Changing is standing still

A Gestalt perspective on organizations

Frans Meulmeester
2006
Content

Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 5

Part 1 .....................................................................................Basic concepts of Gestalt theory

............................................................................................................................................. 6
1. Contact ............................................................................................................................. 7
Definition.......................................................................................................................... 7
Figure and ground ............................................................................................................. 8
Reality .............................................................................................................................. 9
Awareness ...................................................................................................................... 10
The contact-process ........................................................................................................ 10
Rest............................................................................................................................ 11
Sensation.................................................................................................................... 11
Awareness .................................................................................................................. 11
Mobilizing of energy................................................................................................... 11
Action ........................................................................................................................ 11
Contact ...................................................................................................................... 12
Fulfillment .................................................................................................................. 12
Withdrawal................................................................................................................. 12
Contact-mechanisms ....................................................................................................... 13
Confluencing .............................................................................................................. 13
Introjecting................................................................................................................. 14
Projecting ................................................................................................................... 14
Retroflecting .............................................................................................................. 14
Deflecting................................................................................................................... 15
2. The field theory ............................................................................................................... 16
Definition........................................................................................................................ 16
Holistic ........................................................................................................................... 17
The need organizes the field ............................................................................................ 18
The Prägnanz principle .................................................................................................... 19

Part 2 A Gestalt approach to organizations .......................................................................... 22

3. The healthy organization, an organism in a field ............................................................... 23
The importance of the primary process ............................................................................ 23
Facilitating management .................................................................................................. 24
Creative adjustment ........................................................................................................ 26
Rest............................................................................................................................ 27
Sensation.................................................................................................................... 29
Awareness .................................................................................................................. 29
Mobilizing of energy................................................................................................... 30
Action ........................................................................................................................ 31
Contact ...................................................................................................................... 32
Fulfillment .................................................................................................................. 34
Withdrawal................................................................................................................. 35
4. The disturbed process; a model for organization-diagnosis ............................................... 37
The disturbed process ..................................................................................................... 37
The fixed adjustment ....................................................................................................... 39
The stagnated process ..................................................................................................... 42

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 Rest............................................................................................................................ 42
Sensation.................................................................................................................... 44
Awareness .................................................................................................................. 46
Mobilizing of energy................................................................................................... 48
Draining away of energy .......................................................................................... 48
The expression of the energy is blocked, so that it turns inwards .............................. 49
Action ........................................................................................................................ 51
Contact ...................................................................................................................... 53
Fulfillment .................................................................................................................. 55
Rest............................................................................................................................ 55
5. Facilitating management .................................................................................................. 57
Trust ............................................................................................................................... 57
Presence ......................................................................................................................... 57
Awareness ...................................................................................................................... 58
Phenomenological attitude .............................................................................................. 59
Functional or selective self-disclosure.............................................................................. 59
Skills............................................................................................................................... 60
Sensation.................................................................................................................... 61
Awareness .................................................................................................................. 61
Mobilizing of energy and action .................................................................................. 62
Action and contact ..................................................................................................... 62
Fulfillment and withdrawal.......................................................................................... 63
6. Interventions ................................................................................................................... 64
Position, assignment and contract .................................................................................... 64
Mandate.......................................................................................................................... 65
Changing is standing still ................................................................................................. 67
Polarities ......................................................................................................................... 67
The fixed adjustment ....................................................................................................... 69
Structure of interventions ................................................................................................ 70
1. Creating safety ....................................................................................................... 70
2. Recognition ............................................................................................................ 70
3. Acknowledging ...................................................................................................... 71
4. Acceptance ............................................................................................................. 71
5. Integration.............................................................................................................. 71
The stagnated process ..................................................................................................... 72
Rest............................................................................................................................ 72
Sensation.................................................................................................................... 74
Awareness .................................................................................................................. 75
Mobilizing energy....................................................................................................... 76
Action ........................................................................................................................ 79
Contact ...................................................................................................................... 81
Fulfillment .................................................................................................................. 82
7. Group dynamic, a Gestalt point of view ........................................................................... 84
The group as a Gestalt .................................................................................................... 84
The whole is reflected in each part .................................................................................. 84
Giving away one of the poles .......................................................................................... 85
Group-development ........................................................................................................ 86
Levels of intervention...................................................................................................... 88
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 91

3
Literature ............................................................................................................................ 92
Index ................................................................................................................................... 94
Appendix............................................................................................................................. 97

4
Introduction

From the beginning of Gestalt theory (which is mostly only known as a theory on Gestalt
psychotherapy, as developed by Fritz Perls and others) the enthusiasm about its concepts was
so great, that people considered the possibility of a broader application than only within the
context of individual psychotherapy. One such broader use was the application of the Gestalt
approach in the world of education. George Brown and Gloria Castillo published articles and
books on these possibilities, for example ‘Human Teaching For Human Learning’ by Brown
and ‘Left Handed Teaching’ by Castillo.
Another application was the work of Edwin Nevis, who published his book ‘Organizational
Consulting, a Gestalt Approach’ in 1987. He gave an important impulse to the development of
a Gestalt approach in organizations. His book is still considered one of the standards in this
area.
In this book I build on the work of Edwin Nevis and wish to contribute to the development of
the Gestalt approach to organizational issues. I use the concept of the contact-cycle, the cycle
of experience as a model or instrument to diagnose healthy and unhealthy organizations and to
describe possible interventions.
The basic assumption underlying my approach is that when we really want to understand what
is going on in a specific organization or really want to influence this process, we need to take a
moment to stand still and be aware of what is going on.
Without that awareness, interventions will not lead to a real change, but probably only lead to
a situation of ‘more of the same’, which in fact means that nothing has changed after all.

Because not every reader is familiar with Gestalt theory, I divide this book in two parts: part
one describes two basic concepts of Gestalt theory, the concept of the ‘contact-process’
(Chapter 1) and the concept of field theory (Chapter 2). Part two goes directly into the
application of the contact-cycle to organizations.
So for readers, who are already familiar with Gestalt theory, part one will not add much new
information.
In part two I give a description of what might be seen as a healthy organization. The cycle of
experience is used as a model for this description. The underlying assumptions are:
1. an organization can be seen as healthy when the work-structures and work-processes are
formed in a way that they facilitate the primary process;
2. an organization can be called healthy when it is capable of creative adjustment.
Next I want to describe what can be seen as an unhealthy organization. As to be expected, the
opposite of the two basic assumptions listed above, clearly describes what we can see as an
unhealthy or disturbed organization:
1. the primary process is blocked or hindered by the way the structure and processes are
organized.
2. the organization is no longer capable of creative adjustment, but has become fixed or rigid.
Based on these two descriptions I go into possible interventions to facilitate the process to
change an unhealthy organization into a healthy one. But before going into the interventions, I
will describe some characteristics or qualities, a manager, coach, consultant or trainer should
have, to be able to use these interventions in a way that facilitates the creative process in an
organization.
I finish the book with some notes on group phenomena, because much of our work in
organizations is done in or with teams.

5
Part 1 Basic concepts of Gestalt theory

6
1. Contact

Definition

Contact is the process of interaction between an organism and its environment.

It is the continuous process of mutual influence, which takes place at the boundary of
organism and environment, which means that contact is not just something belonging to the
organism, but something that belongs to both, organism and environment.

A good example of this interaction between organizations (seen as an organism) and

their environments is the introduction of mobile phones how they have influenced our
needs and style of communication. This product has created a totally new world of
communication with totally new needs and in its turn, these needs have influenced
organizations to improve and transform their phones into even more attractive products
by e.g. providing them with camera’s etc.

When we say that contact takes place at the boundary of an organism and its environment,
this word ‘boundary’ has two aspects:
1. the process of contact takes place at the boundary, organism-environment
2. the process of contact is limited (bound) by the possibilities and limitations of the manner
of contact.
Let’s make this more clear with another example.

When a person looks into the window of a shop, a process of interaction between him
and the shop starts to take place. This process takes place at the boundary, person-
shop, in fact where the person meets the glass of the window and is limited by the
possibilities and limitations of this boundary.
If, for example, the person can only get a small view of the products in the shop, he
might get a very limited idea of this shop and what can be bought there. This
perception however, is not only part of this person or of this shop, but is part of the
interaction between the person and the shop. It belongs to both.

When we look at our social contacts in an organization, we see the same kind of continuous
interaction and this interaction too takes place at the boundary of us, the other(s) and the
organization as a whole. Here too, the interaction is defined by the possibilities and the
limitations of us, the other(s) and the organization. After all, making contact is not something
we or the other person do(es) alone, but it is a process from both of us, in which we are both
involved. Limitations or disturbances of the contact are definitely limitations and disturbances
of the two of us or of the organization as a whole, because we are both part of this
organization and our contact also takes place within the context of this organization.
From this point of view, a statement like: “It is impossible to make contact with him” is for
more than one reason an invalid statement. 1
First of all, the statement suggests – by its generality – that the possibility of making contact
with this person is definitely impossible, regardless of who is speaking and so the speaker
denies his own part in the contact.

1
I do not include situations in which the other person is unconscious or in a coma, although even then the validity of the
statement can be discussed.

7
Secondly, the statement denies the fact that there is always contact, that there is always some
kind of interaction or influence.

With this, we come to a frequently made mistake concerning the word ‘contact’. Many people
use the word ‘contact’ to indicate or refer only to the consciously experienced or consciously
initiated type of contact, the consciously experienced or initiated connection with the other.
This brings them to statements like: “I am in contact with you now” or “Now I am out of
contact”. However, what people do not recognize here is that, regardless of the fact whether I
consciously make contact or not, there always exists some kind of contact the moment two or
more people are in each other’s presence.
Paul Watzlawick, one of the most important people in the field of human communication, calls
this phenomenon ‘the first law of communication’: “You cannot not communicate.”
(Watzlawick, page 42)
He means, that when two or more people are in each other’s presence it is impossible not to
influence (or to be influenced by) each other. So in this way, there is always some kind of
contact and for that reason it is better to differentiate between two aspects of the word
‘contact’:
 contact as a continuous process of interaction between organism and environment
 contact as a consciously initiated or consciously experienced moment of connection with
the environment.
The second form of contact can be seen as a moment within the continuous process of contact
that is already going on. Therefore we can differentiate four moments in the total contact-
process (Perls, page 456):
 fore-contact: something occurs, a new figure comes up. The body is the ground. There
is a physical sensation, but not yet a conscious experience. We notice something.
 contacting: the figure becomes more clear. There is awareness and the excitement
prepares us for action.
 final contact: we make the connection with the figure. It is a moment of confluence
with the figure, through which something new can arise.
 post-contact: the connection dissolves and we withdraw, while the figure is
incorporated into the ground. We integrate the experience. There is space again for a
new figure to come up. The moment of post contact fluently goes into a new moment
of fore contact.
In this sequence of the contact-process we find the second aspect of the word ‘contact’ in the
moment of ‘final contact’. It is important that we notice that the contact-process includes both
poles of the polarity, ‘approaching – withdrawal’.

Figure and ground

Two important words in the description of the contact-process need further explanation; the
words ‘figure’ and ‘ground2’. Just like the word ‘contact’, these two words are basic elements
in the Gestalt approach. They strongly connect with the concept of ‘contact’. In fact, the
process of contact can be seen as a process of repeatedly differentiating new figures against
changing grounds.
While looking at a field of sunflowers, one of the flowers can become more visible than the
others because of its color, height or movement. In terms of the contact-process we can say
that this one sunflower becomes a figure against the ground of all the other sunflowers in the
field.
2
In Gestalt literature the word ‘ground’ is used instead of the word ‘background’.

8
After experiencing the connection with this one sunflower for a while, we withdraw our
attention and the flower disappears again into the ground and maybe for one moment, the field
as a whole becomes the figure against the ground of its surroundings.
After awhile our attention will shift and focus on another figure in our environment or maybe a
figure inside us like a body-sensation, feeling or thought. It is a continuously, ongoing process.
Why a specific aspect becomes a figure depends on many factors and these factors too are part
of the interacting field. Some of them are:
 interests: if two people enter an office, the attention of one of them will be attracted by
the colors of the paintings, while the other’s attention is attracted by the kind of
furniture;
 experiences: a person who has been bitten by a dog will probably notice a dog in a
street much sooner than his friend who doesn’t have this experience;
 expectations: if we expect that a colleague would do something for us, we will notice
much sooner than the others that the job is not done;
 needs: if we are hungry, our focus will be more directed to food or commercials about
food than when we have just finished our meal.

So, in the process of making contact we are not focused on the total environment, but only on
one aspect, which becomes a figure at that moment. There is a continuous change of figures,
coming into the foreground against a changing background. It is not just the figure that
changes, but also the ground; the change includes the total field.
A well-known example of this phenomenon is the drawing on this page. The moment we focus
attention to the vase in the middle, this vase becomes the figure and the gray faces change into
a sort of screen behind it. On the other hand, if we focus on the
faces, they become the figure and the vase changes into a sort of
screen behind the faces.
In other words: the vase differentiates as a figure against a gray
background, or the faces are the figure against a white
background. There is a change in the figure-ground
constellation.
This brings us to a very important aspect of the contact-process,
which is simultaneously an important basic-principle of the
Gestalt approach.

Reality

There is not just one (objective) reality, but there always exist more (subjective) realities.
These realities are perceived by individuals, who in their perceiving and by their way of
perceiving, organize these realities in a specific figure-ground constellation.
This is an essential principle in the Gestalt approach of organizations. It means that there does
not exist such a thing as ‘the organization’. An organization too will always be perceived by
individuals, who do so in their own unique way. Each person involved (worker, manager,
customer or client) will make contact with the organization in his own unique way and in this
way, creates his own reality of the organization.
Even an internal or external advisor will not be able to give an objective description of the
organization, because he too contacts the organization in a subjective way based on his
background, interests, specializations, needs etc.
Just to be extra clear, I would like to underline, that what we are speaking about here, does
not only refer to the level of experience, but refers to the level of perception, which comes

9
before the moment of experience. It is a generally accepted fact, that every individual
experiences a situation (and in that way also an organization) in his own way. But what is
meant here goes one step further and refers to the fact that sensory perception of stimuli is
subjective, that there is no such thing as an objective reality. From the Gestalt point of view,
the existence of a so-called objective reality is denied!

Awareness

It is clear that in the process of making contact, perception has an essential place. Without
perception, contact is not possible. We are not just speaking of the sensory perception of the
outside world, but also of the perception of our inner world, our thoughts, feelings and bodily
sensations. In Gestalt literature, the word ‘awareness’ is used to cover all these forms of
perception. So we can change the statement: ‘Without perception, there is no contact.’ into
‘Without awareness, there is no contact.’ Therefore, ‘increasing awareness’ is the first logical
step and at the same time, the most important goal of the Gestalt approach, in psychotherapy
as well as in organizational consulting.
As soon as someone is able to increase his awareness of a situation, he increases his
possibilities to make contact with the situation. Contact is the basic condition to life and
growth. This applies to individuals as well as to organizations. When we do not have
awareness of what is actually going on in a situation (team, organization, environment etc.),
we do not have contact with it and therefore, we cannot deal with it. That is why changing a
situation always asks for a moment of standing still, a moment of awareness. We will come
back to this later. I would first like to describe the phases of the contact-process.

The contact-process

Beside the four phases of making contact, Gestalt literature mentions several other models for
the process of contact.. The names and descriptions vary a little, but the most essential
elements that come forward in all these models is the cyclical and the creative experience.
Therefore we encounter names like ‘cycle of experience’, ‘cycle of creative process’, ‘contact-
cycle’ or ‘Gestalt cycle of experience’. In this book I would like to refer to the model, which
Zinker and Nevis describe as the ‘cycle of experience’. Both of them use two ways of
representing the cycle: the circle on the left and the curve on the right.

action
contact action
mobilizing mobilizing contact
of energy of energy
fullfillment
fullfillment awareness
awareness withdrawal
sensation
rest
rest
sensation withdrawal

rest

Picture 1 While the cycle clearly represents the cyclical process, it is

the curve that represents the changes in energy during the process. In the process we see a
sequence of rest, mobilizing of energy, action and again rest. So the energy changes,
depending on the phase of the process.
Let’s look at the phases now and start with the rest phase.

10
Rest

The point of rest can be seen as the moment in the contact-process, where we have just
integrated a previous experience and are open again for new impulses. It is also called the
point of creative indifference (Friedländer in Lambrechts, page 37).
It is an empty point that leaves one open for new impulses. It is often compared to the basic
attitude described by Lao-Tse: the attitude that unites and enables opposites, without choosing
one of them. It is therefore not a matter of being out of contact, but rather a moment without
differentiation of a figure.
Perls himself calls it ‘the fruitful emptiness’. We can also compare it with the openness of a
child or a clown. Both of them can (still) be naïve and completely open for new impulses.
As adults we often anticipate new impulses from our imaginations or expectations.

Sensation

Out of this rest or emptiness, a new impulse can arise; first, as only a bodily sensation or
stimulus, of which we are hardly aware. Our need for food or drink announces itself as a
bodily sensation. It takes some time however before we really notice this sensation.
In a team or an organization there can also be impulses or sensations which we do not notice
at once, but it is possible that some people or outsiders notice it more readily.

Awareness

Therefore, the next phase in the process is noticing and realizing, the moment of awareness.
We become aware of the sensation; we notice it and realize its meaning. A figure starts to
differentiate against the ground.

One day I was present at a team meeting, where little was said and most people were
just staring in front of them. In the beginning I just noticed these signals, but after a
while I became aware of some tension in my stomach, which was not there before.
I realized that I was getting more and more tense and that it had something to do with
how this meeting was going on.

Mobilizing of energy

The more we increase our awareness, the clearer the figure becomes, and so energy will be
mobilized to make a connection with this figure.
Awareness calls upon us to go into action, to make the connection and mobilize the energy
that is needed.

During the team meeting I felt the urge more and more to say or do something.

Action

A logical next step is to go into action. Literally, we activate our muscles, e.g. to open our
mouth to say something. This action leads to making the connection with the figure, which has
become more and more defined against the ground during the process.

I opened my mouth and expressed my tension and by doing that, I felt more connected
to the other people in the meeting.

11
Contact

We make contact with the present figure. Contact, in the sense of ‘final contact’, as the
moment within the total contact-process towards which the process aims. It is the moment of
connection, which can lead to a new experience and fulfillment.

The expression of my tension stimulated others to share their feelings too and we had
an open discussion on how the meetings were perceived until then. Many people were
dissatisfied with the way things were. By taking the time to stop and think about this
dissatisfaction and discuss it openly, we developed more openness and gradually
people became more willing to do something about the situation.
I noticed that my tension had gone and that I was curious how we would go on.

Fulfillment

It becomes clear in this example; the moment of contact will lead to fulfillment or satisfaction.
Making the connection with the figure has led us to a transformation of the situation;
something has changed.

In the case of the team meeting, people shared their feelings and this led to a new
involvement, which created a completely different atmosphere. People were happy to
have spoken about the problem and were again willing to do something, to take
responsibility for the situation.

Withdrawal

In this moment, integration of the new experience takes place. The new experience becomes a
part of us and contributes to our growth; as an individual as well our growth as a team or as
an organization. We now can withdraw and let go of the figure.

After the meeting I had a short conversation with some of the teammembers. They were
really surprised and actually a bit embarrassed by how they contributed to the low-
energy of the meetings by just saying nothing. All of them had the intention to speak out
earlier in the future.
At the same time, I realized that my picture of the organization became more complete
through what I had heard and experienced during this meeting.

After the withdrawal we enter a phase of rest again, a phase in which a new impulse, sensation
or need can come up and a new cycle can begin. The continuous process of creative learning
and growing goes on and every new cycle will bring us one more step further in our growth or
development as an individual, team or organization. Because the process of contact is always
an interactive process between an organism and its environment, we do not only grow or
develop ourselves, but our environment grows or develops with us as well.
Of course this does not mean that every cycle will lead to a radical or fundamental change
which will at once be permanent. Fundamental, permanent changes surely need more than one
moment of contact, but we do have a very important basic principle here: for real, fundamental
change and transformation in individuals as well in teams or organizations, awareness and
going through the cycle of contact is indispensable.
So if we can increase the awareness of a team or organization, we create an essential condition
to improve the contact-process and therefore an essential condition for their development,

12
growth and transformation. In Chapter 6, I will go into this deeper when we will look at the
possible interventions we can make from a Gestalt point of view.

For now, I want to take a moment to focus on the concepts, ‘stagnation’ and ‘process’.
As I stated before, the contact-process is an ongoing process in which we are in a continuous
interchange with our environment. Because our environment is continuously changing, we too
are continuously in a state of change. We are involved in a continuous process of creative
adjustment; a process of not just passive adjustment to our changing environment, but
creative, in the way that we are also creating this environment. By interacting with the
environment, we are also influencing this environment.
Here we see a wonderful example of polarity in life: at the same moment, we are the creation
as well as the creator of our own environment. These two activities, ‘being created’ and
‘creating’, are connected to each other like two sides of a coin.
There is no coin with only one side. There are always two sides and without the one, the other
has no existence.
Still, people do have the tendency to deny this polar reality by allowing just one of the two
poles in their life. E.g. they perceive the reality as only something that is happening to them,
something they cannot influence. But it is exactly this (fixed) attitude towards their reality that
contributes to the fact that this reality stays the way it is.
This is an important principle in working with individuals and teams in an organization,
because there too, we see this phenomenon that people perceive themselves only as victims of
the system and neglect or deny their own creative possibilities.

Contact-mechanisms

A final word about the process of contact: in making contact with our environment we use a
number of mechanisms. These contact-mechanisms contribute to the interaction and so to the
contact-process. 3
These mechanisms were actually first described by Sigmund Freud, but he used the word
‘defense-mechanisms’ and by doing so, he emphasized their neurotic, defensive function. It
was Perls and his associates who deserve credits for describing the contact-increasing function
of the mechanisms.
The mechanisms I would like to discuss here are:
 confluence
 introjection
 projection
 retroflection
 deflection

Confluence

Confluence literally means ‘merging’. It is the mechanism that enables us to merge fully with
somebody or something. For just a moment there is no boundary, no awareness of being
different. “It is the appreciation of the equality.” (Lambrechts, page 470)
You can think of examples like ‘losing’ yourself completely in music or in nature or ‘losing’
yourself in somebody else during a moment of total intimacy. It is also the merging of a new

3
Besides increasing the contact-process these mechanisms (in their distortion) can also disturb or block the contact-process. I
will get back to this effect in organizations later in chapter 4)

13
experience or merging of nourishment, which we have taken in and which now becomes a part
of us. In the model of the contact-cycle, confluence fits into the phases of rest and contact: the
moment of creative indifference, which unites and enables polarities or opposites without
making a choice for either one of the poles or opposing elements; and the moment of merging
with the figure, the moment in which the figure becomes part of us.

Introjection

Introjection literally means ‘throwing inside’ (Lambrechts, page 471). It can be understood as
the mechanism which enables us to take something in from our environment. Taking in
nourishment as well as taking in ideas, are forms of introjection. Without introjection, we are
not able to learn anything and in a fact, we are not able to live, because we would not take in
any food. Taking in new impulses can also be seen as a way of introjection. In the cycle of the
contact-process, introjection fits into the phase of sensation.
Of course we can uncritically take in the ‘wrong’ things (wrong food, wrong ideas etc.). But
in that case we are dealing with a distortion of introjection. In its original meaning, introjection
has a clear function in serving life and growth.

Projection

Actually this is the opposite of introjection. Projection means ‘throwing outside’. This
mechanism enables us to put or bring something out of ourselves. This ‘something’ can be
something we no longer need like the remains of our nourishment, or it can also be something
new, like an idea in which we create something completely new in the world. For example, an
architect projects his idea of the new house he wants to design into the landscape in front of
him. Or the expressionist painter projects his inner images or feelings onto the waiting canvas.
We can also project ideas and images onto other persons, like we do when we recognize
something from ourselves in the other. This is a well-known phenomenon when meeting new
people: we assume all kinds of specific characteristics or qualities of the person based on
someone’s appearance or clothes. Because he dresses himself the same way we do, we assume
that he will resemble us in other ways too, and with that assumption, we feel more
comfortable making contact with this person. We call this phenomenon ‘projective
identification’.
Here, projection has a clear function in getting to know each other.

