The purpose of this webinar will be to describe the use of Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT) and evolution science principles to help social groups and the individuals within them to be more effective. The presenters will introduce PROSOCIAL: an international web-based project designed to disseminate and to test this combination of principles in groups around the world. 

The webinar will orient attendees to “The Matrix,” an easy to use tool to rapidly identify individual and group values and barriers to change drawn from ACT, and to the eight design principles for successful group functioning developed by the late Nobel Prize winning political scientist, Elinor Ostrom. It will describe the online training and development website for the PROSOCIAL project that can be used by coaches and by groups themselves free of charge to foster improved group functioning. The webinar will briefly review the evidence for ACT and Ostrom’s principles, describe how this combination is being used with groups across the globe, and show how these concepts can empower coaches in many settings.