Laboratory training and the Tavistock Conference, two types of experiential learning, contrast in important ways. They are designed to respond to different societal issues and make different types of responses to these issues. Tavistock conferences focus consciously and exclusively on group operation, role, role relationships, intergroup relationships, and total organization. Human relations laboratories (laboratory training) focus at the levels of self, other, relationships in small groups, and group operation. At the same time, both laboratory training and the conference have in common the attempt to provide the learner with direct opportunities for learning from his experience. Both utilize trainers to guide the learning process. Nonetheless, the techniques also differ in that they have different orientations to training clients for conflict. The conference attempts to provide situations that provoke anxiety about behavior and decisionmaking and that allow the members to learn at the rate they want to learn. It relies on organizational structure that is established by the staff on the basis of their authority. The primary emphasis is to study and cope (within the given structure) with conflict that arises out of a simulation of a classically defined bureaucratic authority structure. The concern of the conference is, therefore, for the effectiveness of individuals in given institutional and organizational roles. (Author/WM)