Since we also attribute a thought, meaning or feeling in the phase of awareness to the
sensation we noticed, we are actually projecting. Therefore this mechanism connects with the
phase of awareness within the contact-cycle.

Retroflection

Retroflection literally means ‘throwing back’. It enables us to direct our attention to ourselves
and by doing that, to take care of ourselves. Like Lambrechts describes, retroflection enables
us to make a split in ourselves between ‘somebody who is handling’ and ‘somebody who is
handled’, between ‘somebody who is observing’ and ‘somebody who is observed’.
In this way, we are able to observe ourselves and also to be in dialogue with ourselves. It
enables us to distance ourselves from ourselves and postpone the fulfillment of our needs or be
considerate of somebody else.
Retroflection also has to do with how we handle our energy. If we are considerate of
somebody else or postpone the fulfillment of our needs, we redirect or diminish the energy

14
which has been mobilized by the awareness of our needs. So therefore, retroflection is
connected to the phase of mobilizing energy.

By retroflecting, by being able to distance ourselves from ourselves, we are also able to laugh
at ourselves. So self-mockery and self-criticizing can be seen as a positive as well - in its
distortion - as a negative form of retroflection. In its distortion, we become too critical to
ourselves; we demolish ourselves and become paralyzed.

Deflection

Deflection means ‘not throwing’. Literally it means ‘distracting’. Deflection enables us to put
things into perspective, to reduce things or experiences to manageable proportions. It
diminishes the load or tension and in this way it also connects to the word ‘soothing’. By
deflecting we are able to bring somebody a shocking message in a manageable way.
We can place this mechanism in the phase of mobilizing energy as well as in the phase of
action. In the phase of mobilizing energy we can see deflecting as ‘having the energy
evaporate’ which will prevent us from coming into action. In the phase of action, deflection
will enable us to adjust or reduce our action, in a way that it better fits our environment or
ourselves (e.g. not overruling others).

It also connects to the phase of withdrawal, in that we are able to relativate, to let go of the
figure and become open again for new impulses.

I would like to state once more that all the contact-mechanisms have their distortions and that
- in this distorted form - they can interrupt or even block the process of contact.

aktie However, I think it is important that we first focus on their

Deflecteren contact
Conflueren
contact increasing functions, because it is with these functions
mobiliseren
van energie
Retroflecteren
that they enable us to make contact with the environment and
vervulling have their specific places in the contact-cycle.
gewaar zijn
Projecteren
If we primarily consider the defensive or distorting side, there
sensatie
Introjecteren is a chance that we will see them only as ‘neurotic
terugtrekken
rust
Conflueren mechanisms’, like e.g. Merry and Brown do in their book
“The neurotic behavior of organizations”.
With such a point of view we might easily ‘fight’ these mechanisms and forget that they also
have their positive function. We might focus too much attention on the neurotic side of our
clients and team’s behavior and by doing so, not support their growth or creativity. We would
increase their fear and uncertainty more easily.

In a later chapter I come back to these contact-mechanisms and their contact-increasing

functions as well as to the distorting side. But now, it is time to make the step to another
essential concept underlying the Gestalt approach, namely the ‘field theoretical concept’.

15
2. The field theory

The field theory, which was developed by Kurt Lewin in the first part of the 20th century, is an
important keystone of the Gestalt approach. As Lambrechts states: “The Gestalt approach has
its roots in field theory”. (Lambrechts, page 125) Or as Goodman writes about the Gestalt
approach: “It studies the functioning of the contact boundary in a field of organism and
environment”. (PHG, page 275)
What is meant by this concept, ‘field’ and what meaning does this concept have for an
organizational approach?

Definition

During the First World War, Lewin discovered that a field4 was perceived and organized
completely differently than when there is no war.
A haystack or a ditch, which normally might be perceived by a young couple in love as a nice
place to lie down and ……. do whatever else, might now in times of war be perceived by a
soldier as a possible hiding place, for him as well as for the enemy.
So because of these perceptions the young couple might run towards this haystack or ditch,
while the soldier will probably approach it much slower and more carefully. His behavior is
completely adjusted to how he perceives the field, to how he is in contact with this field, just
as the behavior of the young couple fits their perception of the field.
In both cases, the behavior of the people is related to how they perceive their environment and
their perception is defined by the situation in which they and the environment find themselves.
This phenomenon is exactly what Lewin tried to clarify with his field theory.
Every perception, and every behavior that arises from this perception, always take place within
a specific interactive field, which is bounded by time and space. Perception and behavior are
defined by this interactive field.
As Goodman states: “Contact is awareness of, and acting in, the field” (PHG, page 275) and
“All contact is creative adjustment of organism and environment”. (PHG, page 277)

Contact, as the ongoing process of interaction between an organism and its environment,
always takes place within a specific field and simultaneously creates the field and is created by
this field.
Here we see the same polarity we saw in Chapter 1: the mutual influence of an organism and
its environment within an interactive field.
In other words: we are speaking of an interactive field, in which all parts have an essential
function, contributing in an essential way. The moment one of the parts is removed or
changed, the complete interaction will change and so the entire field will change. At the same
time, we can say that an activity of one part of the field can only be understood within the
context of the field; after all, the parts are not isolated.

There is an anecdote about a group of psychiatrists who were asked to look at a photo
of a man, who is apparently looking backwards in a frightened way.
The psychiatrists were quite unanimous in their diagnosis: a clear case of paranoia,
until they saw the rest of the photo that showed the bull coming after the man.

4
The word ‘field’ here literally means a landscape

16
Holistic

It is clear that field theory essentially is a holistic view. After all, holism stems from the
principle that a whole and its elements, like men and their environment, are in a continuous
interaction with each other and that it is impossible to look at them as separate entities. The
moment an element is isolated from the whole, we no longer study this element, but we study
an element that has been changed because there is no interaction anymore with that whole, or
a different interaction has been brought about.
So from now on, every statement about this element will be different than a statement of it as
part of the whole.
As long as a statement is made about this element as if it is still part of the whole, it will be an
incorrect statement. For example, let us have a look at the waves in the sea.

When I want to study the waves in the sea, I can only do this by observing them from
ashore or by going in a boat on the waves and describe what I observe or experience.
The moment I try to catch a wave and put it in a basin and start to study the ‘wave’ in
this basin, my study will produce statements, which can no longer be seen as relevant to
the waves on the sea.
Of course I can say something about the elements of the water, but I will no longer be
able to observe and say something about the specific character of the waves in the sea.

Another basic principle that connects to the one before states that the whole is different than
the sum of its elements.5 Just as we cannot understand an element without seeing the context
of the whole, neither can we understand the whole if we just study the elements and put those
results together. It is exactly the interaction of the elements and the interaction of the whole
with these elements, which gives specific meaning to a specific field, which creates something
completely new.

The most clear and simple example of this concept is an apple pie; the taste is
obviously better as a result of the interaction of its combining elements, including the
heat, than if we would eat a hand-full of the separate ingredients; even when we do this
sitting on a stove in order to add some heat.

This means that we cannot get a picture of a whole by studying the separated elements. We
have to encounter the whole as a whole. Therefore the Gestalt approach is not an analytical
approach, but rather a phenomenological approach; an approach in which we have the
phenomenon ‘speak to us’ as a whole, or an approach in which we can only experience the
phenomenon ‘in our body’. This is a clear principle of existential phenomenology, which
underlies the Gestalt approach, because the existential phenomenology states that we are
always “in our body and integrated in the world, which as a meaningful whole sticks to our
body”. (Luijpen, page 65)

However, we still have not reached our goal if we try to study the whole as a whole, because
we are confronted with another fact, namely that there is always an interacting whole, an
interacting field. This means that every attempt to study the field is defined by the moment in
which we study it. Per definition it will always be snapshots in time of an ongoing process.
Therefore every statement is per definition, only a momentary statement, a statement that only

5
The original statement is: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. We prefer to use the word ‘different’ instead of
the word ‘greater’ because the word ‘greater’ suggests some kind of hierarchy between the whole and the parts.

17
has value in the here and now.
But now we are again confronted with the fact that we can not study the whole by studying
the separated parts, not even when these parts are ‘time-elements’.
It’s clear that field theory implies that making statements about reality can only be done while
acknowledging the relativity of our statements. It also means that a description of the
interacting field (individual, team or organization) is only possible in the form of a process
description, a description that does justice to the process-character, the dynamics of the
interaction. That is not simple. Making a process-description is almost like the child who tries
to make a drawing of the bird that flew away. The result of his drawing will probably be a lot
of lines and scratches, which can only be understood when we have witnessed the event of
drawing or hear the story of the child.

We still have not reached our goal regarding the relativity of our statements. We have seen
that we can not describe the parts isolated from the whole. We have also seen that we can not
describe the whole by describing all the separated parts and we saw that all our descriptions
are always momentary pictures and therefore, can only partly represent the ongoing process in
the field.
There is still another fact that defines the relativity; the fact that we are always a part of the
field that we try to describe. We cannot step out of the reality of the field. As an observer or
describer, we are not out of the field but we are an integrated part of the field, we are a
participant in the field. So our observation and our description cannot be seen as separated
from the interaction in the field, it is part of this interaction. As an observer we influence the
field, we are co-creator of the field and at the same time we are influenced and created by the
field.
We already met this same principle in describing the contact-process: there is always a person
or subject, who - as a part of the interaction subject-environment in a field - structures or
organizes this field in a specific, individual way. This figure/ground formation can not be seen
as separated from the interacting field, from which this person is a part. This means that the
field theory implicates that any process of observing and describing of what is happening,
always is an observation and description of the field ‘person-environment’ of which the
description is a part, which means that the description is always subjective and can only be
made in ‘process-words’ and even then can only be a partial representation of reality.

This implication has quite some consequences for our approach to organizations and the issues
that are present there. It means that we can never be a so-called ‘outsider’ who makes an
objective description of the situation and that therefore we have to be aware of the fact that as
soon as we have entered an organization, we have become a part of the field ‘we –
organization’. We will come back to this in more detail later.

The need organizes the field

Lewin describes another principle of field theory in the following statement:

“The need organizes the field in changing figure – ground constellations.” (Lambrechts, page
148)
Lewin states that especially our needs are the elements that structure our perception, our
awareness and in this way our environment in a specific figure/ground formation.
When we take this statement of Lewin literally, it would seem that he is introducing some kind
of causality in field theory. After all in this way of thinking, needs are seen as the cause of
what is happening in the field. However it must be clear that here too, the fact remains that
these needs are also part of the field. In other words we see again that there is an interacting

18
field, in which some need occurs, which organizes this field and therefore it is better to speak
of ‘the need of the field’ which organizes the field, than to speak of ‘my need’ or ‘our need’
which organizes the field. Because even when I express a need as my own, it is still a need that
occurs in the field in which I am a part and in this way, I express a need which is present in the
field.

It is clear that not every need in the field will have the same influence on the field. The
stronger the need is, the stronger will be its influence on the figure/ground formation.
Therefore it will always be the most dominant need of the field which will organize the field
into a specific figure/ground formation. Such a specific figure/ground formation is called a
Gestalt.

A Gestalt is in fact an organized whole. And because the creation of this whole is based upon
a present need, which seeks fulfillment, it is always a meaningful whole.
We already came across this principle in the description of the contact-process, in which a
sensation coming from an occurring need brings us into action to fulfill this need, after which
we return to a state of rest. The whole contact-process, the whole process of interaction is a
process of awareness and acting, of Gestalt-formation and Gestalt-completion in the field of
organism and environment.
This process of interaction can be seen as healthy, at the moment it leads to fulfillment of the
underlying need. In that case there is creative adjustment and growth or development.
Of course it can happen that this process stagnates and becomes disturbed. Where the fluent
process is seen by the Gestalt-view as the healthy process, the disturbed process is seen as
unhealthy.
As Goodman states it: “The abnormal psychology is the study of the interruption, inhibition or
other accidents in the course of creative adjustment.” (PHG, page 277)
I will come back to this later, when I go into the possibilities of a Gestalt-diagnosis of
organizations, because one of the ways to diagnose an organization is to look at the process of
Gestalt-formation or creative adjustment developing in this organization. (see Chapter 4)

Let’s make a short resume of what we have seen of field theory up till now.
 Our awareness and actions always take place in an interacting field (environment and
us)
 In this interacting field, all elements (physical, psychological, social and material) have a
function, which can only be understood in their mutual connection and connection with
the whole
 When new elements enter a field, the whole field will change
 The process of interaction can also be called the process of Gestalt-formation
 Every Gestalt-formation has an intrinsic direction, namely the fulfillment of the
underlying need that will create growth and development.

The Prägnanz principle

Now I would like to go further into this intrinsic direction for growth, which is present in
every process of contact and so, in every field. George Lambrechts quotes the Prägnanz
Principle of the Gestalt psychology, which states: “The field has a tendency to realize the best
possible form within the given circumstances.” (Lambrechts, page 127)
And further Lambrechts writes: “According to the Prägnanz principle, the field organism –
environment has a tendency, how handicapped or threatened the organism may be, to arrange

19
its interaction with the world or environment in the best possible way. (….) It tries to create a
whole which is as meaningful as possible. (Lambrechts, page 128)
So the intrinsic direction of every organism leads to the best possible fulfillment of the
dominant need. In other words, the organism will always go through the best possible
development for the organism as well as for the environment, because these two are
inseparably connected as parts of the interacting field. This principle, called the organismic
self-regulation by Goldstein, is one of the basic principles of the Gestalt approach.
Goodman writes about this when he speaks of the conflicts at the universities of those days:
“We believe that the free play of the faculties, concentrated on an actual case, will not lead to
chaos or crazy fantasies, but to a gestalt, which will solve the real problem”. (PHG, page 294)
And further on: “But where someone is in contact with his needs and the circumstances, it will
become clear that reality is not unchangeable, but ready to be created again.” (PHG, page 294)
“Many therapists speak nowadays about organismic self-regulation, which means, that it is no
longer necessary to prescribe, encourage or forbid ones management of eating, sexuality etc.
to increase health or moral. When one lets these things happen, they will regulate themselves
spontaneously and even, if they might be deranged, they will bring themselves back to trail.”
(PHG, page 294)
So when we take this as a starting point, it is not a question or issue of prescribing or
programming the formation of the field. It is much more a question of how we can facilitate
the process of self-regulation that is already present in every field. How can we create the
circumstances in the field in such a way, that the process of self-regulation can take place in
the most optimal form?
This is a very important principle, because acknowledging this principle of field theory, which
underlies the Gestalt approach, implies a totally different view and approach concerning
organizational issues. In contrast with the more result oriented or more structured approaches,
there will be less focus on prescribing or constructing change, but rather on developing or
increasing awareness to support and increase the self-regulating capability of the organization.
In field theory, concepts like causality or ‘constructability’ are put into a different perspective
because these concepts are based on a simplification of reality.

A causal way of thinking assumes a ‘cause/result relation’ between two successive

occurrences and - based on this relation - predictions are made about the future. Too little
importance is attached to the fact that besides the causality, there are also completely other
forces active in the field. From a field theoretical way of thinking, the influence of causality is
not denied, but it is reduced to one of the possible forces active in the field. Therefore, the
value or significance of predictability is also reduced to an appropriate proportion. After all,
predictability follows at least partly, along the assumed causal line between past and present
into an area between present and future.
Working from a field theoretical perspective means that we are willing to be open to what is
actually happening in the field, being aware of what is going on, being aware of the interaction
which we experience in the field, from which we ourselves are a part.
So it is not an analysis at a distance, but an experiencing of, or a meeting with the process that
takes place. In other words, it is a phenomenological approach of the field, a bodily experience
of the phenomena.
The field theoretical perspective implies fundamental acknowledgment of a continuous
involvement of ourselves in a field and that we can understand this field from within by
increasing our awareness. Any statement about this field stated as a universal statement or as a
statement that has no connection to our own experience as participant/observer is thought to
be impossible or untenable.

20
 This means that this statement, which I just wrote down, can not be seen isolated from
my involvement as a participant/observer of the field, of which I am a part, which
actually at the same time defines the relativity and the value of this statement.

Working from a field theoretical perspective in organizations, like we do with the Gestalt
approach, means almost per definition that this will be an exciting event. We are part of a field
which we lead or support and which we want to influence by increasing the awareness of its
participants. What will this bring about in the field? What will this mean to us? What kind of
movement will occur and in what direction will it go? Will we still be able to control the
process that takes place?
These are questions that have no clear answer; but they are also questions which can remain
open for the moment. After all, working with this perspective also includes the principle of
organismic self-regulation, which means that we may have confidence in the process; that we
can meet the process in an open way.
In this sense we can say, that from the Gestalt point of view we are not focused on directing
or controlling the field, but rather on “discovering and taking away the hindrances, which
hinder or block the self-regulation in the field.” (Enright in Lambrechts, page 44)
From this perspective, we are faced with a basic question: how open do we dare to be at
looking at our own fields? How open are we when looking e.g. at our own organization?
How do we encounter the developments within the organization? How much confidence do
we have in our organization and in its processes?

These questions are very important and they apply not only to managers, who look at their
own organization, but also to consultants or trainers who work in and look at the
organizations of others. And so this brings me to the statement that openness is one of the
most important conditions for being healthy as an individual as well as for a team or
organization as a whole.

In the next part of this book I will apply these aspects of Gestalt theory to a Gestalt approach
to organizations and its relevant questions.

21
Part 2 A Gestalt approach to organizations

22
3. The healthy organization, an organism in a field

In this chapter I want to describe what a healthy organization looks like from a Gestalt point
of view. What are the conditions for an organization to become healthy and what are the
characteristics of the processes in such an organization?

To begin I would like to state two basic assumptions underlying my ideas about a healthy
organization:
1. an organization is healthy when the field is organized in accordance with the primary
process;
2. an organization is healthy when it is capable of creative adjustment.

The importance of the primary process

As we know from field theory the most pregnant or most dominant need of a field will
organize this field in such a figure/ground formation that this formation will lead to the best
possible fulfillment of this need (Principle of Prägnanz).
When I look at an organization with this assumption, it implies that in an ideal situation, the
organizing process will flow out of the dominant need. In other words: the method of
organization should make it possible for the dominant need to come forward and be fulfilled.
The question then arises: what is the most dominant need of an organization?
In my view this question can only be answered with the statement: the most dominant need is
the most primary need, which once led to the start of the organization, the need underlying the
primary process.
This can be making cars, giving support to customers in legal affairs, giving care or support to
old people, baking bread or whatever. The dominant need has to do with the most original,
most basic activity of the organization. This is the start of the organization and so it should
also be the starting point for organizing or arranging the field.

In relation to this idea I would like to quote Wheeler, who states: “Experience occurs at the
boundary of organism and environment”. (Wheeler, page 58)
For an organization this means that new experiences take place at the boundary of the
organization (as an organism) and its environment, in the encounter of the organization and its
clients or customers in the primary process.
Using the Principle of Prägnanz as a starting point, the primary process should be the basis for
ordering the organization.
This may seem like stating the obvious but we only have to look at organizations to see many
examples of the opposite: organizations in which the primary process is not the basis for
ordering the organization, but unfortunately in which the primary process is hindered or
blocked by the way of ordering. Apparently there are other needs than the original primary
need or fears, which have become more dominant and organize the field (e.g. need for power
or fear of loss of control).

In nursing homes the primary process is the contact of the nurse or nurses-aide and the
old person who needs care. It would be logical, that nursing home organizations are
organized in such a way that the organization facilitates this primary process and its
underlying needs. However the opposite is too often the case. Many nursing homes
have a centralized, hierarchical structure which hinders the nurse or nurses-aide in a
flexible and spontaneous contact with the old person. Too often they first have to ask
permission, or the wish of the old person has to be discussed on a higher level.

23
Starting from the primary need, really means that the work processes are arranged in such a
way, or maybe better said are facilitated in such a way, that the primary process can take place
in its most optimal way.
This idea explains the phenomenon that after awhile in an organization where the formal
structure does not fit the primary process (anymore), an informal structure will occur, which
will fill in the gaps of the formal structure or may even completely replace the formal
structure. The organismic self-regulation of the organization will take its own path and avoids
or replaces the non-suitable structure.

We have seen this phenomenon many times in organizations which were merged into
bigger ones who laid down their own structure and culture on the smaller ones. In the
beginning it seemed that this new structure was working and that the culture in the
smaller ones had changed, but after a while a clear informal structure emerged, which
turned out to be the old culture but in a stronger form.

Facilitating management

It is wiser to have a good look around with organization to see what processes occur and to
support them, than to start interfering with these ongoing processes.
This is especially true if these spontaneous or informal processes stem from the primary
process of the organization; they will most likely be part of the self-regulating process.
This concept might be totally contradictory with what is usual in organizations: as soon as an
informal process occurs and interferes with the formal processes, it is perceived as
inconvenient or even threatening. There is a tendency to repress these processes.
However, encountering them openly and support them asks for a completely different attitude.
It asks for an attitude or approach in which faith in the process is an essential element. No
passive, blind faith, but more an alert, open faith, where one is still present and available. We
can compare it with the attitude of a seagoing sailor.

A basic requirement of sailing the sea, and especially to cross the ocean is - apart from
knowledge - having faith and being present, which also means being alert and available.
One must be present and alert to notice the changes in the circumstances, and available to deal
with those changes in an adequate way; having faith in the ship and its crew and in the route
that must be followed. Without faith, every crossing might become a frightening enterprise,
with the risk that precisely the wrong decisions or the wrong actions are taken out of this fear.
Every sailor knows that no wind means, not a lot can be done; patience and waiting attentively
to notice signals that the wind is coming back are the only options.
There is no sailor who will blow in his own sails when there is no wind, not even if he is
terribly eager to reach his goal or destination.
Unfortunately we can not always say the same about managers. However, I think that this
same attitude would be very appropriate for them as well.

Having faith in the (informal) processes which occur in the organization and supporting them
is a style of management which I would like to name ‘facilitating management’.
Facilitating management is supportive of the self-regulating capability of the organization,
having faith that this organic process will lead to an organizational form which best fits the
basic needs of the primary process.

24
This does not mean that we should leave everything to chance. That kind of attitude is what I
would like to name ‘passive, blind faith’, a sort of ‘laissez faire attitude’. It lacks alertness and
presence, it lacks contact.
Neither does it mean that we should leave everything to the base, that we should delegate all
responsibility to the people who are directly involved in the primary process. An intervention
like that is directive too and most likely will not facilitate the process which is going on.

I think that this is the reason why we have seen so many re-organizations in many
organizations during the past years, one re-organization after the other, without real basic
change in the primary process. Out of good intentions and also partly out of uncertainty,
changes and re-organizations have been copied from other organizations, other branches or
even from other countries and were implemented without realizing that they come from
completely other cultures or from organizations with completely different primary needs and
different primary processes.

During the 1980’s there was a trend in Holland to implement structures and strategies
from business organizations into health care organizations, including nursing homes,
to improve the primary process. However, these structures and strategies were so out of
place in these organizations and their culture, that the final effects were, practically
everywhere, totally nil.

The reason for this kind of action is an incorrect underlying assumption: when an organization
is not operating optimally we have to do something. If we do not do anything now, we will
miss the boat or go under and therefore we are looking at others, who are more successful,
and uncritically copy their structures and strategies.
Facilitating management is based on a completely different assumption, the essence of which is
having faith in the primary process and the self-regulating capacity of an organization.
This means that there is no such thing as a universal answer that we can copy. After all, every
organization is unique because of its unique combination of elements: target group, product,
goals, workers, environment, history etc.
Just like every Gestalt (as a meaningful, organized whole) is a unique Gestalt, so is every
organization unique as well. Therefore, the best way to improve the health of an organization
is to regularly look at the internal and external processes (to the total field) regularly and
quietly be aware of what is happening there, because within the ongoing process in the field,
lies the answer to the well-being of the organization.
Of course it can be useful to look at other organizations and other countries. Not to take over
or copy their ways of organizing, but to increase our awareness of our own organization.

I travel a lot in Europe and work for many different nursing homes and other
organizations in the field of health care. As a result of all these experiences, my
awareness of our Dutch organizations and also of these foreign organizations has
increased a lot.

