Facilitating Change in Groups and Teams: A Gestalt Approach to Mindfulness

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.