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The following global ideas guide the design and delivery of this course:

• Self-awareness of one's personal leadership style, past experiences, values, identities, and impact on others is essential for ethical group practice. This includes understanding one's social location, privilege, and how personal biases may affect group dynamics, group progress, and marginalized participants.
• Understanding group dynamics—including how power, privilege, and oppression operate within groups—allows practitioners to create more equitable and effective group experiences for all participants.
• Effective communication must be adapted for group contexts while actively honouring diverse ways of being and communicating.  Group leaders must be concerned for individuals in the group as well as the group as a whole.  
• Competent practitioners understand not only how and when to use specific skills, but also the ethical implications of their interventions, particularly regarding power dynamics and potential harm to vulnerable participants.
• Effective groups balance task accomplishment with working relationally, and traditional Western assumptions about productivity or work will be challenged.
• Groups evolve through developmental phases (planning, beginning, working, ending) that involve common as well as unique tasks and worker skills, and success at one phase is dependent in part on success at previous phases.