Facilitating management means that we regularly take the time to stand still and meet the
processes in our organization with an open mind to increase our awareness about these
processes and to find out in what way we can constructively contribute to the health of the
organization. This asks for a phenomenological approach to our organization; an approach in
which we try to experience the phenomena which occur in the organization.

25
 The fact that many people hinder their personal growth and development by comparing
or judging themselves in relation to others and ideals about how they think they should
be, is also applicable to the organizational level.

I do not think that we can improve an organization by judging it with all kinds of ‘blueprints’
of how it should be. We can only improve the health of an organization by meeting it non-
judgmentally and by trying to understand it from the inside. This also means that a manager
can only develop his style of management for a specific organization by being aware of what is
going on and is needed in this organization. Even the style of management for a specific
organization has no blueprint. There are only some clues that we can take in account.

A few years ago I had the opportunity to attend a lecture given by one of the managers of the
zoo in Emmen (The Netherlands). Her lecture, entitled ‘Boss on top of boss’, dealt with the
different styles of living together and the style of leadership in the animal world.
What was most striking in her lecture was, that with every species of animals, from ants to
elephants, the style of living together and the style of leadership were completely in balance,
completely adjusted to the essential needs of the species and the environment in which this
species lives; completely in balance with the total field.
It became clear to me that in the animal world the best way of working together and form of
leadership is the one that connects to the basic needs in the interacting field of animal and
environment. So if this holds true for all animals, I think it is also applicable to this very special
animal called human being and therefore, to organizations.

I want to state that a healthy organization is characterized by an organizational form and style
of leadership that synchronizes the basic needs of its specific primary process. And according
to this, ‘facilitating management’ is not one specific form or type of management, but a basic
attitude of being open and willing to stand still at the process that takes place in the field of the
organization and its environment with faith that within this process lies the answer for further
development and growth.
And so the question of, what concrete structure or which concrete actions are needed, can
only be answered by looking at the field and its specific process. After all, the answers are
situated in this process. We only have to discover them, just like Michelangelo discovered the
angel in the stone on which he was working.
As already said, this does not only concern the processes inside the organization, but also the
processes that take place in the interacting field of organization and environment, it concerns
the total field.

And this brings us to the second principle of a healthy organization, namely the ability for
creative adjustment. After all, an organization and its environment are not stable entities, but
are both involved in an ongoing process of change. It is only possible to be a healthy
organization when it is capable of creative adjustment.

Creative adjustment

What does it mean to be an organization capable of creative adjustment?

It means that an organization is open to what occurs in the field as an idea or need, and
subsequently tunes its actions to this idea or need, so that realization or fulfillment can take
place, and growth or development will be the result. In fact, it is a matter of being open for
what there is and being capable of making contact with what there is; actually going through
the process of contact as I have described in chapter 1.

26
To make what it means for an organization to go through the different stages of the contact
process in order to be healthy and capable of creative adjustment more clear, I will go through
the stages and translate what this can mean on an organizational level.

Before going into this description I need to make two things clear:
1. Although it is normally necessary to go through all the stages to be healthy, organizations
will not always do this in the same way. Some stages may get more attention in a specific
organization, or some stages of the process are more clearly present in one organization
than in another. This has to do with the characteristics of the stage, as well as the
characteristics of the organization. It is possible that a specific stage represents the core
quality of an organization.

An advertising-agency has quite different characteristics (goals, tasks, kind of work,

etc.) than a nursing home. These differences are visible in the way these organizations
go through the process of contact. Where the advertising-agency probably pays more
attention to the phase of sensation (getting new ideas); the nursing home will pay more
attention to the phase of contact. These accents reflect the core-qualities of these
organizations.

This way it is possible, by the use of the cycle of the contact-process, to differentiate
between different types of organizations. I will come back to this later, but I have given an
overview of such types in an addendum at the end of this book.

2. We must realize that in an organization there is not just one process of contact going on,
but several at the same time, which interact with each other and also influence each other.
After all, there are several individuals and several teams, which go through their own
process, but because they are all part of this one field of ‘organization – environment’,
they are interconnected and represent an overall process. In fact, we see here the same
principle we observe in groups; every individual process is part of, and influenced by the
field of the group as a whole. Therefore we can also speak of a contact-process on the
level of the organization.

Now let us go through the phases of the contact-process and explore what these phases imply
on an organizational level.

Rest

The first phase in the contact-process is the phase of rest, which means that a previous process
has just closed, and so there is room again for new impulses. It is the openness of the fruitful
emptiness.
In an organization this phase can be expressed in several ways. One way is that this phase will
literally occur in the form of rest. The people involved are satisfied with the current situation
and with what is accomplished. There are no new initiatives planned (yet) and there are also
no signs of any problems. When we walk around in an organization where this phase is
present, we notice a large degree of satisfaction and little or no need for new changes.
However, there is not a passive, rigid or resisting attitude towards change, but more an open
attitude; an openness for new impulses or ideas.

A very nice example of this phenomenon is a nursing home in the neighborhood of

Rotterdam. This organization has gone through some wonderful changes in improving

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 its care for the elderly. They have developed a wide range of ‘products’ for their clients
and many old people use their facilities or choose to live in this home. Still they are
improving their ‘products’, but each time after a process of implementation they have a
period of rest. Walking around in this home and speaking with the people involved
(elderly, workers, administration, management) I practically always notice a large
degree of satisfaction. This degree of satisfaction is also reflected in the positive
feedback given in the annual questionnaire for clients, and the low rate of illness and
staff turnover among the workers. And last but not least, the financial results of this
organization are better than any other organization in the region.

Another form of expression of this rest phase is in a rather chaotic way; chaos in the sense that
there is no clear direction yet. A lot of things are happening, but (still) unstructured; there is
no clear figure (yet). So it is not a matter of negative chaos, but more a creative chaos, which
is so characteristic in a creative process. All kinds of signals or impulses are present, but there
is not a specific one, which becomes a figure yet.

There is a training-center in Holland where the workers are stimulated to take time for
new impulses and ideas. The center is located close to the beach and it is completely
accepted and even stimulated that the workers take a walk on the beach to get
inspiration or to brainstorm about ideas with colleagues. Very characteristic for this
organization is also, that these new ideas or impulses do not have to be put into ‘form’
immediately. Management and workers have a welcoming and appreciative attitude to
‘chaos’.

While writing this, I realize that maybe only a few readers will recognize this phase in their
own organization or the organizations in which they are involved because unfortunately, only
a small number of organizations allow themselves this rest phase or creative chaos. Especially
in the present time of intensity, quickness and control, people allow themselves only little rest
and little chaos, which actually allows little openness to perceive, what is really there.
Too often changes and reorganizations follow one another, and there is hardly any time to
evaluate or anchor the changes, not to mention taking a moment of rest or allowing the chaos.
It will be clear by now from the title of this book, as well as from other parts, that I prefer that
organizations take more time to experience this fruitful emptiness, more time to be open for
what really goes on in the field of the organization.

One nursing home organization, with whom I have worked for many years, invites me
each year to organize a couple of meetings of ‘standing still’ in one of their
departments. So each year another department has the opportunity to stand still and
reflect on how they are doing.
It is amazing how this process of ‘standing still and becoming aware of what is going
on’ contributes to better cooperation and through that, to a better quality of care.

Awareness, which arises from these kinds of sessions, goes deeper and helps us to move a step
beyond the level of symptoms and offers valuable information about repeating phenomena and
their underlying dynamic.
Of course it demands courage and trust to stand still and to be open for the process, especially
if ‘nothing’ (visible) happens.
Unfortunately, many managers as well as many coaches or consultants lack this kind of trust in
the process and the power of the self-regulating principle which is active in this emptiness. Out
of fear, of losing control or not being able to justify what we have done (maybe even nothing!)

28
old, familiar techniques and patterns once again arise. While this is very understandable,
grasping onto old, worn out responses, denies us the essential step that is needed, and the
team or organization will remain in its old familiar patterns.
I will come back to this point, when we look into the phenomenon of the fixed Gestalt in
Chapter 4 and later when we will look into possible interventions to enable this phase of rest
(Chapter 6).
Now I would like to continue to the next phase of the contact process in organizations.

Sensation

It is possible that from emptiness or chaos, a specific impulse, need or idea comes up. On an
individual level these new impulses or needs often reveal themselves initially as some type of
physical sensation. We notice something.
We can notice such physical sensations also when walking around an organization or
department. We notice a sense of agitation coming over us, or we notice some hastiness in our
speech while we are with representatives of a team. And sometimes, we really have very
strong, physical reactions in parts of our body like heavy pain in our chest or stomach.
Besides these physical sensations there are also verbal signals which represent the occurrence
of a new impulse, need or idea. We notice e.g. some specific repeating topics or statements in
different meetings or conversations which take place in the organization. In this phase it is not
yet clear what the meaning is of these physical or verbal signals, but especially because of the
repeating character or pattern of these signals, we can conclude that something new is ‘trying
to get to us’. Some vague idea is coming out of the chaos.

More than once we hear people say that they are very tired or we notice a sort of
irritation towards a specific kind of client or in several teams we repeatedly hear
statements like, ‘I miss the connection’ or ‘I would like to be more in touch with our
clients’ and so on.

Signals, which separately do not have much significance, gain in importance when we hear
them repeatedly and in several different departments. It shows that they are an expression of
an underlying theme. This theme can still be implicit, hidden or latent, but it is starting to rise
to the surface and become more explicit.
For a manager it is very interesting and also important to take the time to notice and realize
these signals. What kind of specific ‘sounds’ are perceptible in the organization?
What themes have recently been prevailing or present in the formal as well as informal
meetings or conversations? What kind of physical signals do I notice, when I walk around the
organization?
This is exactly the power of what is called ´managing by walking around’.
By literally walking around and being open for what is perceptible, we can gain a lot of
information. The challenge here is to walk around while really being open, being able to be
amazed or to be surprised by a reality (our department or organization) which we have known
for so many years. Only when we are truly open, can we perceive the signals and discover the
underlying phenomena.

Awareness

An important element of noticing the signals is that we trust these signals and take them
seriously as phenomena in the field. By doing so, we can become aware of the meaning of the
signals, and the underlying phenomenon clarifies.

29
Of course this meaning is always our interpretation that comes from our awareness of the
field, from the figure/ground constellation we create as part of the interacting field.
Just to be clear: awareness is not the same as analyzing or explaining the actual situation. It is
more a matter of realizing what is going on in the organization and seeing what kind of figure
or topic becomes visible.

In this way we can distinguish three forms or levels of awareness:

1. The focus on the figure: what is in the foreground or as Perls would ask his students: What
is obvious?
While listening to a manager who speaks of encountering a lot of resistance in contact
with his workers I am becoming tense and after a few minutes I am aware that my
tension is irritation, which is connected to his way of interacting with me.

2. The focus on the exchange of figure and ground: is there some kind of pattern in the topics
or items that become figure? In other words: what is the figure in the field of all the
different figures we have realized lately?
After a few moments of listening to this manager I see a pattern: every time I ask him a
question or try to summarize what he has just said, he interrupts me and corrects me by
saying, that this is a wrong question or that I do not understand him well. I am getting
a strong feeling that I have to live up to his expectations. This idea creates irritation
and resistance; at least in me!

3. To be open without a focus: the awareness of the undivided whole. This is a form of
awareness, which is practiced in several forms of meditation and is characterized by an
open, receiving presence (cf. the concept of creative indifference).
Sometimes in a team building session I ask the team-members to be open and to have
an image come up, which represents their team. This image can be a concrete symbol,
but it can also be just a combination of lines, colors or words. After a while I ask them
to draw or sculpture this image or to put the words in some kind of poem or fairytale
and then we will work with these drawings, sculptures, fairytales or poems. E.g. I ask
the others to state their awareness in relation to these drawings or poems.

All three forms can lead to valuable images or insights of what is going on in the team or
organization. Therefore it is nice to work with a combination of these three forms of
awareness in training or coaching programs. Actually it is amazing how much useful and
valuable information can be present in a team without the individuals being aware of it, not
even the person, who made the drawing, sculpture, fairytale or poem. For him or her too, it is
often surprising how much new information or insight he or she gets from this way of working
with awareness.

Mobilizing of energy

Most of the time, awareness of new ideas or new insights in a situation will lead to an increase
of energy in a team or person and if so, people want to do something with this energy. They
want to put it into action, like working on the realization of the idea or working on solving the
problem.
In many cases this energy also creates a feeling of togetherness: the drive to buckle down
together to get started or to carry the load, even if they have to go through a phase of
expressing disappointment or anger first. Expressing these feelings might be the expression of
the new mobilized energy.

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 Recently I worked with a Gestalt training group, which had been working together for
three years. The process in this group had become stuck. There were long
uncomfortable silences in the group and many people expressed feelings of tension,
loneliness and sadness. Some people even considered finishing the training and leaving
the group. Somehow they were not able to go into closer contact or some kind of
confrontation. In the past there were some moments in which they became more
personal, but afterwards they had fallen back again in their non-confronting, avoiding
attitude. This group loved to work in couples or triads. It had become their fixed
solution to deal with the situation.
During a weekend on group dynamics we took the time to stand still with these
phenomena and I invited the group to stay together as a group and face the impasse.
By exploring their needs and fears, by asking them to think of possible interventions for
their group and by supporting the persons who – in my view - represented a possible
next step (expressing feelings towards each other regarding the here and now
situation), they started to express their irritations and disappointments.
If we had had some kind of ‘energy-indicator’ during these days, it would have been
very visible how the amount of energy differed during the different sessions and
especially how the energy increased during the moments of confrontation.
At the end of the weekend the group was much more connected and people were
motivated again to continue their training.

How often can we observe a similar situation in organizations where the energy in a team has
declined to point zero because several members of the team withhold their irritation or anger.
And it is exactly this withholding, which costs a lot of energy.

In my work in health care organizations I often deal with teams of only women.
Generally speaking, these female teams are more focused on harmony than on
confrontation and therefore many times there is a lot of suppressed, hidden aggression,
which leads to this loss of energy and motivation. The moment however a confrontation
is facilitated or maybe even a bit provoked, a lot of energy is freed and the sky clears
up again.

The moment such blocked energy becomes free a lot of possibilities open up again. Of course
some containment is needed to be able to handle this energy, preventing it from taking the
form of some kind of nuclear explosion, but even an explosion can – if facilitated in a
constructive way – free a lot of energy.

In our Gestalt Institute several times we have noticed that in our staff-meetings the
energy goes down the moment we are only speaking of what is ‘bad’ about our
organization, and how easily the energy returns, the moment we start to think of new
ideas or new initiatives.

Action

Clearly in a healthy process the energy which is mobilized by awareness will automatically lead
to movement, into action. We commit ourselves (again) to a common goal or to a common
recognizing of the actual situation and the actual problems. This makes it possible to look
together for what is necessary to realize the idea or what is necessary in relation to the actual
problem.

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We can still have different views on what is going on, but there is common acknowledgment
that something needs to be done and that this concerns us all. This way we all take
responsibility for what is going on. The situation or problem is no longer defined as ‘non-
existing’ or as just ‘something’ of one or two people, nor will the responsibility for this
situation be put upon just one person. There is a common or shared responsibility.

For five years I have been working as an internal consultant for an organization. Part
of my job was to work with the management team to develop and implement a new
policy. However because of misjudgments on my side, and the centralized culture of
this organization, this new policy was increasingly delegated to me and became ‘Frans’
project’. After a while, only a few members of the management team were still willing
to take responsibility for this new policy and you could hear statements like “Frans
wants ……” or “You have to speak about this with Frans” with growing frequency.
By speaking about this phenomenon in a management team meeting, all of us became
more aware of the situation and the underlying dynamic. This led back to finding
common motivation and energy to change the situation.

Contact

In the contact process, making the connection with what is going on (idea or problem) is
called the phase of contact or actually, the phase of final contact. It is the phase in which we
make the connection with what has become visible as a figure in the field. This figure can be
an idea that we want to realize or a problem which needs to be solved.
By taking the time together to stand still and become more aware of, and in touch with the
most dominant idea or most dominant problem, we actually organize the field in such a way
that this will serve the realization of the idea or the solution of the problem. In other words,
we take responsibility for the realization of the idea or the solution.

I would like to digress for a moment and say more about the concept of ‘responsibility’.
The word ‘responsibility’ is often related to the word ‘guilt’ and with that connection
the word easily retains a particular connotation: to take responsibility for something is
then understood as pleading guilty. The question “Who is responsible for this?” is then
translated as “Whose fault is this?” or “Who can be charged for this?”
Especially in strongly hierarchical or centralized organizations, this can lead to a
situation in which nobody takes responsibility for matters which are not clearly on their
desk. Everyone sticks to his or her assignments and tries to find cover for criticism.
This way of using the word ‘responsibility’ is a denial of the field-concept.
As an individual or team, we are part of the complete field of the organization and the
fact that someone has done or has not done something can not be seen separately from
the whole field. As I stated in Chapter 2, one of the main principles of field theory is
that the whole is reflected in the parts. In other words: the behavior of an individual or
a team can never be regarded separately from the total field, the organization and what
is going on there.
Of course some people will now say, “Then I can never say anything to anyone
anymore about his behavior! Well that’s nice!” But that is not what I mean, because
this would again be a way of denying the field-concept and the concept of taking
responsibility. An individual or team can not, not have any responsibility.
As an individual or team we surely have a personal or common responsibility for what
is going on, responsibility in the sense that every situation asks from us to give a
response to what seems to be present. So we are responsible for the response that we

32
 give or have given in a certain situation. However this is with the acknowledgment of
the fact that we and the situation cannot be seen as separated from the total field in
which we derived this response. The field also determines our perceptions and actions.
We are dealing with the challenge of accepting an ‘and-and-thinking’ instead of
thinking in terms of ‘either-or’. We are ‘creator’ and ‘creation’ of a situation and
therefore we have responsibility and are not totally responsible. Only by
acknowledging this polar existence can we understand the concept of responsibility.
It is like a drawing of Escher in which people are walking up the stairs to end up
downstairs or the drawing where two hands are drawing each other.
In a Gestalt approach to organizations this concept of responsibility and the concept of
acknowledgement are especially important. Acknowledgement creates the possibility
doing something within a situation. As long as I perceive myself only as a victim of the
situation, or I perceive the others as the only responsible parties for the situation, I will
be stuck in dependency.
I am afraid that in our present society, with its culture of ‘passing the buck’ and ‘suing
everybody for everything’, it may not be easy to deal with ‘taking responsibility’ in
organizations in a healthy way.
Too often we see examples of people passing the responsibility onto others for what is
happening to them: the smoker charging the cigarette-company for his lung cancer, the
consumer charging the manufacturer because there was no warning that he could not
put his microwave in the dishwasher, the criminal pleading ‘not guilty’ because of
inaccuracies in the procedures, etc.
In organizations we see these phenomena as well, and that makes it difficult to ask
workers (including the management) to confront what is going on and take
responsibility for it.

Going through the creative process in a healthy way may mean that we need more time, that
the tempo of the change processes or developments will be slower than we want. This may not
always be the case. Organizations can also be fast and dynamic in a healthy way. This has to
do with the nature of the organization, the nature of the primary idea or need in the field of
this organization and its environment, and therefore with the nature of the primary process.
An advertising-agency or press agency will be much faster and dynamic because of its nature
than e.g. a nursing home. If we would enforce the tempo of a nursing home onto an
advertising-agency the creativity in this agency would probably decrease to zero rapidly. On
the other hand, it would not be very clever to lay down the tempo and culture of a press
agency onto a nursing home organization. It would become very hectic.

During the past ten years this tendency has been a fact in many nursing home
organizations in the Netherlands. There were a lot of attempts to enforce
characteristics of dynamic, profit organizations onto nursing homes organizations. This
led to many reorganizations and fusions, but unfortunately not (always) to
improvements of the primary process. It led rather to a stand still in the development of
the primary process.
After all, the creative process in an organization cannot go faster than what its roots,
primary need, culture and the characteristics of its field can manage or allow. Each
type of organization has its own tempo and culture, whether we like it or not.

This brings us to another important aspect of connecting to what is going on: acceptance. In
making contact with what is actually present, in making the connection, there is also the
challenge to accept what is present, both the possibilities as well as the limitations.

33
 In other words: if a snail were to be able to run, the dear Lord
would surely have created him differently and if a deer were to be
able to climb a tree, the Lord would have created a different
prototype. However, sometimes it really looks as if managers
demand from themselves, as well as from their workers, that they
become a deer climbing a tree.
Only by accepting what is present, can we really make the
connection and just then the possibility for movement occurs.
This phenomenon is known as the paradox of change, but actually
it is not as paradoxical as we might think, because accepting is not
a passive attitude, it is not a matter of doing nothing. Accepting a
situation means facing the existential facts of a situation or organization and being willing to
take responsibility for them.
It is in exactly doing this that something will change in the consciousness of the people
involved, and that will change the total field; thereby bringing movement.
Whereas, when we are only oriented towards change because we are not able or not willing to
accept what is present, strangely enough, there will be stagnation or repetition. This is why
Perls always said: “Don’t push the river, it flows from itself.”
Does this mean, we just have to wait and see and stick to the old ways? Of course not. We
need inspiration and new ideas; we need to look forward and make plans for the future, but
these plans or ideas, and the realization of these plans and ideas, can only start from an
acknowledgement and acceptance of the actual present situation.
Real change or development asks for a balance between having our aspirations and goals, and
being able to face and accept the current situation. It is like a tree rooted in the ground and
from there reaches up in the sky with its branches.
This does not mean that as soon as we are aware and in contact with what there is that an
organization will change right away. If it could only be that simple!
Awareness, contact and acceptance form an important step, but the realization of change
needs time and care. Time and care are crucial integration and implementation, and therefore
the two next and final phases of the cycle are very important, the phases of post contact:
fulfillment and withdrawal.

Fulfillment

The phase of fulfillment is where we integrate what we have achieved during the previous
phase of contact. E.g. the realization of a new idea or the development of another atmosphere
in the team once it faced the underlying irritations
Now it is important that we integrate this change or new awareness, otherwise we run the risk
that it will slip away. This phase of integration is just as important as the others and therefore
demands attention too. Organizations too often move on to a new project before an ongoing
project has had a chance to anchor.
We can compare this with a young tree which we have just planted into the ground without
taking the time to put earth on it and give it water.
Integration is the phase in which changes and developments are implemented, putting them
into practice, making them part of our everyday life.
When we have gone through the creative process in a healthy way, the implementation of
change will normally not cause many problems because the change comes from a need or idea
that was already present in the field, in the primary process. We do not have to force it onto
people neither do we have to convince them.

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On the other hand, it is a common fact that in every process of change there is a tendency for
individuals as well as for teams and organizations to go back to the comfort of the old, familiar
situation. That is exactly why it is so important to support and secure the integration and
implementation of new achievements.
Just like the young tree which we support by giving extra care and putting in an extra stake,
we need to support individuals, teams and organizations in anchoring the new achievements.

This is one of the reasons, I always plead for follow-up sessions, intervision or
supervision sessions as part of a training-program. If we only do an intensive one or
two days of training, the energy and motivation can be very high right after the
training, but how will it be after a few weeks? “Now that the magic has gone …”

Withdrawal

It is only when a change or development has been deeply implemented that we can let go (we
can take away the stake) and withdraw in order to enter a new phase of rest and once again be
open to new impulses.
The process of letting go and withdrawing includes a moment of being satisfied with what is
accomplished, the change or development we have achieved.
This is the moment of celebrating our success. To take the time to lean back and look at what
we have accomplished is an important part of the total creative process. We need to be able to
be satisfied, enjoy the success, give each other compliments and have this shared feeling of
‘YES’, like the little boy, who just made his first goal in a soccer game.
It is also the phase of harvesting and receiving, because by harvesting and receiving our
success, we are able to let go. If we do not take the time to do this, there is a chance that we
will be stuck in ‘yearning’. This is when we accomplish a lot, but are not able to enjoy the
fulfillment, and therefore we can not let go and perhaps never stop. This might be one of the
causes of ‘burning out’: no longer being able to harvest and receive, to feel fulfillment and
satisfaction, and as a result, someone keeps looking for fulfillment until he, sometimes literally,
drops.
The culture in an organization influences such a situation as well. In an organization which is
characterized by perfectionism, a worker who tends to be a perfectionist, will resonate
strongly with this organizational culture and fall into the pitfall of always going faster and
further. That is one reason why it is so important to take the time for this phase of harvesting
and letting go. By doing this, we can end the cycle of the creative process and be open again
for a new cycle.

