Relational Resilience: Leading Group Therapy Practices Through Industry Disruption

Relational Resilience: Leading Group
Practices Through Industry Disruption

Objectives:

• Understand how group practice structures, incentives, and constraints shape employee experience, often independently of owner intent.
• Identify the forms of power and responsibility inherent in ownership, and recognize how unexamined dynamics can contribute to confusion, resentment, or workplace harm.
• Apply a relational, liberation-informed lens to leadership decisions which strengthen transparency, accountability, and sustainability without over-functioning or being defensive.

Group practice owners are leading in a moment of real strain. The mental health industry is shifting rapidly by private equity expansion, changing employment models, and increasing financial pressure. While clinicians and clients alike are carrying unprecedented levels of stress and complexity. Many owners find themselves holding more responsibility, ambiguity, and relational weight than they were ever trained for.

This presentation offers an orientation rather than a prescription. Modeled after the Comparing Apples to Oranges business literacy presentation for group practice employees, this owner-focused version examines how independent group practices operate alongside and in contrast to private equity-backed models, and how these broader market forces are reshaping expectations, culture, and working conditions across the field.

Rather than defending ownership or offering quick fixes, this training supports owners in developing a shared understanding of structure, power, and constraint. Both within their own practices and in the larger industry context. The goal is to lead with integrity, transparency, and realism, building practices that are financially sustainable and humane without bypassing the emotional, relational, and ethical realities of leadership.

About our presenter

Sarah Buino is a therapist, consultant, and speaker whose work centers on healing at the individual, organizational, and systemic levels of the mental health field. She supports therapists and practice leaders in understanding how personal history, relational dynamics, and industry structures intersect and how attending to all three is essential for ethical, sustainable work.

As the founder of Head/Heart Therapy, Inc., Head/Heart Business Therapy, and Group Practice (R)evolution, Sarah brings clinical depth to the often unspoken emotional and power dynamics of leadership, business, and organizational life. Her work helps therapists align their inner work with the real-world decisions they make about money, responsibility, and care.

Through her podcast Conversations With a Wounded Healer, Sarah explores how our own healing journeys shape the systems we participate in and the cultures we create. Across all of her work, she is committed to cultivating workplaces rooted in relational consciousness, integrity, and shared responsibility. 

Visit: Head / Heart Business Therapy website