributed leadership throughout a group
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Learn embodied practices they can apply immediately in their own contexts
This training is appropriate for those new to Matrix Leadership, as well as those who wish to deepen their practice.
You don't need to arrive with answers or a fixed role. What matters is a willingness to participate fully, learn alongside others, and stay in the practice when things feel unfamiliar.
AN IMMERSION INTO RELATIONAL LEADERSHIP
Our offering will be an experiential, immersive learning community guided through three interwoven dimensions: Connection, Differentiation & Emergence.
Which will be explored via:
The EIGHT MATRIX ESSENTIALS
We'll learn and practice the sequential application of core communication and leadership practices that form groups as interconnected living systems.
RELATIONAL PRACTICE GROUPS
Small group sessions throughout the training provide intensive practice with real-time feedback, building embodied skill in person-to-person communication.
Nature-Connection
Our wilderness location offers an environment in which to immerse & connect deeply with the wider web of relations we are all a part of.
EMBODIED LEARNING
Movement, presence practices, and somatic awareness support whole-person learning that goes beyond intellectual understanding.
Being at Bjärkan
COST
Standard
TBC
Lower Waged
TBC
Bursary
TBC
About the pricing
This is an 8-day residential training, and the fees reflect the real costs of hosting a small, well-held group over an extended period, including food, accommodation, materials, and facilitation by two highly experienced trainers.
We offer a tiered pricing structure to balance financial viability with accessibility.
These tiers help us make the training possible while sharing the cost as fairly as possible among participants. We invite you to choose the tier that most honestly reflects your circumstances.
About Us
Amina Knowlan
Amina co-founded Matrix Leadership Institute in 1990 and has been facilitating groups and trainings internationally for over 35 years. She works as a consultant, trainer, facilitator and coach for corporate teams, businesses, healthcare organisations, schools, communities and non-profits. She considers herself a social artist, incorporating systems approaches, somatic and psychological awareness, and practices of mindfulness into her work. Her background includes an M.S. in Counselling and Teaching Psychology and training from the National Training Laboratories. She is currently completing a book on Matrix Leadership.
Nick Osborne
Nick is a Holacracy Master Coach—one of only seven worldwide—with over 30 years' experience helping leaders and teams move beyond traditional hierarchy into adaptive, self-managing ways of working.
He founded Evolving Organisation and The Beyond Hierarchy Project, working at the intersection of Holacracy, Matrix Leadership, and living systems thinking. His focus is helping organisations develop the relational and structural capacity to thrive in complexity.
Nick lives in northern Sweden with his partner at Bjärkan, where he integrates his work with land-based practice and nature connection.
Practical Information & FAQs
Dates & Timing
7 nights/8 days, 2-9 September inclusive
Arrival from 3 pm on Day 1, Wednesday 2 September
Departure on the morning of Day 8, Wednesday 9 September
Please plan your travel to arrive in time to settle in before we begin together.
Location
Bjärkan is located in the forested foothills of the Ansättfjällen wilderness area, approximately 1.5 hours north of Östersund, Sweden. This is a remote, land-based setting held at the wild edge of forest and mountain.
We are situated on the edge of a small village that is primarily active during the winter months, when it supports seasonal tourism and winter sports. The village includes a winter-season campsite and a small hotel, but there are no shops or other local services. Outside of the winter season, the area is quiet, spacious, and largely inhabited by land, weather, and wildlife.
Late Summer Conditions at Bjärkan
Early September marks the threshold between summer and early autumn. The weather at Bjärkan can be changeable — some days are warm and sunny, while evenings often cool quickly, and rain or wind may pass through.
This is also a time of abundance. The land and forests are rich with berries, mushrooms, and other foraging opportunities, and the atmosphere carries a sense of ripening, harvest, and seasonal turning.
A full kit list will be sent to all participants.
Accommodation
Accommodation is shared, with twin and double rooms available in both the main farmhouse and the adjacent guest cabin. Two smaller bunk rooms in the cabin are available for single occupancy at an additional cost.
Guests have access to all shared living and resting spaces across both buildings.
Facilities include:
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Three shared bathrooms
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A large community sauna
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An outdoor hot tub
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Shared dining and living areas
Workshops are held in our large barn, and sharing circles often take place in our traditional goahti hut.
Please note that accommodation is simple rather than hotel-standard. The spaces are warm, well cared for, and held with a rustic, lived-in charm.
Food
Registration includes three nourishing vegetarian meals per day.
Vegan and gluten-free options are available — please let us know your dietary needs when applying.
Cost & What’s Included
The fee is fully inclusive, covering all teaching, materials, accommodation, and meals for the full 7 nights and is TBC.
Financial Accessibility
We recognise that access to trainings like this is shaped by many forms of privilege. Supporting diversity, inclusion, and wider participation is an important part of our work.
We especially welcome applications from people working in low-income, marginalised, or under-resourced communities. If finances are a barrier, please contact us directly — we are open to conversation and will do what we can.
Getting to Bjärkan
Our nearest town is Östersund
By train
Direct trains run from Stockholm to Östersund or Krokom (5–7 hours), including sleeper trains.
It’s also possible to travel from the UK to Stockholm by train via Hamburg over two days.
By road or ferry
Driving from the UK takes approximately three days. We’re happy to advise on routes from elsewhere in Europe.
By air
Fly to Östersund Åre Airport via Stockholm Arlanda.It’s also possible to fly from Gatwick to Trondheim (Norway), then travel by train via Storlien to Krokom (overnight stay required).
From Östersund or Krokom, onward travel by bus or shared taxi is available. Full details will be shared after booking.
Application Process
To support a thoughtful and diverse group, this training is offered by application.
Please complete the application form. We may be in touch with a few follow-up questions to ensure the training is a good fit for both you and the group.
Payment & Cancellation Policy
Once a place is offered, a £350 deposit is required to secure your place.
The remaining balance is due by 1 July.
If your place is confirmed after 1 July, full payment will be required at that time.
The £350 deposit is non-refundable.
If you need to cancel:
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up to 8 weeks before the start date: refund of any payments beyond the deposit
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within 8 weeks: 50% refund of the remaining balance
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within 4 weeks: 25% refund of the remaining balance
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within 1 week, or after the training begins: no refund
If you have particular circumstances you’d like to discuss, please contact us.
Contact
If you have any questions about the training, logistics, or whether this is the right fit for you, feel free to get in touch.
Email: nick@evolvingorganisation.co