By going through the cycle in this healthy way, the organization will grow in its ability to
adjust creatively. The organization will be more and more able to tune into new impulses and
developments inside and outside the organization. It will be in dynamic contact with its inner
processes, as well as with the processes in its environment, and from this contact it will
develop in a healthy way. Not only qualitative, but also quantitative growth can be a part of
this development if this quantitative growth is connected to the underlying primary need of the
organization.
It is a well-known fact that psycho-dynamic fields have a tendency to organize themselves,
according to the self-regulating principle, towards more meaningful and more encompassing
entities. So in this way quantitative growth can be part of a healthy organic process of an
organization too.

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Unfortunately not every organization is able to deal with what is going on in the field in a
healthy way and that is why we see all kinds of stagnation and also many examples of wild
growth including the exploitation of people and environment.
In the next chapter I would like to use the model of the creative process again to look at what
I call ‘unhealthy organizations’ and describe what can go wrong in this creative process, and
what forms this can take within an organization.

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4. The disturbed process; a model for organization-diagnosis

In the previous chapter I described what we might define as an healthy organization from a
Gestalt point of view. The central issues were:
1. a healthy organization finds its base in the primary process;
2. a healthy organization is capable of creative adjustment.

It should be clear that the opposite of these two basic assumptions describes what we can see
as an unhealthy or disturbed organization:
1. the primary process is blocked by an organizational form or pattern
2. the organization is no longer capable of creative adjustment, but has become fixed. 6

In this chapter I will explore this concept of the unhealthy organization in the following steps:
 describe the concept of “unhealthy”
 describe the phenomenon of the fixed adjustment
 use the cycle of the creative process and contact mechanisms to describe examples of
fixed organization behavior.

The disturbed process

Following in the footsteps of Perls, Hefferline and Goodman, I would like to describe an
unhealthy organization as an organization in which the creative process has become disturbed:
“Abnormal psychology is the study of the interruption, inhibition or other accidents in the
course of creative adjustment”. (PHG, page 277)
In an unhealthy organization the creative process does not fluently move through all the
phases, but gets stuck. The process is interrupted or one of the phases is so dominant, that the
other phases in the process will hardly get any attention.
As described in the previous chapter, the fact that a specific phase is more dominant does not
always mean that we are dealing with an unhealthy situation; it can also mean that this
dominant phase represents or expresses the main quality of the organization.

A research-company, normally speaking, will be very good in collecting and analyzing

data. Their main activity is strongly related to the first phases of the process, the phase
of sensation (noticing stimuli) and the phase of awareness (realizing the meaning). So
it is natural that in a research-company these two phases might be more dominant.

This dominance can influence or define the total culture of the organization. It may be not only
very good in collecting and analyzing data about their customers, but also they might be quite
capable of becoming clear about what is going on in connection with their own internal
process. In this way, the organization is characterized by a specific phase of the creative
process, because this phase is strongly connected to their primary process. This is not a sign of
illness, but rather the sign of a healthy organization: the contact-style fits the basic need of the
organization. This principle is also expressed by the statement: “Practice what you preach”,
meaning that an organization shows in its own behavior (internally and externally) what it
represents or what it sells as its core-product.
However there are situations in which a specific phase has become so dominant that this can
lead to a disturbance of the process.

6
This fixation is in fact the best possible form of adjustment at that moment.

37
 This same research-company appeared to be very capable of becoming clear about
what was going on, but they were not capable of finding the right answers or actions.
They just kept on researching and analyzing.

Another type of disturbance in this sense is where an organization presents a specific quality in
its outward behavior, while at the same time this same quality is almost totally absent in the
internal process.

I have seen some social health organizations in Holland which were widely admired
and respected for their high quality of social and caring work in the ourside world. At
the same time it was clear that their management dealt with the staff and workers in a
terrible, unbelievably sloppy way.

In these two cases we can see a sort of split; the poles that belong to a specific phase or
quality have become disconnected. One can expect that in these situations the disturbances
will lead to blocks or disturbances in the primary process and that, if left unchecked, this could
lead to the downfall of the organization; the organization might go under by virtue of its own
success or main quality.

Before exploring the source of this kind of fixation, I first want to make clear that whether an
organization is healthy or not is never the result of just one person or one team or one part of
the organization.
Based on the principles of field theory, the illness of an organization is always caused by
something that concerns the whole interacting field. After all, an important fact within field
theory is the existence of the continuous interaction between the different parts and between
these parts and the whole. The illness of an organization, per definition, becomes an illness of
the whole interacting field; even if it is only visible in, or expressed by one part of the
organization.
In organizations we often see a tendency to attribute the illness to only one person or one
department and by doing so, this person or department will become the so called ‘identified
patient’ or ‘black sheep’, while the rest of the people or the other departments wash their
hands in innocence.
Even when a team or individual is functioning significantly worse or could be called ‘ill’, it still
exists within this field, and so very probably expresses something that concerns the whole
field. Through this team or through this individual, the illness of the total organization is
revealed.
This does not mean that there is nothing wrong with this team or this person. Because of their
own characteristics, they probably resonate strongest with the illness of the organization. If we
were to observe the illness from the level of the individual only, there would be a big chance
that we would miss the underlying dynamic. That is the reason, why it is important to get a
picture of the whole, to understand the phenomenon of the total field and this is only possible
if we are really willing to look at the total organization, including ourselves as a part of this
organization.
In other words, as a manager, person in charge, consultant, coach or trainer we have to
realize, that our diagnoses of a disturbance should always refer to the total field and so also
refer to our part in this interacting field. Without acknowledging this principle, we are denying
the field and denying our own interactions with the field. Diagnoses that are made with such
denial will definitely be amputated diagnoses or statements. Eventual interventions, based on
these amputated diagnoses, will fail or even worse, may become contra-productive which will
not contribute to the health of the organization.

38
The fixed adjustment

How does stagnation or fixation occur within an organization and what are the typical
characteristics of a fixed situation?
To make this clear I want to use a model of the fixed gestalt, based on an article by George
Wollants in the Dutch/Flemish magazine ‘Gestalttherapy’ (1994), that I further developed
over the past years, based on my experiences with clients (individual and groups) in
therapeutic settings as well as in
Desire organizational settings.
The principle of the fixed gestalt
need fear
can be applied on an individual
creative adjustment or organizational level because
(solution) all these levels refer to living
organisms in a field.
correcting confirming I will begin with the individual
experience experience
| |
level and ‘translate’ it into the
conclusion/ ___ __ conclusion/ other levels from there.
conviction | | conviction:
Wow, it can be different | | On an individual level, we can
You see! You have to …….
| | | | say that one of the fundamental
flexible, open | | rigid, fixed
| | | |
drives for a person to work in a
capacity for creative | | specific organization is that he
(creative) adjustment
adjustment increases | | gets fixed has the desire to develop himself
| | | | and to contribute something
new situations are | | new situations arevaluable to the world and that he
challenge ___| | threats
| | |
believes that this organization
live, free energy, grow | recurrence of can offer him this possibility.
|___ unfinished gestaltCommon sense and
| organizational research says that
survive, stagnation,
every individual has the desire to
fixation
create or contribute something
of which he can be proud, the desire to contribute his qualities in a unique positive way to the
goals of the organization.
Out of this more general desire he will have more concrete needs like fulfilling specific tasks or
being involved in interesting projects or activities, and of course also the need to be
appreciated.
When these basic needs are fulfilled, the person will feel happy and satisfied by his
organization and will likely to be motivated to contribute more, even more than his original
task. He will take on new tasks or activities and each time a ‘job’ is done, he will fluently go
on to the next one, enjoying his work.7 He does not need to be motivated because he is
motivated.
If however, his needs are not fulfilled, then something else can happen.
Imagine if a person fulfills his task in a specific way and does not get any appreciation, or a
person tries something new to improve the work but his initiative leads to dissatisfaction
among the workers and in the end, to a worse quality of work.
Or imagine that a person’s initiative is blocked. If this blockade is for just a short while, the
person’s motivation and energy will find its way through, but if the blockade stays longer or
occurs repeatedly, a ‘fear’ may develop.
7
Actually we can recognize the process of creative adjustment here.

39
The person may fear that the next time, this will happen again, that he will fail again or that he
will be blocked again or even worse that he will be punished.
If his need is not so strong or if he is not truly convinced of his ideas, he will probably let go of
his needs or ideas and continue with something else, but if on the other hand his need to
contribute is stronger or if he is really convinced of his ideas, he will surely try again.
Possibly he will do it in a more adjusted form like e.g. by first doing it in a hidden way before
going public or by first trying to gather different opinions before putting it on the agenda, or
by changing some elements of his original ideas etc. In fact he is looking for a solution, which
can be seen as looking for some kind of creative adjustment.
If this person finds that his specific, adjusted form will work, he will probably use this form
(this solution) again next time and maybe he will use it as long as it is needed.
In this way it has become his best possible way to deal with his needs and his ideas in this
situation. From here, two paths might be followed.

1. The creative route

The first thing that can happen (the left route in the model) is that the person will receive
correcting experiences. This means that in a new situation, when the person comes forward
again with some plan or initiative, he finds out that he does not have to use his solution or his
adjusted form, but that he gets appreciation spontaneously or that his ideas work out well.
At first the person may have difficulty understanding or trusting this new situation. He was
used to the old situation in which he was not successful, but the more these correcting
experiences take place, the more he can come to the conclusion: “Wow, it can be different!”

A unit-manager, who met a lot of resistance in his unit every time he introduced a new
idea, became more and more unsure and hesitating in speaking about his plans. Finally
he lost almost all his courage and motivation to innovate or improve the unit.
Then he was asked to take over another unit for a few months and to introduce some
changes there. When he presented his ideas to the workers during a unit meeting,
people responded enthusiastically. He was totally surprised and actually waited for the
resistance to come later, but the people remained enthusiastic and even asked him how
they could contribute.

The more often a person experiences such correcting situations, the more his conclusion, that
it can be different, will be confirmed and so it can develop into a conviction: the conviction
that it is possible to come forward with new ideas or to take initiatives or to speak openly
about problems in the team, company or organization. One also develops the conviction that
you do not always have to hold on to your adjusted way of acting, because it is possible to act
in different ways. In this way a person will feel stimulated to increase his flexibility and
creativity.
Therefore we can state, that the more open the management responds to new ideas and new
initiatives, the more open, spontaneous, flexible and creative people will be, the more free and
secure they will feel to come forward with their ideas, and the more open they also will be for
new initiatives or plans from others.
New initiatives and situations will be perceived as challenging, new learning-experiences rather
than as threatening. And just by this attitude new situations will indeed become enriching new
learning-experiences and in its turn increase the ability for creative adjustment again.
Even difficulties and crises in the team or organization will probably be seen and met as
challenges. Of course people will not be happy with a difficult situation, but they will be able
and willing to take responsibility for it and will have the faith that they can fulfill or solve these
difficult situations.

40
 In a nursing home there was a sudden outbreak of a virus. Many patients and workers
became ill. The manager of this organization did not panic, but faced the situation
openly, made the necessary steps including being open to the press.
It was remarkable how calmly and adequately the whole organization responded to this
crisis.

It gives joy to contribute to an organization in this way and because of this joy, the
environment benefits better quality.
It is well-known that when workers in an organization are satisfied and do their job with
pleasure, the product has higher quality. We can see a very nice interaction here: the joy of the
workers leads to more quality, which increases the satisfaction of the customers or clients,
which makes the contact between worker and customer/client more pleasant, which stimulates
the workers to improve the products according to the wishes of the customers or clients,
which leads to more quality and more satisfaction. In this way, we can see that the satisfaction
of the workers and the satisfaction of the customers or clients are not contradictory interests,
but common, shared interests. It is exactly in the contact with the customers or clients, that the
original desire or need of the organization can be realized and improved.
This is an example of the basic principle of contact, as discussed in Chapter 1: contact, as a
process of creative adjustment, takes place at the contact-boundary of an organism and its
environment. Translated to organizations, this principle means that contact (as a process of
creative adjustment) primarily takes place at the boundary of the organization and its
environment, and that is where the organization is in touch with its customers or clients.
A positive interaction at this boundary inevitably leads to a positive interaction within the
whole organization and vice versa: there can only be a positive interaction at the boundary if
there is internal positive interaction, a form of creative adjustment.

2. The fixed route

Now, if we look at the other route, namely at the possibility that someone does not receive
correcting positive experiences, but instead has many negative confirming experiences, the
conclusion will be: “You see, you have to ….” or “You better not ……”
This conclusion too can develop into a conviction. “What’s the use? Things never change over
here!”
One feels a loss of perspective and gets increasingly stuck in the conviction that this form of
creative adjustment is the only one. And so, the original creative adjustment turns into a fixed
adjustment. By hanging on to this fixed adjustment, the principle of the self fulfilling prophecy
will do its work and thus, what the person fears most and what he is trying to avoid with his
fixed adjustment, will happen over and over again.

The new unit leader, who was afraid of not being accepted as leader, interpreted the
looks and reactions of the unit members as being critical, judgmental and because of
this he did his uppermost best to please them. This led to so much irritation in the
others that - just because of this - they did reject him in the end.

The manager who, because of previous negative experiences, came to the conclusion,
that he had to instruct his workers in detail otherwise they would never do something,
was confirmed in this conviction over and over again. The moment he did not give
detailed instructions, people waited and undertook nothing. “We don’t know what to
do. He didn’t tell us anything.” And this manager sighed: “You see!”

I feel it is important to stress that such a unit leader or manager became fully convinced by

41
their previous experiences, that their way of creative adjustment was the only possible way to
deal with these situations. If they knew of other possible ways, they would surely try them.
Usually they know that they are not happy with the way it is. They survive rather than enjoy
their work.
And so the original creative adjustment, which they felt was needed to fulfill their tasks, has
turned into a harness or armor in which the person has become a prisoner.

The Flemish artist and writer Bruno Paul de Roeck gives a very nice description of this
phenomenon in his book De Loernoot (the glare nut). He describes a little boy, who
hides himself from his mother in a small nut with only two small holes to listen and
glare through: “This nut was fantastic to survive. Better to be lonely on an island, than
to be swallowed by the sea. Better to be a worm in a nut than to be a mother’s child”
(De Roeck, page 12)

Still this harness or armor, no matter how mutilated it may seem, is the person’s best possible
way to interact with his world. It is his maximum degree of creative adjustment within the
current situation. With that it is important to see and realize that the person came to this form
of creative adjustment from a state of emergency.
This principle is important to managers, consultants or coaches who have to deal with a
manager, worker or team that is stuck in some form of creative adjustment. The basic principle
here is: a client or worker displays his best possible form of creative adjustment. However
contorted or irrational the behavior of a client or worker may look in the eyes of the manager,
consultant or coach, for this person it is the best possible way to respond to the situation.
Most of the time, rejecting that person or putting him under pressure is only negatively
effective. It leads rather to another confirmation of the original negative experience and
thereby increases the fear more than that it will reduce it. Apart from that, it shows that there
is no respect for the potency that is present in this form of adjustment.
Only with respect and gentleness can we invite the person to look at his ‘fixed adjustment’, his
fixed way of behaving and at the underlying needs and fears.
As we will see later on, it is exactly this attitude that creates the possibility to develop a
correcting experience, which (after a while) can enable the person to let go of his fixed form
and become more flexible and to release his potential. (see Chapter 6)

The stagnated process

Now let’s use the cycle of the creative process again to look at what these fixations can look
like in the different phases of the cycle. What can happen or what specific characteristics can
show up when the process is blocked or stagnated in a specific phase?
For this description I also used Merry & Brown, who describe possible blockades and
stagnations in the cycle in their book also. However Merry & Brown limit themselves to a
description of only three phases: the phase of awareness, the phase of mobilizing energy and
the phase of action. I would like to go through all the different phases, because in my
experience, stagnations can occur in all phases and that each type of stagnation has its own,
specific characteristics.
Further, I want to make a connection between the stagnation in a specific phase and the
distortion of the contact-mechanism that is dominant in that phase.

Rest

The phase of rest is characterized by an undifferentiated openness, an emptiness, in which new

42
impulses can arise.
When the process stagnates in this early phase, it means that new impulses are not noticed.
There is no sensation of unrest or need and the individual, team or organization remains in this
emptiness. Such emptiness will not be perceived as a fruitful emptiness, but more like an
impasse. As an uncomfortable situation, in which no one knows what is going on and no one is
capable of breaking through this impasse. Maybe there is some movement, but it is not a
directed or focused movement. It is rather a chaos or perhaps even the opposite: a passiveness
or lethargy, in which every one turns inwards and waits for the ‘deus ex machina’8.
Stagnation in this phase is also characterized by the fact that no one comes into the foreground
or makes himself clear. Everyone prefers to stay a part of the masses. To come forward means
to differentiate from the others and that is practically impossible in this phase. Therefore the
dominant contact-mechanism in this phase is confluence, which – in its distortion – leads to
the phenomenon that everyone ‘disappears’ in the masses and has no or little need to stick out
his neck and reveal his identity.
Communication is characterized by frequent use of words like ‘we’ and ‘together’, the word
‘I’ hardly ever comes up. Team members have a tendency to show themselves as a sort of grey
mass, sometimes even literally as a grey mass in the way that they dress or speak in a uniform
way.
In some organizations, work areas or sub cultures such uniformity and confluence is
appreciated like e.g. in some army departments, hospitals, religious or political groups or
clubs.
The stronger the accent is on uniformity, confluence, getting all the noses pointed in the same
direction; in fact on conformity, the less one can expect individuals to develop new initiatives.
Taking an initiative means, you have to stick out your neck, to differentiate yourself from the
masses. And that’s exactly what is discouraged by such a culture.
Passivity is created and however strange it may sound, in the end there will be chaos.
Nowadays, we know from the so-called ‘chaos theories’ that: “He who sows order, will
harvest chaos”.

Another characteristic of this type of fixation is that people do not notice any signals. People
do not notice what is going on inside or outside the organization. The organization seems to
be ‘sleeping’.
As an outsider you may notice all kinds of signals (typical remarks, typical behavior, specific
reactions, remarkable mistakes or failures etc.), but people in the team or organization do not
recognize them. And even when they are mentioned, the signals still are not recognized. In a
way you could say: the signals do not reach the people.

Sometimes when I am working with a team I notice all kinds of insulting remarks being
made or I notice that some people are made a fool of by others.
When I ask them, how they do perceive their way of cooperation and communication,
they easily state that they have a wonderful way of cooperation and communication.
Even when I mention some examples of behavior I have observed and tell them, how I
would feel if this kind of behavior was directed towards me, it is still possible that the
team members only answer: “Oh yeah, but that’s our normal way. We’re used to that.
It doesn’t mean anything.”

8
The expression ‘Deus ex machina’ comes from ancient Greek drama, in which at the end of the play a machine was used to
have God come down from heaven to speak the final words or to make the final relieving action.

43
Merry & Brown give a wonderful list of remarks you can encounter in organizations when an
outsider mentions these specific signals or problems (Merry & Brown, p.226) 9
 We do not have these problems.
 We have these problems, but they are not so bad.
 We have these problems, but who doesn’t?
 We have these problems, but that’s normal. No one can deal with this kind of problems.
 We have these problems, but there’s nothing to do about it because .....

Sensation

The main characteristic of this phase is noticing new sensations or new stimuli. This can be
inner sensations as well as sensory perceptions of signals or stimuli from outside.
We observe specific signals in ourselves (feelings, thoughts and bodily sensations) or we
observe signals in our environment (certain sayings or behaviors). In an organization, this
phase is especially related to the gaining of information (collecting of data). Listening to
workers or customers, reading information (like this book!), doing research, looking for
information on the Internet, participating in congresses or courses, they are all examples of
gathering information.
This phase is necessary in the development of an organization because it is in this phase that
we are allowing new impulses to come in. We learn through new experiences. If, however, we
stagnate in this phase, it means that we are continually taking in new impulses or gathering
information. We have not even finished this book before we start with the next one. We did
not finish a course or training completely before we are participating in a new one or we
participate in several courses or studies at the same time. We hardly took in the answer to a
specific question before we are busy asking new questions.
There are always new questions to explore; there is always more information to read or more
data to gather. Every found answer forms the basis or reason to ask more new questions.
There is no actual working through of new information. All found or gathered information is
directly swallowed without being chewed, tasted or tested. This way it is impossible to come
to conclusions regarding the newly gathered information. People can only reproduce what they
have heard or read. There is no integration or processing, nor the development of one’s own
opinion or point of view.
A team or organization which stagnates in this phase is dominated by the contact-mechanism
of introjection. In a positive way, introjection helps us to receive or let in something from
outside like food, information and images. In its distortion, this mechanism leads to an
uncritical absorption of whatever comes to us, including ideas or thoughts that actually do not
fit us at all. And because we do not really process these new-comers, they will not transform
into an integrated part of us, but will just remain hidden ‘Fremd körper’, something that we
are not aware of. And as long as we are not aware of these ‘Fremd körper’, we are not able to
have distance and take a more critical look at them. We just reproduce what someone else told
us and we are not aware of the fact that we are selling theories or preaching the ‘true belief’,
without having any idea about the real consequences or maybe even the real content of what
we are saying.

On an individual level, introjection often means that we are taking in all kinds of ‘shoulds’ or
norms, which become a rule or standard for living. In organizations, we see a comparable
phenomenon; when organizations or teams copy procedures, models, management theories or

9
Actually these remarks do not only refer to the denial in this phase of rest, but also to the phase of awareness.

44
ideologies from other organizations or departments uncritically and directly implement them in
their own situation. One could say that the organization or team is uncritically swallowing
‘shoulds’ or norms and creating their own ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ without being aware of the
consequences.
As I said before, I fear that this uncritical copying of models and procedures from other
organizations (and sometimes even from other countries) we do not support but rather hinder
or even block the primary creative process of our own organization. That’s why typical
characteristics of organizations which become stagnated in this phase, are continuously taking
examples from other organizations and being strongly focused on so-called ‘organization-
guru’s’, hoping that one day they will find the ‘holy or true belief’.
Merry & Brown write about this: “An introjective organization has a tendency to move from
one trend to another. Every trend rules for some time and it seems to bring the answers to all
the organizational questions and problems. After a while, this new trend fades away because
the answers did not work in the end, and will be replaced by a new, introjected belief system.”
(Merry & Brown, page 129)
On this issue Merry & Brown also quote Perls, who writes very strikingly:
“When they switch from one intellectual dummy to another, it is not that they have assimilated
the content of one ‘ism’ and are ready for new mental food. The old dummy has become
distasteful to them mostly as a result of disappointment, and they got hold of another ‘ism’,
with the deceptive hope that the new dummy will be more satisfactory.” (Perls in Merry &
Brown, page 128).

In their book Merry & Brown differentiate on the question of “Who is mainly introjecting: the
organization as a whole or just a part?” (Merry & Brown, page 125).
I don’t think that this differentiation is relevant, because according to field theory, every
symptom, illness or distortion always relates to the whole organization. Even if it may seem
that just one part of the organization has the tendency to introject, it will become more clear
through further observation, that it is not just this one part which is introjecting, but that this
part actually brings the introjection in the open.
There can be an exception when we are dealing with a short, temporary stagnation in one part
of an otherwise healthy organization. One part can be temporarily stagnating due to internal or
external circumstances (e.g. respectively, conflicts between team members or negative
government decisions). However, my experience is that a healthy organization is capable of
dealing with these temporary stagnations and will respond to them in an adequate and creative
way by facilitating the process and ‘unfreezing’ the stagnated part (the principle of organismic
self-regulating).
Organizations with a strong, rigid, hierarchical structure and a clear top-down culture will tend
to have a strongly introjective character. In such organizations, a lot of value is put on
‘socializing’ new workers. What this actually means is that new workers are injected or
brainwashed with the values and norms of the organization by means of introduction courses,
meetings and personal coaching. In this kind of organization the word ‘social’ often means
nothing more than ‘being adjusted’ to the system and willing to uncritically swallow the values
and norms of the organization. Being critical is often seen as deviant, undermining or a clear
sign of incompetence. “Clearly, he is too stupid to understand what it is all about here!”

