BACKGROUND & PHILOSOPHY
History
We were founded in 2011 and after a pilot phase, launched a full programme of facilitator training, supervision, and accreditation in 2012. Our approach to facilitation skills development is based firmly on the principles of self-directed learning, an experiential accreditation process, self-and-peer assessment, and personal empowerment.
Our offering has grown out of the humanistic psychology movement, in particular, the work of the Human Potential Resource Group at Surrey University during the 70s and 80s, and the emergence of Facilitation Styles training and Organisational Gestalt Practitioner approaches in recent years.
Humanistic psychology, sometimes called the self-awareness or human potential movement, is a positive, optimistic way of being. The goal is for us to direct our own lives to flow in healthy interconnection with others.
In working humanistically, we focus on:
- Health and peak performance more than problems and issues.
- Who we are more than what we know.
- Lived values not spoken judgments.
- Reviewed experience not expert opinions.
- Empowerment and appropriate power dynamics not repression.
A group facilitator working according to humanistic principles will work transparently with intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal material towards a goal of equality, health, and peak performance.