Facilitating Change in Groups and Teams

Facilitating Change in Groups and Teams

"If you are looking for a short cut to mindfulness this book is not for you. If you are willing to embrace with Paul the adventure of uncertainty and ‘not knowing’ read on for there is much to learn about how to live in organisations in this ruthlessly honest and deeply compassionate book"

Professor Ken Evans, Founding President of the European Association for Integrative Psychotherapy

Paul Barber is widely recognised as one of the leading practitioners and researchers of Gestalt-informed facilitation and coaching. In Facilitating Change in Groups and Organisations he encapsulates the key lessons from his extensive practitioner research and teaching of Gestalt, group facilitation, clinical philosophy and research, counselling and organisational consultancy.

As a Gestalt-informed facilitator, Paul Barber works with groups and organisations to generate individual and group understanding; liberate and refine new experiential knowledge; raise personal and social awareness and educate and empower all involved. The model of facilitation he presents here addresses how to raise and increase awareness of five sets of significant influences:  physical and sensory; social and cultural; emotional and biographical; projective and imagined; transpersonal and intuitive. Each of these influences is teased out so readers can appreciate different methods of working with each modality and appreciate how facilitative massaging of each can influence the whole.

Paul Barber’s approaches to facilitation and coaching have been influenced heavily by Humanistic Psychology and Group Analysis. From his synthesis of theory, practice and reflection readers will be able to build their own picture or ‘gestalt’ of what facilitation means to them. Underpinning Facilitating Change in Groups and Organisations is Paul Barber’s concern to ‘heal’ or ‘to make things whole’. His book has much to offer not only organisational consultants and coaches but all people-facing professionals.  

 Paul Barber is Academic Advisor for the Metanoia Institute's 'Doctorate in Psychotherapy by Professional Studies' and 'Doctorate in Psychotherapy by Public Works' programmes. He is also a Visiting Professor (Gestalt in research and organisations) at Middlesex University's Institute for Work Based Learning, a Fellow of the Roffey Park Institute and a Visiting Professor in Psychotherapy at the University of Novi Sad, Serbia. He is also Associate Editor of the British Gestalt Journal. He can be contacted by email at gestaltinaction@msn.com or on his website www.gestaltinaction.com.