To summarize, we can say that an organization or team which is stagnating in the phase of
sensation invests a lot of time in gathering information without really processing this
information in a critical way. The information stays a collection of words and ‘dogma’s’ and
does not contribute to a view or method that fits the primary process.
An organization like this could be called a ‘hungry’ or ‘zealous’ organization.

45
Awareness

The phase of awareness is characterized by realization. We do not only notice a sensation, but
we are able to give this sensation a meaning. We reach a figure/ground differentiation or
constellation. In the field of the different sensations that we notice, we distinguish a clear
figure, which brings up images and thoughts in our mind. It is this differentiation in
figure/ground that enables us in a later phase to make contact with this figure.
In an organization, this phase has to do with giving meaning to the gathered information or to
the sensations we have noticed. What is the phenomenon that is showing itself through these
sensations? What meaning can we give to what we are noticing? What kind of images come to
our mind? This way we connect inner images, thoughts or interpretations to our perceptions.

When a team or organization stagnates in this phase, two phenomena can appear:
1. the signals lead to a situation in which the people involved keep interpreting and discussing
the possible meanings they can give to the signals
2. the signals lead to a situation in which the people involved focus quite quickly on only one
fixed interpretation.

In the first situation, we can observe that the people involved invest a lot of time in meetings
and discussions to be sure they really understand what is going on. Many images and
interpretations are reviewed in a common attempt to find the one and only true meaning. Out
of fear that they will not have found the ‘one and only true meaning’, they are not able to
come to a decision and keep on searching.
In the second situation it seems at first that we are dealing with a completely different
mechanism, but when we take another look we notice that this mechanism also finds its basis
in the same ‘holy belief’ that there is a ‘one and only’ correct meaning or a one and only
objective reality. In this case people think they have found this one conclusion or meaning and
hardly leave any room for other possible interpretations or images. “You see …..! Again a
clear example of …….”
At first it seems that the principle of fixed adjustment is more clearly present in the second
situation, but in fact, in the first situation (where people search and discuss out of fear to
incorrectly interpret the signals) there is also the underlying conviction or belief in an objective
reality outside of us.
Actually, this believe in an objective reality is a distortion of the contact mechanism projection.
As we have seen in Chapter 2, no such thing as an objective reality exists. There exist only
subjective realities; realities which are the creation or result of our own imagination.
In the phase of awareness, where we assign a meaning to the signals, we project our meaning
to the signals. We project an image, meaning or feeling onto the signals we have perceived.
Projection is the basis of recognizing.
In its distortion, projection will lead to a situation in which we are no longer aware of what we
are projecting. We are no longer aware that what we are recognizing or assigning is a part of
us. We split off this part or isolate it and perceive it as an objective fact.
Therefore, such distortion leads to statements with a so-called universal value, in which we
deny our subjectivity: “This is the way it should be done. There is no other way!”
Blaming can be another type of this distortion. We blame others for something without
looking at our own part or share in the situation. This way a team or organization can put the
responsibility for a situation completely outside themselves. A team can blame the manager for
everything that goes wrong or can blame it on one team member, who does not function well
(the scapegoat). Or the management of an organization can blame the bad results completely
on the economic depression in the world or other external forces.

46
 We saw a wonderful illustration of this phenomenon in Holland during the autumn of
2002. The management of the Dutch railway company explained that all the delays and
cancellations of trains were due to the leaves that had fallen on the tracks during a
storm. Because of this, all the train wheels had become square in just one day.

Or management can blame all failures on just one worker or one department, which is
functioning less effectively than the others. This often leads to the resignation of the specific
worker, closure or reorganization of this one department, and the conviction that this action
will solve all the problems.
However history shows that these solutions do not function. If an organization or team is not
able or willing to re-own their projections, to look into how they contribute to the situation,
the problems will not be solved. They may disappear temporarily, but after awhile they will
return and most of the time even more seriously than they were before.
In this sense you can say that a projection works like a boomerang. If you don’t watch out
when throwing it, you risk being hit on the back of your head just a short while later.
Unfortunately, one commonly sees phenomenon that teams and organizations put the blame
for what goes wrong on the shoulders of just one person or one department. When it happens
inside the organization, we call this phenomenon, blaming the ‘identified patients’ or
‘scapegoats’ and outside the organization we call it, blaming the so-called ‘bogey man’, the
‘external enemy’.
Often the effect of these projections is that all ranks will temporarily close up due to the ‘us -
them’ - situation, which is created and in which ‘them’ represents the bad ones and of course
per definition, ‘us’ represents the good ones.

Even on an international level we can see this phenomenon, where e.g. the USA tries to
distract attention from the internal economic situation and political problems by
creating or introducing an external enemy and starts a war against them to save and
protect the nation. In the 50’s the communists were the evil ones, the external enemy
against whom we had to be protected; now it is the Muslim world that is the axis of evil.
And again everything has to make way for the great holy war in the name of freedom
and democracy.

We can see a phenomenon here comparable to the phenomenon in the previous phase: in this
phase we jump from one simple solution to another, where in the previous phase we jumped
from one trend or belief-system to another. In both situations we just keep jumping in the hope
that we will find or have found the one and only simple solution to all our problems. But in
both situations it is clear that the people involved are not able or not willing to take
responsibility for the situation, to acknowledge their own influence. The result is that we will
have an amputated diagnose and because of that, only amputated interventions. An adequate
intervention can only be based upon a complete, comprehensive diagnosis, which means per
definition, a field-diagnosis including the whole field, including us as part of the field.

Summarized, we can recognize teams or organizations stagnating in the phase of awareness by

the different forms of projection. On the one hand, assignment of meaning to the signals takes
place in a fixed or rigid way and on the other hand, there is a strong tendency to create internal
or external ‘enemies’ who are responsible for all that is going on.
So maybe the name ‘Paranoid organization’ made up by Kets de Vries fits this kind of
organization best. (Kets de Vries, page 36)

47
Mobilizing of energy

The phase of mobilizing energy is characterized by the fact that we experience excitement
based on the meaning we gave to the signals. This excitement gives the energy that we need to
come into action. We become enthusiastic, get warm or literally feel the energy in our body to
come into action. We can hardly sit still.
In organizations, this phase is visible the same way. The team or the individual workers want
to do something, want to get started. What is going on has become quite clear and people
want to do something about it. People have a lot of ideas and want to realize them.

The moment a team or organization becomes stagnated in this phase means that they do not
move into action. There is a lot of energy mobilized, but this energy does not lead to action.
There is no transition to the next phase.
Two things can happen now:
1. the mobilized energy drains away
2. the expression of the energy is blocked so that it turns inwards 10

Draining away of energy

Like in the awareness phase, where the contact-mechanism ‘projection’ was in the foreground,
it is possible that in this phase, this same mechanism of ‘projection’ leads to a situation in
which we do not come into action and the energy drains away or, as Merry & Brown call it,
‘evaporates’ (Merry & Brown, page 229).
This happens when action is postponed to a later date or into the future. We project the action
into the future. In a healthy way, projection also includes making plans for the future. We put
an idea or plan outside of ourselves, beyond the present time and localize it in the future, in a
time that is not yet here. This means that we have to hold on to the energy, which has been
mobilized, until we can come into action at a later date. Normally we will do this by talking
about our plans, by working on them to make them more concrete or by making preparations.
In this way we keep the plans alive and the energy mobilized.
However, if the realization of the plans has been projected too far in the future or has been
projected into the future too many times, it will be harder and harder to hold on to the energy.
Our enthusiasm will diminish and we develop the attitude: “We’ll wait and see. When
……..then there’s still time enough to take action.”
Workers will lose their faith in new ideas especially when postponement has happened many
times, the. This can lead to a fixed conviction: “Well, I need to see it, before I believe it.
We’ve heard this before!”
There is hardly anymore mobilizing of energy. Precisely as a result of this conviction and
attitude, new plans will have little chance to succeed.
Merry & Brown speak of ‘low-energy systems’ and describe them as follows:
“Low-energy systems are organizations in which people invest little motivation, interest and
excitement in their activities. There is very little initiative, pro-activeness, enthusiasm and
creativity. There is an air of lethargy, tiredness. It is extremely difficult to arouse people to do
anything. (Merry & Brown, page 230)
In addition to the characteristics described by Merry & Brown, I would also like to mention
the phenomenon of ‘wishful thinking’ as a typical characteristic of this kind of organization,
because wishful thinking can also be a channel through which the energy drains away. In these

10
In Merry & Brown we see a comparable ranging of what can happen, but in their description they only refer to the previous
phases. As a result of which the specific characteristics of this phase remain less clear. (Merry & Brown, page 229)

48
situations people often speak in terms of “If only …..” This is yet another example of waiting
for the ‘deus ex machina’. People dream about how things could be, if only ……, but do not
involve themselves (anymore) in the realization of this ‘if only …’
There is potency in this wishful thinking. It includes energy which can be used when the urge
to start something arises. (see also chapter 6).

Apart from the mechanism of projection, there is also another contact-mechanism

characteristic for this phase, namely ‘retroflection’.
Retroflection is the mechanism which enables us to distance ourselves from ourselves. In a
positive way, it helps us to put distance between ourselves and our needs, feelings, physical
sensations, thoughts etc. and so it enables us to postpone our needs or energy to a later
moment or to change the direction of our energy. And that is exactly what is happening when
we stagnate in this phase. If we postpone our action into the future, we also have to postpone
the expression of the mobilized energy into the future. And although this postponement can
have a very healthy function; in its distortion it may lead to a complete draining away or
evaporating of the energy.

The expression of the energy is blocked, so that it turns inwards

Another way of retroflection in this phase is when the expression of the energy gets blocked
and turns inwards.

A clear example of retroflection on the individual level is the person who is angry
about a colleague, but does not express his anger; he instead gets angry with himself.
He judges himself, or ‘beats himself up’ because he did not express it.

In many cases, depression also finds its roots in retroflected anger over a long period of time,
which has turned into a negative self-image and low self-esteem.
In organizations, a block in the expression of energy can also lead to a situation where the
energy turns inwards. When personal expression of energy is blocked in an organization, it
usually means that the individuals or teams do not have the opportunity to take initiatives or
undertake spontaneous actions. Or even worse: personal initiatives are being discouraged or
punished rather than being encouraged. Sometimes this occurs in an overt way, for example,
when a manager literally announces that such initiatives are not appreciated, but most of the
time it happens in a more subtle or thoughtless way.

Many managers, perhaps due to lack of time, do not respond promptly or with interest
to an idea or plan from their workers and then forget to come back to it later.

Some ideas get swept off the table labelled as being impossible, without being properly
discussed.

Some managers even take to ‘stealing’ the ideas or initiatives of their workers and
presenting them later (to others) as ideas of their own.

Sometimes workers are overwhelmed with a verbal ‘tidal wave’ the moment they come
up with a new idea and this can work as a block as well.

Often the effect of all these kinds of reaction-patterns is that workers start to doubt the value
of their ideas or initiatives. Or they blame themselves for not presenting the idea clearly. In
situations where loyalty to the manager or the person in charge is great, there is an especially

49
bigger chance for retroflection, the chance that irritation or anger turns inwards. After all, in
those types of situations it is more difficult to express irritation or anger directly. We tend to
rationalize the behavior of the other person and blame ourselves.
We encounter the blocking of personal expression most of the time in extremely bureaucratic
organizations, where people are expected to only do what they are told to and keep strictly to
the rules. Of course, as can be expected, after awhile people will indeed only do what they are
strictly told to do.
We see the same effect in strongly hierarchical organizations with a clear top-down structure
and culture. There too, people will take less and less initiative or propose new ideas. People
who (still) have this urge will usually leave the organization quite soon.
The level of energy in these kinds of organizations is therefore usually very low and what little
is left over has turned inwards and causes enormous tiredness.

When I walk around in such an organization I feel my energy decrease and after a few
hours I am really worn out. Or I jump to the opposite pole and have the tendency to
become hyper active. If I am not enough aware, I start to do the job of others. Of
course I will then be worn out after a short time because I end up doing the work of
many others. Most of the time I feel it in my body and sometimes I have to go outside to
get back to my own energy, to center myself again.

The people who work in these kinds of organizations start to look more and more like ‘living
dead people’, zombies rather than living, creative human beings.
In accordance with Kets de Vries, I would like to call these kinds of organizations ‘Depressive
organizations’. (Kets de Vries, page 46) On an individual and team level, as well as in the
organization as a whole, one can see feelings of inferiority, inadequacy, impotence,
hopelessness, a negative self image, and the incapacity to change.

In their book, Merry & Brown name three examples of organizations where the blocking of
personal expression is strongly present. Besides the already mentioned bureaucratic
organization, they name the extremely task oriented organization and the critically judgmental
organization. This third type has also been referred to lately as the ‘un-learning organization’.
In the extremely task oriented organization, personal aspects of employees or personal
relations in a team get hardly any attention. The employees are seen mainly as instruments in
the working process, just an extension of the machines or means to reach the goals or targets.
Personal feelings, thoughts, perceptions or experiences in ones private life are not important.
Private life and working life are strictly separated.
In many countries we still see many examples of extremely task oriented organizations.
Organizations in the sex-industry may be the most extreme examples (abuse of children and
women, white slavery, violent exploitation etc.). In other organizations we also can see
elements of this extreme task orientation in for example, how they deal with the absence and
reintegration of sick people. We regularly see that companies put severe pressure on the sick
person to begin working much too soon. The effect on employees is, that their energy turns
inwards and that they lose motivation and enthusiasm for their work, become sick once again
and must stop working; most of the time for a much longer period.
I want to mention one other phenomenon of extremely task oriented organizations here, which
does not lead to a loss of energy at first, but most of the time, leads to a total break down after
a longer period. This is the phenomenon where employees work many hours a week
(sometimes 60 till 80 hours) and overstep their boundaries completely, risking their own
health.

50
 A clear example of this phenomenon was evident in the IT industry during the past ten
years. Young IT students, who had not even finished their schooling, were recruited
with very high salaries to work for IT companies for many hours a week during and
after their studies. And when they were completely drained and exhausted (‘sucked
empty’) at the age of thirty, they were fired because they no longer were of enough use
to the company.

In some organizations we see that every initiative or action is criticized and sometimes judged
so much that no one will even imagine taking another initiative in the future. You really have
to be quite strong, persistent or convinced of the value of your ideas to stay upright in such a
storm of criticism. The result is that after a while, energy drastically diminishes and what
remains are people who just say ‘yes’ to everything.
In relation to this kind of frustration, Merry and Brown give a clear overview of how workers
can respond to such a work-situation (Merry & Brown, page 105)
1. Leaving the organization; the person feels that what he or she has invested in the
organization is not worth the suffering, especially when there is the option of joining an
alternative organization.
2. Working the system; the person stays in the organization and exploits it as best as possible
for his or her own self-interest.
3. Sitting on the fence; the person exploits the organization by threatening to leave it. This
can be used when the person is needed and the organization is losing staff it needs.
4. Persistent grumbling; the person always complains and grumbles about conditions and how
things are in the organization.
5. Finding a niche; the person tries to create a private safe enclave in the organization,
decreasing interdependence with others and creating a barricade. This is less selfish than
working the system.
6. Withdraw inward; almost catatonically facing inward, the person lives in an inner world
and stops almost all communication with others.

Action

In this phase we literally come into action to fulfill the need upon which the process is based.
The action should therefore lead to getting into contact with the figure, which we
differentiated in the phase of awareness.
If we stagnate in this phase there will be action, but this action will not lead to the necessary
contact and so, fulfillment of the need will not take place. The action is not adjusted to or in
congruence with what is needed to realize the contact.
If we translate this to an organization, it means that we can observe action, but that this action
will not lead to what ought to be achieved. The action does not fit the intention.
This can mean that the wrong action is undertaken or that the right action is taken, but in the
wrong way. In each case the process will be different, although the outcome will be the same,
no achievement of the desired results.
An inappropriate action could be caused by a wrong choice or a mislaid priority. These could
be focusing on details or side issues, dealing with symptoms instead of the real problem or,
starting one action while actually other actions need to be taken first.
A team that moves too fast into action, in reaction to certain signals, without first taking the
time to look properly at the connection between the signals, risks getting lost in details and
although a lot of action may take place, nothing significant happens or changes. Or a team
makes great progress in working out a lot of ideas, but does not pay attention to some basic,
essential necessities like finances or staffing requirements.

51
 I once coached a very creative and enthusiastic team who were all highly engaged in
working out ideas and making plans. Quite soon it became clear that the amount of
staff was not sufficient to realize all their plans. They did not include this aspect in
their preparations and it looked as if all their plans were going to fail.
Fortunately we could avoid this disappointment by including this aspect in time. In this
way they were able to make much more feasible plans with the result that their actions
led to the realization of their ideas.

When there is stagnation in this phase very often there is also a lack of coordination or a
coordination problem. A lot can be happening, but the different actions are not coordinated
with each other, or there is no clear direction, and so the actions do not support each other but
rather hinder or even counteract each other.

This happened in a team which had many leadership changes in a short time. Because
every new leader decided to go into a new direction and set new priorities during his
‘administration period’, the team members lost track of their goals.
When I met them, the team members were still willing to do something and were
actually quite active, but there was no clear common goal or direction anymore. There
was only chaos.

Especially in organizations where several interim-managers are operating at the same time or
one shortly after another, we see this confusion or lack of direction. As a result of this, after a
while we sometimes see that a team goes its own way and does not take management seriously
anymore. This informal course often appears to be the right course of action in relation to the
original intention of the organization and so the right course in relation to the primary process
of the organization. As mentioned before, it is the self-regulating ability of the organization
which leads to these informal processes.
If a (new) person in charge is able to facilitate these informal processes, he can support this
self-regulating ability and in this way support the team and the organization in its healthy
development and growth. However, if he tries to suppress the informal processes, he will
unfortunately hinder the healthy process and the self-regulating force has to find a new way, so
to speak.

I heard a wonderful example in a lecture from a consultant, who worked with a very
motivated, hard working team of IT-specialists. Because of a new rule they had to write
down very precisely what they were doing all day.
In just a couple of days they designed software to make for each of them a fake daily
report (time of arrival, activities, breaks, time of leaving etc.) . It was so good that
nobody noticed that all the reports were fake and they could continue with their real
work and passion.

It can also happen that an organization repeats the same wrong action over and over again just
because they have the true conviction that this action is the one and only possible way of
working. In this situation we can speak of the repetition of a fixed adjustment and fixed
conviction. For example, there are managers who are fully convinced that resistance is just a
lack of insight, a lack of information. From this conviction they keep spreading more
information to the employees, hoping that this will diminish the resistance. The employees on
the other hand are getting the idea more and more that they are being forced to believe or
think the way the manager does. So unfortunately their resistance only grows.

52
In such a situation, instead of only defining it as a lack of information, Rick Maurer proposes
three questions to ask when people have resistance: (Maurer, page 13)
1. Do they get it?
 this is about a lack of information
2. Do they like it?
 this is about an emotional reaction to the proposal or change
3. Do they like you?
 this is about trust or confidence in yourself
A unique example of stagnation in this phase is an organization in which apparently a lot of
action takes place, but actually all this action is nothing more than camouflage. If we take a
better look, we see that it is one big piece of theater in which the employees and managers are
keeping each other busy with all kinds of ‘fake activities’. These fake activities only serve to
give the higher managers or the outside world the idea that people are very busy and a lot of
work is being done.
I saw some clear examples of this phenomenon in a government department and in the army.

In one government department there was a large surplus of employees. To keep up the
illusion that everybody was working hard and really needed, people were busy with a
lot of ‘important businesses. It became clear that the managers micro-managed the
work done by their employees and almost instantly disapproved of what they had done
or written so that this employee could do his job again and the manager would have
another chance to check it. By leaving small errors in a document and always
disapproving of something the managers and employees kept each other busy for quite
some hours.

I once met a sergeant in the army who had the important task of guarding all the
officers’ cars. This seemed at first glance to be a strenuous job, but after a closer look
it became clear that only one or two officers came to the barracks by car.

To summarize, a stagnation in this phase leads to the phenomenon that the actions in an
organization do not lead to the desired results. This is not always a matter of lack of
motivation, but rather a matter of lack of coordination and planning, or a matter of making the
wrong choices. Because of the amount of uncoordinated action I would like to call this kind of
organization a ‘flea circus’.

Contact

This phase of contact or ‘final contact’ represents the moment of connecting to the figure, so
fulfillment of the underlying need can take place; actually it is a short moment of confluence, a
moment of total merging with the figure.
Although this phase can be seen as the finale of the contact-process, this does not mean that
the process has come to an end. The phase of contact is meant to lead to fulfillment of the
underlying need, so that integration and later, withdrawal can take place. A long with the
approach and contact, integration and withdrawal are also essential phases in the total contact-
process.
When there is stagnation in the phase of contact, it means that there is no transition to the next
phase, which means here that we will not attain fulfillment of our need. We stay stuck in the
assimilation, in confluence with the figure.
When we apply this phenomenon to an organization, this stagnation is characterized by

53
continuous working or innovating, not because of a lack of results, but because the results do
not lead to fulfillment. People are not satisfied with what has been accomplished. “We can
always do better!”
Or maybe it is better to say (after all, it is always possible to do it better):”We could have done
better! So we are not yet finished.”
There can be several causes for this phenomenon. A most likely cause is that we are dealing
with a so-called ‘perfectionist organization’. In an organization where perfectionism is the
leading culture, even 200% is not good enough. There is always a perception of imperfection,
as a result of which, people do not reach fulfillment or satisfaction.

I encounter this phenomenon a lot in the care of the elderly where nurses and care
givers do a wonderful job in taking care of sometimes very demanding elderly and still
they often go home unsatisfied, because they keep focusing on what they did not
accomplish during that day or what did not go well.
Whenever they get a compliment they easily wave it away with the words: “Oh, but
that’s just normal”, whereas some imperfection can bother them for days.

In a perfectionist organization successes will often be attributed to coincidence, good luck or

to reasons beyond the person or the team, while failures are seen as a personal failure. By
doing this, people keep hitting themselves with a hammer or keep pushing themselves harder
to perform better.
In fact, we can see the distortion of all possible contact-mechanisms in this kind of
organization. Based on the introjection “You are only good when your work is perfect”,
people work extremely hard and are not easily satisfied. When they are successful they will
project the cause of it outside themselves; when something goes wrong or is not completely
perfect they will blame themselves (retroflection) and keep doing their best without ever
reaching fulfillment. They are in confluence with the work and in the end, they will end up a
workaholic or totally burned-out.
In fact, I assume that one of the main causes of becoming a workaholic or getting burned-out
is that the person is not able to reach fulfillment in his work. Of course it is also possible that
being a workaholic or getting burned-out are caused by running away from unresolved
experiences or by feelings of inferiority (proving oneself).
Actually it will probably be a combination of causes. Again we can see an example of how an
individual and an organization can reinforce each other in their pathology. Someone who is
always busy with proving himself because of feelings of inferiority can - within the context of a
perfectionist organization - easily fall into his own trap of demanding too much from himself.
By working very hard to come up to his own expectations he is also co-creator of the culture
in which others get the feeling they have to work very hard too.

A completely different reason for getting stuck in this phase is if people do not check the
results against previously, clearly defined goals. If there are no clearly defined goals or targets,
checking the results will be very difficult. And because of that, it is difficult to be satisfied.
Even when there are clear goals or targets, if we do not take the time to measure the results of
our action against these goals or targets, then too it is difficult to feel satisfied, because we do
not know if what we did reach was what we wanted to reach.
This phenomenon is quite familiar to highly innovative organizations. One new idea after
another is initiated and executed, but there is seldom a moment to take the time to check how
this innovation functions in every day life and its end results.
The next innovation or project has already been started before a final evaluation is even begun
or any potential results have been reached. In the end it is totally unclear what project or what

54
innovation has led to which results, or if there are any results at all and if so, how they line up
with the original goals.

I once was involved in an organization in which more than a hundred projects were
going on. Many projects had a totally unclear status (e.g. in trial, implementation or
evaluation) and worse, unclear results.

