Learning more about the invisible assumptions, experiences and behaviours of groups is an essential leadership skill, says Bella Mehta, founding director of Association of Facilitators. As a trained scientist leading my first project in the world of consultancy, it soon dawned on me (with a degree of fear) that 'group dynamics' were going to influence our achievement much more than the quality of our research data or the qualifications we all held...

Bella Mehta examines the difference facilitation can make to people’s relationships with their organisations. Employee engagement is not just about ‘comms’ or ‘hearts and minds’. Engagement happens, or fails to happen, at many levels of organisational life, but often the day-to-day team experience is undervalued. Most employees experience working life through being part of a team. For a group of individuals to become a high-performing team, they need healthy habits, good communication and positive group dynamics. Most groups need to learn how to create a high-performing environment, but few are taught. This is a training gap that leaves a huge untapped source of potential within our organisations.

This chapter is designed to orientate you with the aims, style and content of this text. To encourage your reflection upon how Gestalt and holistic facilitation may be integrated in an approach to research, you will be invited to consider how what is on offer here compliments the world view that is gaining ascendance in the twenty-first century, which is suggested to be rapidly moving towards an ecologically informed holistic position. I also attempt to illuminate the core concepts that underpin this work. The definitions provided should not be taken to be truly definitive but rather as starting-points of your own research. We will also survey what holistic inquiry might focus upon, along with poetic aspects of inquiry in this vein. Hopefully, by the close of this chapter you will have begun to reflect upon your own world-view plus the bias and values you operate by.

This text is designed to help you ‘think’ and ‘act’ in the manner of a qualitative researcher and will attempt to brainstorm you with options and challenges in a Zen-like way towards fresh insight. Indeed, Zen, ‘holistic research’ and Gestalt all encourage you to expand and raise your awareness, attend to everything, dismiss nothing and to establish a robust and intimate dialogue with what is unfolding in their immediate environment – right now. In this way, similar to a student of Zen you will also be encouraged to bracket-off belief and disbelief, to cultivate an open mind and to experientially inquire into what is before you. But first, I offer you a working definition of ‘Gestalt’ as a researching method...

To motivate and develop personnel while fostering a co-operative team spirit presents a major challenge for business communities of the 21st Century (Waitley 1995; RSA 1995; Barber 2002). To this end this paper sets out to examine the gains and challenges of using a Gestalt informed peer-learning community within a commerciallybased master’s to nurture co-operation and personal development. On ancient maps in locations where danger was thought to exist the traveller was warned ‘there be dragons’. This account raises awareness to the organisational dragons that await Gestalt inspired change agents...