To summarize, we can say that stagnation in this phase is characterized by continuous action
without reaching some kind of fulfillment.

Fulfillment

As already mentioned, the essence of this phase is satisfaction, fulfillment of the original need
or intention. The new idea or project has been integrated or assimilated in our organism or
organization and now there can be fulfillment and growth. Because of this, we can let go of
the underlying need or intention and go into the phase of rest (the fruitful emptiness in which
there is space for a new impulse or a new need or intention to come up.
Although it might seem strange, we can get stuck even in this phase. We stay in fulfillment, in
the satisfaction and are not able to let go of this. We are not open to new impulses. Perls used
to call this phenomenon on an individual level, ‘egotism’. This can be expressed by an attitude
of: “I don’t have to learn anything anymore.” Or by more ‘spiritual’ people: “I am already
enlightened. I don’t need this anymore.”
Perls saw egotism also as a contact-mechanism, which in a healthy way can lead to feelings of
satisfaction and in a distorted way, to a fixation in this satisfaction so that there is no more
openness.
In organizations we can see this phenomenon as well. In such a moment, the team or the
organization as a whole is stuck in their success. They keep talking about their success and
how wonderful the organization is. As a phase, this phenomenon is very healthy and natural:
to celebrate and enjoy our good results or our success. In the Calvinistic Netherlands we
sometimes forget to do this.
But when a team or organization gets stuck in this, it can easily lead to what is called “the
dialectics of progress”. We are so satisfied with what we have accomplished, that we are no
longer open for new impulses, new signals, new surprises and so we finally lose our leading
position and end up behind. Our position has led to a situation in which we come to a standstill
and lose contact with the ever-changing world around us. Our form of creative adjustment,
which once fitted our intentions and the primary process very well, does not fit anymore and is
going to hinder the primary process, the creative process of growth. We become fixed.

Rest

And so we are back where we began: the phase of rest. Now we have completed the cycle of
the creative process and have looked at the healthy process (see the previous chapter) as well
as possible ways of stagnating in the process.
I want to be clear that an organization or team never gets fully or exclusively stuck in one
phase. Normally there will be a stagnation which shows itself most clearly in one specific
phase, but it will, of course, influence the next phases and so the total process. In this way we
can use the cycle of the creative process as a diagnostic instrument to find out in which phase
the stagnation is most strongly present. This can help us to determine what kinds of
interventions are most appropriate to facilitate the process again and to get out of the
stagnation or fixation.

55
Before going into these possible interventions, I would first like to describe what I see as the
basic qualities, attitude and skills a manager, coach, consultant or trainer should have, in order
to be able to work in a process-oriented way and be able to facilitate a process from a gestalt
point of view.

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5. Facilitating management

In this chapter I would like to describe the qualities and basic skills a manager, coach,
consultant or trainer should have in order to facilitate the creative process in an organization.
Although their positions and tasks are different, I will place them, in the frame of this chapter,
together in one general concept, namely the concept of ‘facilitating management’ because I
think the basic attitude and skills of all four are the same.
I introduced the concept of ‘facilitating management’ in chapter 3 (see page 26), where I
described it as: “supporting the self-regulating ability of the organization, trusting that this
organic process will lead to an organizational form which best connects to the basic need of
the primary process.”
As before, the word ‘organization’ can be replaced by the word ‘team’ or ‘individual’.
The essence of ‘facilitating management’ is that we are able to work with the creative process
in the team or organization in such a way, that it will lead to the best possible work form for
this team or organization. Of course this demands a specific basic attitude and some specific
skills.
In chapter 3, I spoke of some of these aspects, but now I would like to go into them more
deeply.

Trust

In the first place it is important that one trusts the self-regulating ability of an organization.
A basic assumption of the Gestalt approach is that every organism has a self-regulating ability,
which enables this organism to develop or create the best possible (organizational) form in the
interacting field. In nature we see many examples of this self-regulating ability.

Nobody has to explain to a seed how it should become a flower or a plant and certainly
no one has to tell the seed what kind of flower or plant it should become.

Even under quite difficult circumstances, we see organisms adjust themselves creatively and
survive. This same ability for creative adjustment and self-regulation is active in teams or
organizations. Trust in this ability is a basic condition for facilitating the process in a team or
organization. If we do not have this faith, we will easily fall back on more structured
interventions the moment events get exiting or become a bit foggy. By doing so, we will
probably disturb the self-regulating process.

As I stated before, in the rest phase it is essential to take the time to stand still and give the
fruitful emptiness a moment’s thought. This is not always easy, because standing still, per
definition, means that for a moment we are in a state of ignorance; we do not have a clear
picture of what will come next or how we should continue.
When the emptiness (as a result of all kinds of underlying problems or mechanisms) takes the
form of an impasse, many people are especially eager to escape from this emptiness and jump
back into their daily routine. However, experience teaches that every significant change is only
possible when we have the courage and faith to go through this emptiness or impasse.

Presence

When I speak of ‘trust’, I do not mean ‘blind trust’, but a trust from a posture of being
present. That is why ‘presence’ is the second basic condition to facilitating processes.
Being present means that we are committed to what is happening, here and now, with full

57
awareness, awareness of what is happening inside of us as well as what is happening around us
in the environment, the others, the team or the organization. Being present is closely related to
being aware.
Being present also means having interest, real interest in others. It assumes that we remain
open. When people only look at others with preconceived notions, there is no real presence.
Presence demands that we let go of the old images and be open to what ever will occur.
In another way, presence also has to do with presentation and charisma. Nevis is very clear
about the importance of this quality. He dedicates a complete chapter on this topic. He
describes ‘presence’ as follows: “Presence as the living embodiment of knowledge: the
theories and practices believed to be essential to bring about change in people are manifested,
symbolized or implied in the presence of the consultant.” (Nevis, page 69) 11
And further on: “That which is important to the client’s learning process is exuded through the
consultant’s way of being.” (Nevis, page 70)
Nevis makes a clear distinction here between what he describes as ‘presence’ and aspects like
style or personality. He sees these aspects as being a part of someone’s presence.
Being present in this way means that when we want to facilitate processes or stimulate others
to trust and facilitate their process, trust and openness must be visibly present in our own
attitude and behavior. Actually it has to do with being congruent. In other words ‘Practice
what you preach’.
How can we expect others to have trust in the self-regulating process when we, as a manager,
coach or consultant intervene every moment things become exciting or unclear. When we are
congruent and practice what we preach, we can gain a mandate from the people we manage or
support. We gain a mandate in the way that we create a willingness in the others to go along
with us. We cannot force a mandate; we can only create it by our way of being present.

I am reminded of my French teacher in high school. When this man entered the
classroom for the first time, right from the beginning it was clear that he was the one in
charge. He never had to do anything extra to prove his authority. He gained his
mandate from the beginning by just being present, where on the other hand my Biology
teacher – despite all his efforts and all the punishment he gave us – never gained any
mandate.

Awareness

The most important goal of the Gestalt approach and also the most important intervention of
‘facilitating management’, is to increase the awareness of the people involved.
This holds true if one is supporting or training employees or teams, or managing individuals,
teams or organizations. Increasing awareness of what is going on, and/or what some one is
doing, is the basis for development or change. After all, awareness is the basis for contact and
so, the basis for the creative process.
By becoming aware of how the creative process stagnates, we often create movement again.
This means that someone who wants to facilitate creative processes in organizations needs to
be able to have awareness of what is going on; awareness of inner signals (bodily signals,
thoughts, images and feelings) as well as of signals from the environment. It is not only a
matter of perceiving or noticing these signals, but especially understanding the meaning of
these signals.
In relation to this topic Nevis states in his book: “One of the qualities that distinguishes skilled

11
Nevis refers only to consultants. However I think that what he writes applies to managers as well. They too should embody
their knowledge.

58
professionals from novices or nonprofessional persons is the depth and breadth of their
awareness in the area of their specialty. The range of stimuli responded to and that leads to
formation of figures of interest, is significantly greater for the experienced professional. In
fact, the training of the professional is basically designed to enhance this awareness.” (Nevis,
page 88)

Phenomenological attitude

Awareness needs an underlying phenomenological attitude, which means an attitude of being

willing to be affected by reality and to openly encounter the phenomena. Apart from, or maybe
better said, before being able to analyze the signals, it is important that we can receive and
experience the signals. A phenomenological approach is not the same as an objective
observation.
From a Gestalt point of view, there is no such thing as an ‘objective observation’, but what I
mean here is that a phenomenological approach is not the same as having or giving a clear
description of the actual observation. It goes a step beyond this; from an open attitude we let
the observation affect us and then we become aware of what these facts and signals do to us.
We involve our self into the perception. We experience it physically. This willingness to
physically experience instead of just analytically observing a phenomenon is the essence of the
phenomenological attitude.

Functional or selective self-disclosure

Logically, the next quality is that we are capable of functional or selective self-disclosure. This
means that we are able to share our awareness with others in a way that will support their
creative process.
In the beginning of the Gestalt therapy many Gestalt therapists (and those who pretended to
be) took the meaning of >stating the obvious= and >making the implicit explicit= sometimes
too literally and confronted their clients in a very directive way with everything they observed
or became aware of. However, this total openness did not always serve or support the process
of the client; it often made the client feel unsafe.
Functional or selective self-disclosure means that we intuitively sense how far we can share
our awareness with others so that it will support their process best.
Ernst Knijff, a Belgium Gestalt therapist, trainer and author uses the following drawing in his
book “De therapeut als clown” (The therapist as a clown):

The characters symbolize:

th = therapist
cl = client
th m cl m = buddy (from the Dutch ‘maatje’)

Knijff expresses how the therapist is aware of what is

happening in the field, in the relationship and how he seeks
advice about this awareness from his inner buddy and based
on this advice, he will make an intervention in contact with the client.

This intervention includes the possibility of ‘doing’ as well as ‘not doing’ something, speaking
as well as being silent. The buddy helps to sense what is appropriate, not from a critical,

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restrictive attitude, but rather from an affectionate involvement with the relationship.12 (Knijff,
page 129)
Generally speaking in the Gestalt approach we will go further in our self-disclosure than is
usual in other approaches. We include ourselves in our awareness of the field.
For example, in the classical, psychoanalytical approach, the therapist was almost literally
invisible and in the Rogerian client-centered approach, the therapist acts mainly as a mirror. A
Gestalt therapist will regard his sensations, feelings and thoughts as very valuable for the
process and will share them with his clients. After all, his sensations, feelings and thoughts are
part of the field and therefore an essential part of the relationship and the process.
This same principle applies ‘facilitating management’. The ability to facilitate processes in
organizations asks for more visibility and self-disclosure from the manager, coach or trainer. If
we want to increase the awareness of the people involved, it is important that we also share
our awareness, not only our awareness of the others or of our thoughts, but also the
awareness of our physical sensations and our feelings.
Too often people attend staff meetings, team building sessions, retreats and training programs
only as ‘intellectual beings’ who only react from their head and leave all their other sensations
unattended or even try to suppress them. By doing so, much useful information is unused and
a lot of energy is lost in their suppression, while it could be used in a constructive, process-
supporting way.
By sharing awareness (feelings, thoughts and physical sensations) a manager, consultant or
coach can be an example and stimulate the others to share as well, which will improve the
process enormously.
At the same time, the concept of functional or selective self-disclosure is applied here too. In
organizations it also means that we are able to share our awareness in such a way that it will
support the process. This requires that we connect to the world of perception of the others
e.g. to be able to speak their language or at least be aware of the possible differences in
language or culture.

In Gestalt training for people who are working in organizations, I have often heard: “I
can not work with Gestalt in my organization.”, but when we explore this kind of
statement, most of the time it appears that people mean to say: “The people in my
organization do not like to talk about their feelings.” As if working with Gestalt or
sharing your awareness means only talking about feelings. There is more to awareness
than our feelings and furthermore, feelings can be expressed in such a way that even
the toughest hardliner will remain open. It’s just a matter of language.

Skills

So far, I have described a number of basic qualities which are required for ‘facilitating
management’ of organizations. In addition to these conditions and qualities it is also necessary
that facilitating managers have certain skills. I would like to describe these skills now and use
what Nevis has written about them in the chapter: “The desired skills of a competent
intervener”. (Nevis, page 88)
Nevis also uses the phases of the creative process and describes in detail a list of skills which
he sees as essential to a Gestalt approach of organizations. I will restrict myself here to naming
these skills and offering short descriptions. For more detailed descriptions, I refer the reader to
Nevis’ book.

12
Therefore Knijff describes this buddy in his book as a clown: naive and without judgment. (Knijff, page 139)

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Sensation

This phase in organizations is connected to the observation and perception of signals, and so
to the gathering of information.
Nevis differentiates the following skills here:
1. The ability to stay in the present and to focus on the ongoing process with faith in natural
developmental sequences.
Some aspects that belong to this skill are the ability to be patient, tolerate confusion, to
accept responsibility for one’s own feelings of frustration, boredom and unmet
expectations, to be able to work from a posture of >creative indifference= and
especially not being too eager to speed up the process. (Nevis, page 92)
2. A considerable amount of sensitivity to sensory and physical functioning of self and others.
Nevis specifies aspects such as being open to experiences, having good sensory
discrimination, awareness of own blind spots, being able to notice how others perceive,
being able to separate non-verbal behavior from content, awareness of breathing and
being able to see the expectations of others towards oneself. (Nevis, page 92)
3. Being able to tune in frequently into own emotional reactions and those of others.
Nevis means: being able to be in touch with emotions, having a wide range of available
emotions and being able to tell the difference between confrontation through direct
expression of strong feelings and the use of teasing, sarcasm, ridicule, etc. as an
avoidance of true feelings and being able to see the connection between depression and
blocked or repressed aggression. (Nevis, page 93)

Awareness

The essence of the phase of awareness is being able to give meaning to the signals that were
perceived. Therefore, Nevis speaks about abilities that relate to being able to share one’s
experience as a consultant.
4. The ability to separate data from interpretations and to emphasize the importance of non-
judgmental observations.
This ability includes skills like responding in a non-judgmental way, being able to
distinguish between "descriptive'" and "evaluative" observations, having the ability to
make interesting statements that imply or allow for more than one interpretation of an
observed event, to provide several ‘hypotheses’ for others, only when they seem
sincerely interested in hearing them. (Nevis, page 94)
5. The ability to put things briefly, clearly and directly.
This requires skills like clear speech and language, being able to use metaphors or to
speak in other poetic, colorful forms, congruency in verbal and non-verbal
communication and the ability, which Nevis describes so beautiful as: “Speak the
unspeakable in a graceful, direct, yet non-attacking way@. (Nevis, page 95)
6. Awareness of one’s intentions, together with the ability to make clear to others what is
wanted of, and from them.
Nevis includes: being able to ask clear questions; to share observations in a clear way;
being clear about what one is doing, even when one is confused or uncertain; being
able to identify the core of a problem and being able to pose dilemmas as paradoxes,
which will lead to ‘skillful frustration’13 of the other. (Nevis, page 95)

13
‘Skillful frustration’ is a well known concept in the Gestalt approach and means that we increase the awareness of others,
the moment we are not in confluence with their (fixed) expectations, predictions and behavior. Their normal predictable
pattern is being disturbed.

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Mobilizing of energy and action 14

This phase concerns the management of energy in the system. From the ‘facilitating
management’ point of view it has to do with ‘doing’ as well as ‘not-doing’. If there is enough
energy and the people involved are dealing with the energy in a constructive and creative way,
there is less reason to intervene. However, if it appears that people are not able to handle the
force of energy being mobilized, or if they are acting out of limited awareness, it may be
necessary to become more active in helping to slow things down or create a better pace.

7. The ability to appreciate the status of others at any time and to respect that within the
context of this approach.
This ability has to do with ‘timing’, knowing when it is better to hold back, allowing the
process to emerge according to its nature, holding personal needs in abeyance in order
to progress with the others, being patient yet active in face of the other people’s
resistance, having the ability to remain aware even when the other is not ready to move
ahead. (Nevis, page 96)
8. The ability to face and accept emotional situations with a minimum of personal
defensiveness.
This ability focuses on facing conflicts and anger, but also tolerating closeness and
affection; the ability to wait in silence and tolerate tension; knowing when to contain
versus heightening and expanding emotional situations, knowing how to uphold the
rights of individuals to resist group pressure; to be able to remain in contact with
others even though one is personally upset or anxious, to be able to ‘park’ one’s
feelings for later attention. (Nevis, page 96)

Action and contact

The abilities in this phase correspond to the former phase and therefore are partly the same.
After all, our work in this phase has to do with appealing to the others to move into action and
make contact. Here too, there is less need to intervene when there already is action and
contact; in that case it might be necessary to modulate the action or contact.

9. The ability to make good contact with others.

Nevis means abilities like: being at ease when others want to move closer, appreciating
the usefulness of sharing feelings and fantasies and having appreciation for the
difference between asking questions and making statements. Also, being able to express
feelings authentically rather than as a "gimmick" and having the ability to know when
expressing one’s own feelings is not functional. (Nevis, page 98)
10. The ability to present oneself in a highly attractive yet not charismatic way.
This ability has to do with the difference between being clearly present and being
dominant. In other words: being able to share personal experiences in a useful, not
disruptive way, allowing room for others to influence what happens without abdicating
one’s leadership, making parts of one’s life-style known to clients, but not selling them
as "the way" and showing a strong personality, but having a non threatening way of
relating to others. (Nevis, page 98)

14
In his description Nevis does not explicitly differentiate the phase of action. It is partly integrated in the phase of mobilizing
energy and partly in the phase of contact. This is the reason that I mention the word ‘action’ in this phase as well as in the
next one.

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11. The ability to be both tough and supportive during the same work session
This ability has to do with being able to share strong feelings or thoughts in a straight,
forceful, yet caring way, to disagree openly with a client without being contentious or
disruptive, being able to express warm feelings without being "gushy" or to express
recognition or appreciation without the use of flattery and being able to touch people
physically or verbally when it is truly helpful, but also to know when to refrain from do-
ing so. (Nevis, page 99)

Fulfillment and withdrawal

As already mentioned, it is important to pay attention to the phase of fulfillment and

withdrawing, because in this phase we ‘digest’ and integrate the new experience.
It has to do with tallying the score of what we have accomplished as well as of what still needs
to be done. By doing that, we are involved in making initial preparations for a new creative
cycle. The abilities that are important here are:

12. The ability to help others to draw meaning or understanding from their experience with the
consultant.
In the first place this ability has to do with the skill to plan a process in such a way that
the targets are reachable and that they can be accomplished in a given period of time.
In addition to that, Nevis focuses on the importance of withdrawal of energy after the
work has been done and recognizing the need for assimilation of an experience before
moving on to another. Also the ability to be didactic at appropriate moments. (Nevis,
page 100)
13. The ability to appreciate significant contextual issues involved in system interventions.
This ability deals with the skill of being aware of, and considering the possible
consequences at other levels, when making an intervention at any given level or part of
a system. This also means being able to consider and accept that what has been
accomplished, might be the maximum to be accomplished within this context.
So Nevis points here to skills like: being able to relate the interventions to the maturity
of the system, being aware of one’s own skills, strengths, and limitations with regard to
the nature of the problem or client, and the use of various techniques or methodologies.
(Nevis, page 100)

Besides these specific qualities and skills of the facilitating manager or coach, Nevis also
speaks of some qualities and skills which are more related to the total field of organizational
consulting. These are qualities and skills that highlight the creative aspect of management and
consultancy. Here he means qualities like: having a strong sense of curiosity or playfulness
about life happenings, having the ability to use irony, paradox and humor, appreciating the
importance of fantasy and imagination, having the ability to integrate some sense of mysticism
with a cognitive, rational approach, being able to appreciate and use references or examples
from art, music, theater, technology, etc and being open to potentialities. (Nevis, page 101)

With this list, I think that Nevis created a sound basis for criteria or goals, which can be used
in training programs for ‘facilitating management’.

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6. Interventions

In this chapter I want to discuss possible interventions that are based on the Gestalt approach
and the concept of ‘facilitating management’.

Before going further, let’s look a moment at the word ‘intervention’. Actually, this word does
not fit a Gestalt approach of organizations, because it corresponds with ‘interference’ or
‘coming in between’ and it is clear by what is described in the previous chapters that from a
Gestalt point of view we are not so much focused on ‘interfering’ but rather, increasing
awareness of what is going on.
Instead of interfering we are much more focused on exploring and - where possible -
facilitating the phenomena of the self-regulating or selforganizing process already present in
the organization. In that sense, the word ‘intervention’ has a regulating connotation and is
almost contradictory to what we mean by facilitating. But because I do not have a better word
and most people are accustomed to this word, I will use it, but with the note that an
intervention can mean ‘acting’ as well as ‘non-acting’. In fact, the ‘non-acting’ or standing still
in the present moment and inviting others to become aware of what is going on, is the most
basic intervention.

Position, assignment and contract

In the previous chapter we looked at the attitude and skills which are necessary to facilitate the
creative process in organizations. I placed managers, coaches, consultants and trainers in one
overall concept, namely the concept of ‘facilitating management’, because the attitude and
skills are relevant for all of them regardless of their position and tasks.
However, when we look at possible interventions the differences in position and tasks do
become important because the interventions someone can make depend strongly on his
position, assignment and contract. These three aspects in fact define the person’s mandate.
A manager clearly has a different position than a coach or consultant and so the manager can
and will make different interventions. The manager has e.g. the possibility to decide to change
the company’s policy or he has the possibility to make use of sanctions. A coach or consultant
normally does not have these possibilities.
On the other hand, the coach or consultant might function easier as a ‘confidant’, with whom
one can freely share and explore doubts or uncertainties concerning the work, without direct
consequences to his work-situation.

Apart from a person’s position, his concrete assignment is also an important factor in choosing
possible interventions. For a trainer it makes a big difference whether he has been asked to
reflect on the issue of cooperation with an existing team or to train a group of workers from
different teams to improve their skills in dealing with customers or clients.
With the first assignment it is logical to focus on the cooperation and the dynamic of the
group, while with the second assignment he will mainly focus on the individual participants.
As a manager it is also important to have a clear assignment, to know what the board or
managing director expects, to have a sort of ‘vertical synchronization’ on the issue of what has
to be done.
Do they expect the manager to mainly focus on the big picture or do they expect him to also
focus on leading the operational process? Is the assignment, to focus mainly on the external
process and policy or on the internal process and policy?
If a manager does not have a clear assignment and related to that, no clear authorization, he
cannot function well unless he has total freedom to develop his own initiatives. If that freedom

64
is not given he will be either confronted with the criticism that he did too little, or too much
and overshot his authorization. I have seen that vagueness in a manager’s position and
assignment first led to inactivity and later on to the decision to leave several times.

Apart from this more vertical ‘synchronization’ there is also the need for horizontal
synchronization. When a management team is comprised of several persons, it must be
especially clear “Who is responsible for what?”
Of course there may always be some overlap, but too much overlapping will easily lead to
irritations, conflicts and a loss of energy due to these conflicts, and sometimes even to
situations where the managers are openly fighting each other, bringing with that possible
negative consequences for the organization.
That same amount of clarity in assignment is important for a coach or consultant. The
assignment defines the space and the boundaries of the interventions. An unclear assignment
will almost per definition lead to unclear results and therefore less quality.
The coach or consultant should look at this unclear assignment, together with the person who
gave it, and explore how this assignment is related to the process of the total field of the
organization as his first intervention. This way we take the unclear assignment as a clear
phenomenon in the field, which we can explore. Such an intervention can already lead to an
increase of awareness in the ongoing process of the organization. In fact we can say that
speaking about the assignment and in relation to that, clearly formulating the contract together
with those in charge, is already the first intervention we make.

This principle is an important aspect of the Gestalt approach to organizations. Normally many
coaches and consultants assume that they first need to have an assignment, upon which they
can make an analysis and then present a proposal or plan for possible interventions. In the
Gestalt approach however, we go from the assumption that discussing the assignment is
already a first intervention.
After all, the moment we have entered the organization and are in contact with our possible
customer, we have become part of the field of the organization. From that moment, we are
influencing or co-creating the interacting field, because by stating our awareness or by asking
our questions we have an influence on the awareness of our contact-person and thereby on the
total field.

While discussing an assignment, I (in the role of a coach or consultant) often raise a
question about a specific aspect of the organization of which my contact person is
totally unaware. By asking this question, the person becomes more aware of this aspect,
which will influence his perception and interaction in the field of the organization and
thereby, influence his diagnosis of the situation.

Sometimes the person is strongly convinced that what I mentioned “has absolutely nothing to
do with the situation or assignment” and he is not willing to integrate this aspect in his
consideration. But even then there is an influence on the field and the fact of his ‘resolutely
rejecting the question’ might be an item for further exploration as a phenomenon in the field.

Mandate

Now we get to an essential factor which is important in determining the possible choices of
interventions and therefore important to include in the discussion of the assignment. This is
what we call ‘the mandate’.
A mandate entitles me to do or say something. A mandate is closely connected to our

65
contract. It flows out of our contract. I would like to distinguish between a ‘formal’ mandate
and an ‘informal’ or ‘relational’ mandate.
The formal mandate can be seen as the formally defined power or authorization I was given by
the person in charge. The relational mandate is shaped in the context of the relation, in the
interacting field and therefore is much more dynamic. Normally this relational mandate will fit
inside the boundaries of the formal mandate, but it is possible that it will deviate temporarily,
becoming narrower or wider.

An example of a smaller relational mandate is the situation in which I was talking

about an assignment with my contact-person and therefore I thought I was entitled to
ask him questions, but during our conversation I noticed several times that he was
ignoring and sometimes even rejecting some of my questions. Apparently in his view I
did not have the mandate to ask these specific questions.

An example of an informal mandate which became (temporarily) wider than the

original formal mandate was when I had an interview with a person of an organization
and was asking her questions about how things were going in her department. In
answering these questions the person did not only speak about her department, but also
started to speak about her personal problems at home and how that was related to her
past. So I brought up the topic of my mandate and asked her if she was aware that she
was so open and in a way widening this mandate. It was clear that she was not aware of
it and was shocked by the fact how easily she went into personal issues with a complete
stranger, which I was at that moment.

Of course it is always possible that personal issues (private situations or memories from the
past) become foreground in a conversation about the organization or someone’s functioning
and that the person wants to share this with his coach or consultant. This is not always a
matter of crossing the line of the formal mandate. It can fit in very well, when e.g. this sharing
might lead to an improvement in functioning. However, I think that working through such
issues, when necessary, is less suitable in coaching, consulting or training. Redirecting the
person to someone else seems to me a more appropriate intervention according to the mandate
we have as a coach, consultant or trainer.
When we work as a (interim) manager, coach, consultant or trainer, we must work with a
clear mandate and stick to it. An unclear mandate or frequently crossing the line of our
mandate can lead to situations in which the other person feels more and more insecure and this
increases the chance that he gets more stuck in his already fixed adjustment. This is not in the
interest of this person and also not in the interest of our assignment. The question of clearly
defining our mandate in relation to the suitability of, and allowance for possible interventions
is certainly also an ethical question; after all, it has to do with the trust someone or an
organization has in us as a manager, coach, consultant or trainer. And it is precisely this trust
that is needed to make an intervention. Therefore, we have to question ourselves regularly as
to what we are entitled to do and how we deal with the trust people have put in us.

This means we have to ask ourselves questions like:

“How clear are the boundaries of my mandate?”
“How wide do I interpret these boundaries?”
“With whom do I examine these interpretations?
“What are my considerations or arguments to cross the boundaries and how do I
examine these considerations or arguments?”
“Am I approachable for discussions about these considerations and my interventions?”

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Intervening in a responsible way asks for regular examination with colleagues in the form of
intervision or supervision. Otherwise we run the risk of losing sight of our own contribution to
the interacting field and risk forcing our projections onto our workers or clients.

Changing is standing still

When we now look at possible interventions, we immediately come to the first and most basic
intervention of the Gestalt approach and ‘facilitating management’, namely inviting the
other(s) to stand still and so increase his or their awareness.
In spite of our position or assignment we can always invite the other to stand still and become
aware of what is going on. We can do this by literally asking the other to stay quiet for a
moment and notice what is going on or by stating our awareness and ask if the other
recognizes this. By stating our awareness we are more visible to the other, which in general is
more comfortable for this other person. By only asking the question “Do you notice what is
happening?”, we might create uncertainty and maybe even irritation, because we hide
ourselves too much in this mysterious game of “I spy with my little eye something beginning
with…….”
As mentioned before it is important to state our awareness in such a way that it will support
the process of the other (selective self-disclosure).

Polarities

A second basic intervention is identifying and naming the existing polarities and particularly
bringing attention to the so-called ‘missing pole’.
Our whole existence is made up of polarities, as the Dutch gestalt author Daan van Praag
defines, ‘opposites that are bonded to each other’ (Van Praag, page 145)
Day and night, warm and cold, big and small, fat and thin, fast and slow are all examples of
such polarities. The character of these polarities is that one pole can not exist without the
other; without the other, one will lose its meaning. It is this difference that binds both poles.
The concept ‘figure/ground’ is a clear example of a polarity in which the content of the
polarity continuously changes, but the polarity itself stays present. Without the ground no
figure, without a figure there is no ground. It is in the connection that the interaction is
expressed.
However, we are not always able to handle the polarities in our life and organizations. We
have a tendency to simplify the world by only acknowledging one of the poles and denying the
other. We love someone and so it is hard to acknowledge our irritation or disappointment or
vice versa, we are angry with someone and find it hard to feel our appreciation at the same
time.
In organizations we see this same phenomenon: individuals and teams, who express only one
pole and deny, disregard, suppress, or ‘give away’ (project on others) the other pole.

In a team of hard working, very enthusiastic people it was hard to say that you were
tired. It was like cursing in church.

In another team, which valued their cozy atmosphere very highly, it became more and
more difficult to express feelings of irritation or criticism.

An example of ‘giving away one pole’ is a team where people feel completely dependent on
their manager. They give away all their power or the possibility to influence the situation to

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this manager.
Of course in situations like this, where people suppress or give away one pole, they will
eventually not feel this pole anymore. They have lost contact with it and created an imbalance
which often leads to an exaggeration of the present pole or to a situation in which the present
pole will disappear as well.
Again I would like to underline here that when we encounter an individual or team, who
suppresses or gives away one pole, we also have to take into account that this phenomenon
might reflect a characteristic of the total organization. After all, an organization as a whole can
also suppress, deny or give away certain poles and we will notice this in our contact with
individual workers or with teams within this organization.

Once I was working in an organization, where almost nobody expressed criticism to

others. In one of the teams it appeared that people were having a lot of trouble with
one specific woman. “She is so negative!” However, when we explored the situation it
became clear that she was one of the few people in the organization who did express
her criticism. But because she did it very often and in a quite strong way, it was clearly
not appreciated by the others. So on the one hand, this person could easily express
criticism and on the other hand, she was doing the work of expressing criticism for all
the others too and therefore, was exaggerating.

So, being critical was not only a personal characteristic of this individual worker, but it had a
connection with the organization as a whole too. She was actually reflecting a phenomenon of
the total organization.
I state here ‘not only’ on purpose, because it was clear, that this phenomenon had something
to do with this individual worker. From her history I could see that she developed a specific
attitude towards expressing criticism and therefore she resonated quite strongly with this topic
as soon as it occurred in her environment.
In working with organizations, and individuals or teams in organizations, we would overlook a
very important dimension if we would only look at these kinds of phenomena on the level of a
individual or team. We would miss or disregard the dimension and influence of the total field.
Therefore it is always important to also consider the broader perspective of the total field.

In relation to this topic of repressed or missing poles, it is quite informative to see

which kinds of workers have left the organization lately, irrespective of whether they
left by resigning or if they were fired. Very often they represented a pole that is/was
suppressed, rejected or denied by the team or organization, especially when it is clear
that this group of former employees have some common characteristics.

One of the ways to explore polarities in a team is to examine the present pole and to reinforce
it. In most cases, one of the team members will stand up and start to represent or bring up the
opposite, missing pole. By supporting this person in expressing this other pole, we can
contribute to the possibility that this team will re-own the missing pole and solve their
imbalance. In fact, we help them to heal their ‘amputation’ and become whole again and at the
same time we also help this one person or group of persons who were representing the
suppressed pole. We actually discharge or relieve them. They can come back into balance
again too. They do not have to do the work for the others anymore, which will diminish the
risk for them to step into their ‘pitfall’15.

15
The idea of ‘pitfall’ stands for the phenomenon that people risk to exaggerate or overdo a quality which is present in them.

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The fixed adjustment

A third, basic intervention is to look at the fixed adjustment with an individual or team.

The team that puts a lot of energy into keeping the atmosphere cozy because of
negative experiences with expressing criticism will probably avoid expressing new
irritations and will bottle them up. And so when, after a while, they attempt to once
again speak about their irritations, there is a big chance that all the bottled up
irritations will lead to an explosion and perhaps a ‘ritual slaughtering’.
It is only logical that they will again conclude: “You see! We should not speak about
our irritations; we should just be friendly because otherwise it will only lead to more
problems.”

Much ineffective behavior in organizations is based on such assumptions or convictions, which

in turn are often based on previous negative experiences. As I have already described in
Chapter 4, specific (negative) experiences can lead to an idea like “You see, you had better
(not) …..” This idea was in fact at first just a form of creative adjustment to a specific
situation, but after repetitive experiences, this idea became a fixed adjustment and so the
behavior which flows forth from this idea also became more and more fixed.
The consequence of this kind of fixation is that the person or team does not move freely
anymore; effective behavior is more and more hindered. One actually amputates oneself.
By looking at these fixed adjustments together, and exploring their underlying needs and
hindering convictions, we can support a person or team to let go of the fixed forms and to
start looking for more appropriate forms of creative adjustment.
Of course we have to take into consideration that it might be scary to look at the fixed
adjustments because of the underlying negative experiences and the possible associated pain.
Even if none of the current team members has experienced these negative experiences
personally, the fear can still be in the field.

We can compare this with a vase of flowers, where we put ink into the water. Soon all
flowers will have the color of the ink. If we put some new flowers in, they did not
experience the fact that the ink went into the water, but they too will absorb the color of
the ink soon.

This same phenomenon occurs in organizations and that might explain why changes in culture
take so much time. After all, the culture of an organization is the sum of values, norms and
habits of this organization, as well as the resultant or expression of the (fixed) creative
adjustments in the field of organization and environment.
By stating our awareness of what we experience in this field, we can invite the others to pay
attention to their culture and so, to their possible fixed adjustments.

I would like to once again stress, that whatever fixed adjustment we experience in a team or
organization, was once the best possible response to a specific situation. We have to respect
that. Therefore I would like to plead in the same way that George Wollants does regarding
therapy clients, that managers, coaches and consultants do not focus too much on the fixed
adjustment itself, but much more on the underlying need, which manifests itself in this
adjustment. (Wollants, page 20)
Literally Wollants writes that the focus of the Gestalt group therapist should be to “specifically

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help group members explore the corner of the need,16 while taking their fear seriously.” “In the
tension triangle ‘need – fear – fixed adjustment’ it is wrong to confront the group members
with their fixed behavior. The acknowledgment by the client of his needs and the growing
awareness of these needs will be much more therapeutic.”
Of course Wollants speaks about clients of individual and group therapy, but I think that this
same basic attitude can also be applied to people working with individuals and teams in
organizations. There too, it will be much more supportive to the process to explore the
underlying need and increase awareness of the obstructing conviction, than to confront the
other(s) with the fixed adjustment.

Once during a management team meeting concerning the budget for the next year,
people were fully involved in a battle over the euros. By first enlarging this battle in a
humoristic way and then paying attention to the underlying needs of the people, one
administrator came once again into contact with his underlying need and sighed,
clearly moved:AAh, now I realize again, why 20 years ago I chose to work in the care
sector for the elderly. I had almost forgotten it because of looking at these euros all the
time!”

Exploring these underlying needs can free this kind of (blocked) energy, create movement and
thereby, development.

Structure of interventions

Before going into the specific interventions for each phase of the creative process, I would like
to briefly discuss the general structure of interventions, because when making interventions we
need to keep some basic, necessary steps in mind.

1. Creating safety
To be able to open up and learn something, people need to feel safe. Therefore I think that
creating safety for the other(s) is our first step.
Having a clear assignment and keeping to our mandate are part of this step. Having clear
agreement on reports we will make for others and knowing how to deal with what is discussed
or expressed are also important issues in creating safety. We also create safety by tuning into
the state and needs of the other(s). Wollants speaks about ‘synchronized presence’.
He writes: “A Gestalt group therapist is continuously alert and present. He puts himself as
fully as possible in the needs of the group members and the group. Based on this awareness,
he decides to intervene or not, in a way that fits the actual needs and difficulties of the
members and the group as a whole.” (Wollants, page 14)
This same kind of synchronized presence seems to me important when we work with
individuals or teams in organizations. Actually this is the same basic Gestalt approach of
standing still and connecting to what is present in the here and now.

2. Recognition
Once we have created a safe environment we can share our awareness with others and ask
them if they also recognize these phenomena. Actually, this is a basic principle of giving
feedback: we describe what we have noticed in the behavior of the other(s) and what this does
to us or to others. The next question is if someone recognizes the behavior we described and if

16
See the model of the fixed adjustment on page 43.

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he also recognizes the effect it has on others.
The more we are able to offer our self-disclosure in a non-judgmental way and without any
kind of interpretation about the intentions of the other(s), the better the other(s) will be able to
accept the information. Therefore, to support their recognition of what is happening in the
field, we need a phenomenological description of what we notice.

3. Acknowledging
If the other is able to recognize what is happening (again), we can support him in exploring his
own part in the present situation. If he perceives the phenomena in the field as (almost) totally
independent of his own person, he will feel unable to influence the situation.
As soon as he can acknowledge that he is a ‘co-creator’ of the field, he can start to take
responsibility for the phenomena in the field. Here too we can see the importance of feeling
safe in this situation. As previously mentioned a person will not take responsibility for a
situation easily when he knows he might be risking sanctions. In such a ‘sanction-culture’,
acknowledging responsibility can seem like pleading guilty, putting your neck in the rope and
therefore, it is no wonder that people will not acknowledge their role. People will instead try
to hide or cover up their role. However, we need this acknowledgment in order to be able to
explore with the other person(s) how he or they exactly contribute to the situation.

4. Acceptance
An important next step is, to support the person in accepting the way he contributes to the
situation. As already mentioned this acceptance will be easier for a person, when we focus
more on the underlying need than on the fixed behavior, the fixed adjustment.
Acceptance in this way is not a matter of passive acquiescence, but a much more active
relationship with reality, of which we are a part. We can see what we are doing and how we
are doing it, and we can again make contact with our underlying need(s).
When we, as a manager, coach or consultant, are willing to accept the person in this moment,
we can create a ‘correcting experience’ for him, which will have a transforming effect. We can
not eliminate the previous negative experience, but we can offer the person an opposite,
correcting experience.
This is the essence of the so called ‘paradox of change’: when we are focused on trying to
change a person, we give the impression of not accepting him the way he is, which will lead to
a confirmation of the previous negative experience and therefore to a reinforcement of the
fixed adjustment. On the other hand, when we are in fact able to accept the person, to accept
what there is, we will facilitate the person in making contact with what there is and with what
lies underneath. This will increase the space to feel and express the underlying need, which will
lead to a correcting experience. The stagnated or fixed situation starts to move again and new
forms of creative adjustment can be experienced. So, by acceptance, change will occur.

5. Integration
Of course we can not change an individual, team or organization with just one positive
experience. So we will need to support the person or team in integrating this new experience.
This is also the intention of the post-contact phase in the cycle of experience: assimilation and
integration of the newly achieved experience.
In organizations this means that we support the individual or team in integrating the ‘new’ in
their daily life, anchoring it.
People are always vulnerable when integrating e.g. new behavior in their daily lives; the risk of
falling back onto old patterns of behavior is always present. The ‘new’ is still frail and the
environment can easily appeal to the old ways; co-workers were used to the old ways and
there is a possibility that they feel more comfortable with those.

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So we have to look for conditions that can support the consolidation of the change. Of course
there is a risk in this consolidation that we will become fixed again, that we will create a new
fixed adjustment. There will always be a tension between striving for anchoring and
consolidating change on the one hand, and striving to stay open for new impulses on the other
hand. To be open for new impulses and new developments and at the same time not fall into
the trap of running after each new trend is not a simple goal for organizations and teams.
Again, it is the challenge of accepting and living with the paradoxical ‘and – and – situation’
instead of choosing the comfort of a more simple ‘either – or – situation’. It is not whether to
take care of the consolidation or to be open for new impulses, but to take care of the
consolidation and stay open for new impulses. This is the focus of the process of integration
and implementation.

The stagnated process

Now I would like to explore some interventions that are connected to the model of the
creative process. In fact the three basic interventions mentioned are applicable in each phase of
the process, but besides these three we can distinguish other interventions which are
connected to the specific phenomena of a specific phase. All interventions have the goal to
eliminate stagnation of the process in a specific phase and to facilitate movement again, so that
the creative process can continue and the fulfillment of the underlying need or intention can
take place.

Rest

When a person, team or organization as a whole stagnates in the phase of rest, this means that
new impulses are no longer noticed and so there will be no sensation of tension, needs or
intentions.
An important question here is whether this emptiness is perceived as a fruitful emptiness or
more as an impasse. In both cases there is an experience of ‘not knowing’, but in the case of a
fruitful emptiness, people will experience it more like an emptiness which is full of expectation
(a bit like a pregnancy). Maybe the people involved do not experience it clearly, but it is
possible that we as a manager, coach or consultant are aware of it.
In such a situation it is better most of the time to wait a while, to stay with it and, if suitable,
to invite the other(s) to stay with it too, to be open for what will come next.
Because this phase is also characterized by a tendency to confluence and therefore less
experience of differentiation, it is also important to keep an eye open for individuals or teams,
who like to differentiate. They need our support, because they might represent the upcoming
new impulse, need or intention of the team or organization. We can support them by inviting
them to express more of what is bothering them, what they are aware of, or support them in
dealing with opposing tendencies from the other team-members.

During a small conference with a management team we were speaking about the
changes that they went through lately. It was clear that people were satisfied and
somehow there was a silence and for a moment we did not know how to continue. So we
decided to have a break and a walk in the forest. During this walk it became clear to
me that something new was arising in this team, but yet still very implicit. So back in
the room I suggested the people share their awareness and see what would come up
from that. Most people said something like, they still did not know what was happening
or how to continue from here, but one person started to speak about an experience he
had in another organization and how they organized a seminar to present their model

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 to colleagues.
Because I had the feeling that this person was representing a new step in this team
(coming out in the open and being proud of one’s success) I supported him by inviting
him to speak more about it. It was nice to see, how people began to realize how proud
they might be of their success and what it would be like to publish their results as well.

If the emptiness feels more like an impasse, an uncomfortable situation in which there is a lot
of confusion and resistance, it might be more suitable to take some initiative. The initiative to
introduce a break or to introduce another way for people to withdraw for a moment can
decrease the tension, but also interrupts the confluence and in this way, it can facilitate
differentiation.
Another kind of intervention is to present new ideas or impulses to the others, or to invite the
others to go with you and look around their own organization. For example, walk around with
some people in the organization or department and state some of your observations or raise
some questions.

In a nursing home organization, we introduced the use of video and photos of every day
situations to create new impulses and increase awareness.

Visiting other departments or organizations can also be a way to stimulate new ideas or
impulses. Not to copy elements of these other situations, but to develop a different perspective
of one’s own situation.
The organization of courses, symposia, congresses etc. can also have a function in de-
stagnating the process.

A completely different way to have people sense new impulses is to invite them to do
something completely different or to look at the world in a completely different way.
Using my background as a clown, I like to work with the red nose as a way to invite others to
look at their behavior, function, department or organization in a different way. Here are some
of the impulses I give people in coaching situations:
 Try to be a stupid manager.
 Continue your team meeting, but now with the red nose on.
 Imagine and show us how you normally behave towards your customers or clients and
now do the same again but with a red nose on.
 Walk around in your department or in your organization, but be like a clown (open,
innocent, stupid).
I use the red nose as a symbol for being naive, open, curious, innocent, and not knowing the
meaning of things. It can also represent being gentle, mild and affectionate (after all, the clown
loves his audience).
Normally I start doing small experiments to introduce the basic principles of the red nose like
being vulnerable, innocent, open, stupid, alert and available, saying ‘yes’ to whatever is
present and letting go of all the ‘shoulds’. This increases the fun and lightness in looking at the
situation.

Once we used this intervention in a large cardiology department in a hospital to

increase the workers’ awareness of their attitude towards their work and their patients.
It was amazing how much fun they had during these days and how great the impact was
on the culture in this department. People became much more attentive to the patients
and also to each other as colleagues.

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It is really surprising to see how people awake up and become much more open to signals in
themselves as well as for signals from their environment just by using the red nose. It acts as a
sort of license to be open, curious and innocent again.

Sensation

When the stagnation is more related to this phase, it means that people continuously perceive
signals, collect information. They keep taking in and do not process or ‘chew on’ the new
signals, impulses or information. These new impulses remain as ‘Fremdkörper’ and start to live
a life of their own in the team or organization. They will become sacred ‘shoulds’ or dogmas
or people will become ‘gurus’ or other organizations will become sacred examples which
should be copied.
It is especially important for a facilitating manager, consultant or coach to share his own
awareness in this phase. We do this in order to increase the awareness of others because they
apparently are not able to be perspective or give meaning to what was perceived.
The first applied intervention is clearly stating what we have observed and how this has
affected us. Subsequently, we ask the others what they have observed and how this affected
them. We invite the others to stand still and let that, what is happening, really get through to
them.

I would like to mention here that in organizations it is better to ask people: “How is
this for you?” or “What does this do to you?”, rather than directly asking them about
their feelings. “How do you feel about this?” or “What do you feel?” First of all,
asking about feelings might restrict a person to just one part of his awareness and
secondly my experience in organizations is that asking about feelings is often
frightening, where asking about the effect is more safe, especially in the beginning.

Sometimes it is necessary to do general, introductory experiments on awareness, before we

can get into awareness of the present situation in the team or organization. It is amazing how
little awareness people sometimes have in their own situation and also little experience in
sharing their awareness. However, it is clear, that we need this awareness and need to share it,
to be able to differentiate the figure or to be able to come to a conclusion. One of the possible
conclusions in this phase might be that the people involved have a strong tendency to introject
whatever impulse they perceive. In that case, a next step could be to explore the underlying
need – fear dynamic?
“What makes it so difficult to come to a figure or conclusion? Is there something people are
afraid of?” And especially: “What kind of underlying need or desire is someone trying to
realize through this current behavior?”
One of the fears I often encounter, is the fear of not having enough information to come to a
conclusion or the fear of losing flexibility the moment a conclusion was reached.
By exploring this underlying fear, the underlying need to make the right conclusion or to stay
open and fresh becomes more visible and as a next step we can explore the question of what
they need to fulfill this need in order to continue the creative process.

In one organization this led to the formation of an ‘impulse-group’ which had the task
to explore new developments, while the others had the possibility to go on making
decisions and implementing these new developments into the organization.

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Awareness

Stagnation in this phase is usually characterized by two phenomena:

1. people continue discussing the possible meanings of the signals
2. people come to a conclusion very quickly and bind up themselves to one fixed
interpretation
In both situations we are actually dealing with one and the same conviction or assumption,
that there might be something like a ‘one and only’ right decision, meaning or reality. Where in
the first situation people are afraid of not assigning the right meaning to the signals, in the
second situation they are in fact happy to have found this ‘one and only’ right meaning.
Our first intervention can be to look at this phenomenon: the belief or assumption of a ‘one
and only’ right reality and how this assumption hinders the process of awareness and assigning
meaning to our perceptions. And as a next step, together with the others, we can explore the
underlying need – fear dynamic. “What are they trying to achieve?” and maybe also, “What are
they trying to avoid?”
Many times the underlying need is to do the job well, but it seems in this situation that this
need to perform well has degenerated into a striving for perfection, which can block people
totally.

This phase of the process, the contact mechanism of projection is in the foreground, after all,
assigning meaning is a form of projection. It is useful to explore what is projected onto the
outside world, in relation to this process of assigning meaning.
A possible next step might be to stimulate the others to re-own these projections and by doing
that, taking responsibility for their own part of the projection. For example, we can pay
attention to phenomena like the culture of complaining or the all mighty chief, who makes us
his victims.
By introducing role-play, in which people have to change roles with the chief or in which
people can look at their own role in victimizing themselves, we can increase their awareness of
the situation, the projections and especially of their contribution. This increased awareness will
undoubtedly contribute to a change of the situation.

An important aspect of re-owning projections is to teach people to think more in an ‘and –

and’ way of thinking instead of restricting themselves and others to the more simple ‘either –
or’ way of thinking. For many people it is difficult to deal with the existence of two apparently
opposing realities next to each other. Someone is either the cause or the victim of a situation
in an organization. It is one or the other, as simple as that.
To be able to see that someone is a victim and at the same time, because of this conviction and
attitude, also causing or at least maintaining this situation, asks for another way of thinking
and is less easy. 17
Many times team members blame their superior for being the cause of all their trouble and feel
that they are not able to change a thing.

A typical statement I often hear in such situations is that the superior does not allow
them to discuss a specific rule or decision. I then often provoke and tease them a little
by asking: “So?”
Normally they are quite shocked by this “So?” because they perceive the situation as
unchangeable. Therefore I often also take the next step and tell them: “If somebody

17
Paulo Freire writes in his book The Pedagogic of the suppressed about the ‘suppressor within the suppressed’ and the
consequence of this, that the suppressed will fall into fatalism, which creates a culture of shutting up. (Freire, page 25 e.v.)

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 tells me, that no discussion is allowed, I want to discuss that!” This provocation often
wakes up the people to start seeing and re-owning there projections.

Actually this way of projecting gives them some comfort, because when you really cannot
change a thing, you do not have to do a thing, besides waiting and complaining.
Awareness of the ‘and – and’ dynamic of the situation in the team or organization will often
lead first to some resistance, but later on it often leads to an increase of energy and motivation
to do something about the situation. When we have accomplished this, we can then support
the team in making decisions to create a plan for action. Depending on what is perceived as
going on, decisions can be made about which direction seems to be the best one to begin.
Main points have to be distinguished from side issues and priorities have to be decided upon.
This can result in a concrete action plan which contains clear information on ‘who is going to
do what, how and when’. 18
This step is important to be able to continue to the next phase, mobilizing energy, but
normally, this mobilizing of energy will automatically arise from clear awareness and concrete
decisions.

A specific intervention to increase awareness in the situation one is dealing with, is the use of
‘constellations’.
In recent years the use of terms like ‘family constellations’ and ‘organization constellations’,
based on the work of Hellinger, has become quite popular in Europe. However I use the term
‘constellations’ slightly differently than Hellinger.
To me creating a constellation means that the manager or coach is invited to place persons
from the group (not his team!) or chairs as representations of key-figures of the team or
organization in what seems to him, suitable positions. After the person has finished doing this,
I ask these people to state their awareness in this position and also to be aware of possible
impulses to do something or to move towards someone. If they sense such impulses I invite
them to follow these impulses and then to state their awareness again after these possible
changes. In case of using chairs instead of group members as representations, I ask the
manager or coach to sit down on each chair and state his awareness on this chair and follow
his impulses.
So instead of giving the participants instructions to move or to say some lines and work
towards a solution of the situation, as Hellinger normally does, I only invite them to state and
follow their own awareness and impulses in the field. In my view this fits the Gestalt principle
of increasing awareness in the field more. If a solution is needed, we do not have to bring it in
or to force it onto the others. According to the self-regulating principle, the field will
(re)organize itself by the increased awareness in a more applicable constellation.
In case of a training-group I also ask the other group members to share their awareness of the
situation. It is amazing how much valuable information and new insights are gained by this
way of working with constellations.

Mobilizing energy

When there is stagnation in this phase of the process with an individual or a team, we can see
two kinds of phenomena:
1. the mobilized energy is floating away
2. the expression of the mobilized energy is blocked, so that it will turn inwards.

18
A helpful method for this can be the use of ‘mind-mapping’, a method to differentiate and visualize the main and side issues
of a project or plan.

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Energy often floats away when actions are postponed too long or too often. A first
intervention can be to explore the postponement. What makes the person or team postpone
their actions over and over again or for such a long time? What possible fear or conviction is
playing a crucial role in this?
In many cases it is a fear of failure that is drives the postponement.
Of course, the conviction that the time is not yet ripe can come from a realistic consideration
of the situation, but often it is based on the need to keep control of the process.
When we are faced with a fear of failure, we might explore what concrete steps are possible;
in the case of a need for control, it might be better to support people in learning to let go. This
requires creating conditions which make it possible to trust the process that is going on.
A completely different fear is the fear to expose newly developed skills or qualities to the
outside world. This is a well-known phenomenon on an individual level, but teams can also
have this fear. People stay in old patterns or behavior even though they realize that these
patterns do not fit anymore, but their fear to be vulnerable is too great. This fear seems a bit
like the fear of failure, but while the fear of failure is more neurotic19, this fear is more
existential.

We see the same sort of fear with artists who do not have the courage to make the piece
of art they know they have to make. They remain in a sort of impasse, moving around
just to avoid this necessary step.

This fear calls for two possible interventions: one is to explore how the situation can be made
more safe and the other is to stimulate the person or team into action, to experiment with how
things might be should they take the step.
An example of making the situation more safe: a person who was out for a longer period
because of a burn-out should be allowed to first re-integrate in a different team or even a
different work environment, before re-integrating in his own team. Most of the time, it is
easier to experiment with new behavior or to implement new behavior in a new situation. The
members of the new team will be more open to the new behavior than the old colleagues. The
old ones might easily react out of old habits and expectations.

In The Netherlands we have a project called ‘care-farms’, where people who are
recovering from burn-out, can temporarily work with supervision to learn to become
more aware of their boundaries and how to communicate these boundaries with others.

It is also possible to give a team temporary extra support in implementing the newly developed
qualities. For example, one possibility is to have a team-coach temporarily join team meetings
to support and stimulate awareness in the interactions. The presence of the team-coach can
make the situation safer and in this way, facilitate the process of implementation.

If the energy is blocked, the first intervention is to look for the block, to explore and discuss it.
Is there a real block or do people only perceive a block.
I refer here to the question of whether the restrictive behavior comes from the present person
in charge or are we dealing with old fears based on previous experiences with managers or
leaders. In both situations it remains important to discuss the block, but when there are clear
signs of restrictive behavior from the person in charge, it might be useful to teach people to

19
With >neurotic= I mean, that this fear is more based on old habits or more based on a fixed adjustment.

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raise this issue to the ´boss´ for discussion. Should they have already tried this several times
without success, I think that we (as a manager, consultant or coach) can give a signal to this
specific person and subsequently, depending on our position and mandate, discuss this issue.
It is the responsibility of the team or individual to raise this topic for discussion, but if there
has been no adequate response from the person in question, we also have to take our
responsibility. It is possible that the person is not aware of his restrictive attitude or behavior
and therefore does not understand what his workers or team tried to express. One of the
possibilities for this lack of awareness can be that the phenomenon of being restrictive is part
of the culture of the total organization. In that case, it is important to reflect on this cultural
aspect and to see what interventions might be needed to increase awareness of this
phenomenon within the organization.
Sometimes it is not the culture which is restrictive, but the chosen structure which is
completely contradictory to the goals and interests of the basic process of the organization.

It is, for example, almost impossible to be truly client-centered in an organization

which is strongly hierarchical or centralistic. Operating in a client-centered way asks
for flexibility and the possibility of taking initiatives.

So in this kind of situation, our interventions should be focused on facilitating a culture and
structure which are more tuned into the primary process.

I would like to mention two more specific interventions in relation to situations where the
energy is blocked:
1. To initiate ‘madness’
2. To reinforce the block

To initiate ‘madness’:
With this intervention I invite teams or individuals to behave completely differently than what
is normal. “Act crazy!” “Allow yourself to be stupid!”
In other words, try to approach the blocked situation in a completely different, unusual way
and see what happens. Instead of having meeting number twenty-seven about the block, go to
the beach and give expression to the block by building sand sculptures. Or we can give
expression to the block by other artistic means: painting, creating a photo-gallery, video-
production or speak about the block in a completely different way like I already mentioned
before, using a red nose.
Or during the meeting we can invite people to look at their reality from a different point of
view: how would your problem look inside out, or upside down or from the moon or how
would an Eskimo in Africa speak about it? Just interrupt existing patterns and views.
In my experience, working this way frees a lot of blocked energy and people go back to work
with enthusiasm.

To reinforce the block:

Another intervention which is closely related to the previous one is to reinforce the block.
Instead of trying to dissolve the block, we are going to increase it or make it bigger. We
increase the pressure that keeps people from becoming active. The effect of this paradoxical
intervention is that it often brings people to the point of literally, breaking through. By
increasing the pressure, the tension is also increased, which eventually can lead to an
explosion.

Besides interventions which are focused on freeing blocked energy, we sometimes need

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completely different interventions, interventions to slow down or decrease the energy.
Some people or teams are so enthusiastic to jump into action, that the action is almost bound
to fail, because they run the risk of doing more than they can handle.
It is not easy to support a team which is quivering with enthusiasm in such a way that their
enthusiasm can be maintained and at the same time, they can be protected from overdoing it.
This asks for a more ‘canalizing approach’. One must determine concrete actions and
synchronize them, while at the same time provide possibilities where they can ventilate the
overload of energy. Here too, creative methods can bring a lot of solutions.

Action

If there is stagnation in this phase, one sees a lot of action that does not lead to contact, to the
necessary connection to fulfill the need or task.
An initial intervention here is to invite people to take a moment of rest and reflect on their
actions. Ask if these are really the actions which are needed at this time. Actually, with this we
come to a very basic question: “What is it all about?”
In other words, we put the question of the primary need or the primary goal of the
organization back in the foreground and from there we will look at the process and the present
actions. This will almost automatically lead to the question: “Is what we are doing an
appropriate answer to what we are trying to achieve?”

When I look at what has happened in the Netherlands the past years in many
organizations, I see all the time and energy spent on reorganizations, mergers and on
formulating ‘quality protocols’, I ask myself: “What the hack are we doing?”, because
I really wonder how all these reorganizations, mergers and these descriptions
contribute to the primary goal.

Looking at the original goals of the organization, and with those in mind, reviewing the set of
present actions, will lead to reflection on and possibly an adjustment of those actions.
It can also clarify our common interest and direction once again.
It is also possible that in reflecting on our actions, we will find out that our actions are actually
adequate, but not synchronized enough. In that case we are dealing with a coordination
problem. We will have to look at how we can improve coordination of actions. One possibility
is to engage an interim- or project-manager to temporarily coordinate the process. It is also
possible that the coordination problem actually stems from vague goals or a lack of a clear,
common direction. Like before, we are back to the same basic question: “What is it all about?”
Especially, organizations or teams who had one manager after another, introducing his or her
own ideas, often experience a great deal of confusion about the common goals.
This confusion might express itself in bad cooperation among the workers or team members.
The bad cooperation itself is not the problem, the problem lies deeper. It is very difficult to
cooperate well if the goal or task is not clear.
We can compare this with a sailing yacht. The crew can be very motivated to work together,
but as long as there is confusion about the destination and route, they could easily work
against each other. All it takes is a moment to define the destination and route and the same
applies to organizations.

I remember a team where I was asked to work on their cooperation. According to the
manager and to the team itself, the problem was that they did not cooperate very well
and had trouble in giving feedback to each other. After working a few hours with them I
noticed that they cooperated very nicely and were quite open in their feedback. So I

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 expressed my surprise about their initial question in relation to what I experienced so
far and invited them to look into this. It became clear that there had been many
changes in management during the past year and every new manager had left his or her
‘footprint’. So they had become completely unclear about which direction they had to
go. When I spoke to the present manager about this phenomenon, he recognized it and
we changed the goals and focus of the coaching. The main goal became to get more
clarity in the goals and direction of the organization.

A typical problem related to cooperation and communication has to do with how people
handle agreements20 that have been made. Are the agreements they make clear enough to
everyone? Do people fulfill their agreements and do they follow through on their agreements?
In many teams, people have difficulties in making clear agreements and following through on
them. Very often it is totally unclear who will do what, where, when and how. So this asks for
reflection on how the agreements are made and of course, on the underlying, relational level of
communication. Sometimes people need training in skills such as decision-making.
It is a different problem when people do not follow through and fulfill their agreements. In
some organizations and teams it seems as if people only fulfill one basic agreement: “We do
not fulfill our agreements.”
When one adds a culture of not addressing feedback or criticisms to one another (e.g. to
maintain a friendly atmosphere), the fulfilling of agreements is rather a coincidence than a rule.

A few years ago there was a study in Dutch hospitals on how people were handling
agreements. It appeared that over 75% of the agreements that were made, were not
fulfilled!

An almost funny phenomenon which often occurs during team-coaching is that as people
become more aware of the current, loose culture, they jump rather quickly to the solution of
making the agreement: “From now on we are really going to follow through on our
agreements.” Of course the big question is, will they really stick to this agreement? As to be
expected, the answer often is ‘no’.
In this situation an appropriate intervention is first, to invite people to look at the purpose of
their agreements and also to look at this phenomenon as a part of the total field of the team or
organization. How much are people committed to the primary process? How are agreements
connected to the primary process? Do the people in charge clearly keep track of what has been
agreed upon? Do they keep their own agreements? Are there consequences when people do
not fulfill their agreements?
Are there ‘informal leaders’ who have a complete regime of their own which runs
contradictory to the goals of the organization? How does the organization deal with that?
It is a common fact that the more clearly a formal leader fills his/her position and mandate, and
is committed to the primary process, the less chance there is of an informal leader arising.
Informal leaders fill the vacuum that the formal leaders have created.

A completely different intervention which is connected to this phase is, as a group, to explore
the range of options for action. I mean here that we should consider the question of whether
the actions are purely based on rational arguments or conclusions, or if there is also the
possibility for actions based on emotionality, creativity or intuition, based on the ‘irrational’,
‘non- tangible’, or madness?

20
With the word ‘agreement’ I refer to the fact that people have consent on what has to be done and who will do what, when
and where.

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As I have stated before, many people in organizations only behave as purely, rational beings.
They will only act based on logical, rational arguments and little from their heart or belly. At
the end of the day this often leads to a loss of passion.
Creating the possibility for the unexpected, for wondering and intuition will definitely lead to
more liveliness. This asks that we do not make our plans and schedules too tight, that we have
the courage to make plans and agreements, and to leave space for the unexpected.
It is an almost impossible combination and still, it is this combination that helps us to stay
committed, to stay passionate and have fun, to experience usefulness and do our work with
our hearts. It is the art of the juggler, who knows better than anyone, how to hold on and let
go. To work and act only with your head is like juggling with only one ball and it will become
dull after a while. Juggling with three balls (head, belly and heart) is already a lot more
interesting, but if we also add our physical sensations and intuition and maybe even more to it,
it will become a real spectacle.
We can state that the more our actions are related to what is happening in the moment or
opportune in the organization, the more people will be involved with more than one source
(the five balls). A way to reflect on the connection between our actions and the present
situation is to build in reflection loops.
Merry en Brown call this >to build in possibilities for meta-processing= in our action. (Merry
& Brown, page 283)
Again and again we detach from our actions to become aware
of what is happening in the moment and how this is related to
what we wanted or have planned.
Within this process of reflecting we should not only focus on
the content or task (one or two balls), but also on the process
and relationships (some extra balls).

In all sort of teams, including management teams it is amazing how often the relational
level of the communication is completely ignored or neglected, even though everyone in
the room experiences this level clearly. This topic is still taboo.

If we really want our actions to achieve our goals, we can not do without reflecting on these
more implicit processes. Awareness of what is happening on the relational level and
recognizing how this is may be hindering or even blocking our action, will absolutely improve
our actions. It is therefore a necessary intervention to request these moments of reflection
regularly.

Contact

All previous interventions were mainly directed towards increasing contact within a team or
organization. This might lead you to the conclusion that since we have reached the phase of
contact (final contact), there is no need for further interventions. We have accomplished what
we wanted to achieve.
However, this is not correct. Contact is not a goal in itself, it is meant to lead to fulfillment, to
a satisfying result. If we do not reach this fulfillment or result, we will be stuck with a hole, an
‘unfinished Gestalt’, and this will make it hard to withdraw, let go and be once again open for
new impulses or ideas.
Therefore, one of the most important interventions in this phase is to support the others
(individual, team or organization) in seeing and valuing the accomplished results. Clear goals
or targets are needed to do that. Otherwise how can we decide if what we have accomplished
is what we wanted to reach? If our goals or targets were not clear, we can be satisfied and

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unsatisfied at the same time. This underlines just how very important it is to take the time to
formulate a clear direction and clear goals at the beginning of a process or project. In fact,
even in this phase it is also useful to look once again at our goals and see if we can make them
still more clear and concrete.

Of course there is the risk that we will become the archer, who after his arrow has hit
something, defines this as his target so that he can always say: “Look! I did it!”

In this phase another intervention might be needed to help people look at how they deal with
success.

Individuals as well as teams sometimes attribute success to others or to the extenuating

circumstances, while viewing failures as totally their own fault. I see this tendency
especially in my work with nurses and nurses-aides, and as can be expected, it is often
connected to their need for perfection.

By increasing awareness of this phenomenon, people can first see and then recognize what
they are doing and from that, learn to deal with this tendency in another way.
A final intervention which is sometimes appropriate in this phase is to say ‘stop’. In other
words, it can be necessary to invite the others to stop their work for a moment and take some
time to see what has been accomplished already. Some workers or teams go on forever
without any awareness of what they have achieved.

Fulfillment

Like the previous phase, interventions might still be needed. This phase is not like ‘the day
after the night before’, but also an important phase in the total cycle of experience. To
stagnate in this phase can mean that we hang onto fulfillment, not let go and withdraw to
become open again.
A very suitable intervention might be to introduce closure rituals. Celebrating success can be
an important part of this.

If we would spend as much time on celebrating and valuing our success as we spend on
all that went wrong, the joy and work satisfaction of a lot of people would increase
enormously.

I am convinced that finishing a successful project with a party, where people are appreciated
for their job, literally in front of the spotlight can contribute to the fact that people are more
able to experience their success and to let go of the project.
And of course another, even more appropriate, intervention might be to ask the others what
they need in order to let go of the project. This way we create a common responsibility for
ending this phase.
Another essential element of this phase is to consider if we have to say goodbye to some or all
of our colleagues at this moment and if so, how we do this in such a way that it will contribute
to a feeling of fulfillment.
When we work with teams, project-groups or task-groups which are created for only the
duration of a project it is especially important to take time for saying goodbye.

In this chapter we have looked at some possible interventions in relation to the cycle of the
creative process. It is not a complete list. The interventions mentioned are just a few of the

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many possible interventions which, in my view, relate to the Gestalt approach.
The essence and most important goal of all these interventions is to increase the awareness of
the people involved: awareness of what is present and what is missing, of the possibilities as
well as of the boundaries or limitations.
This makes it impossible, from a Gestalt point of view, to prescribe specifically what is best for
all individuals, teams or organizations. These kinds of prescriptions can easily lead to new
‘shoulds’, new introjects or new ‘Fremdkörper’, which will hinder rather than facilitate the
self-organizing ability of an organization. From a Gestalt point of view, the best thing we can
do is to increase awareness within ourselves and in others of what is happening right now, and
to explore what interventions might be most appropriate at this moment to facilitate the
process in an optimal way. In other words: better to explore and facilitate than to prescribe
and enforce.

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7. Group dynamic, a Gestalt point of view

Because much of a manager, consultant, coach or trainer’s work is done in or with groups, I
would like to finish this book with a few words about group dynamic phenomena and how we
can understand them from a Gestalt point of view.
Originally, little attention was paid to groups and their specific dynamic in Gestalt literature.
Perls worked mainly with individuals and when he worked in groups, he still focused on the
individual and the others in the group were more like an audience to him. A lot of his work in
these groups was in fact meant to demonstrate his method.
The development of a theory on groups and group psychotherapy within the field of Gestalt
therapy did not really get started for a long time. Only recently, have we seen a change here
and therefore we can now observe growing attention for the exploration and development of a
theory on Gestalt group therapy.
In the Dutch-speaking region, George Wollants made an important contribution to the
development of this theory. This chapter is therefore partly inspired by his work and his way
of thinking about Gestalt group therapy. I think that most of his ideas, although developed in
the field of therapy, are very valuable and useful for the Gestalt approach in organizations.

The group as a Gestalt

From a Gestalt point of view a group is seen as a Gestalt, as a meaningful whole. This means
that a group is seen as an entity in itself with its own dynamic and its own themes, which are
definitely different from the dynamic and themes of the individual group members. There is a
transcending dynamic and there are transcending themes which find their basis in the needs,
experiences and behavior of the individual group members, but are not fully determined by
them. More than that, the individual behaviors in a group are rather an expression or reflection
of this transcending dynamic and theme.
This is a crucial principle in reflecting upon groups or teams in organizations. Here too, we
can speak of a transcending dynamic and of transcending themes in teams. What at first may
seem to be an individual issue might be an element of a common theme or development on the
team level when looked at more closely.

A nice example of this is when a team is taking a new step in its development. Before
such a new step is taken, we often see a period of chaos or a period in which old topics
arise. On the surface, or on the individual level we could easily interpret these chaotic
discussions or old topics as a waste of time, as disturbances of the group development,
but in fact they are the expression of this development. They are the expression of the
hesitation the group as a whole is experiencing in order to make this new step.

So instead of seeing phenomena only as individual or relational problems running the risk of
spending a lot of time working on this level, we can look at phenomena as an expression of
something that is happening in the group as a whole and explore this Gestalt of the team. This
way we facilitate the team in taking new steps.
If we spend all our efforts on the individual level and try to control or influence these
individual behaviors, we might miss the transcending theme and interfere with the on-going
healthy process of the team. We hinder the self-regulating ability of this team.

The whole is reflected in each part

A second principle, related to the previous one, is that each individual in a group or team

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reflects the transcending themes and has his or her specific function in this context.
As Wollants states it: “The whole is working through the interactions of the individuals.”
(Wollants, page 7)
In this article he also quotes Anthony and Foulkes: “Whatever happens in a group is always
seen (by us) as a process which develops within the whole group.” (Idem page 7)
This principle is also important for people who work with teams in organizations. Too often
the behavior of an individual worker is only seen as an individual, personal event and
therefore, possible reactions or decisions are only focused on this individual worker, with the
risk that this worker will become a so called ‘identified patient’ or scapegoat.
However, the moment we realize the principle that the whole is reflected in each part, we can
see that whatever an individual worker says or does is somehow connected to the whole team
and the possible transcending themes of this team. With this in mind we get a better
understanding of the behavior of this individual. We are better able to perceive it as a
phenomenon in the field of the whole team and its environment.
As already mentioned, this does not mean that this individual has no link to this issue. Of
course this specific individual worker has a connection to this transcending theme otherwise he
would not bring it out in the open. He resonates (the strongest) with this theme, presumably
due to his personal history.
It is my experience, the group or team member, who is most strongly connected to the
transcending theme of the group, will bring this theme out in the open and make it visible.

We can compare this with the strings of a guitar. The e-string of a guitar will start to
tremble with the sound of a piano, the moment someone hits the e-key of this piano. The
sound of the piano will fill the room and because the e-string has the strongest
connection to this e-sound, it will resonate first.

The moment a team does not know what to do next and is hesitating to make a decision
the member of this team who generally is more hesitant will presumably open his mouth
and start to speak in a hesitating way.

Or in a team with a lot of hidden anger towards the leader, the team member who is
particularly sensitive to authority will presumably begin the conflict with this leader.

In a team where the rules and boundaries are not clear, the person, who has an issue
with boundaries will presumable begin to overstep the boundaries more and more.

Therefore, it is important that a manager, consultant, coach or trainer is able to see the
behavior of an individual as a figure against the ground of the team as a whole, and the
possible transcending themes that are present. Otherwise we risk perceiving the behavior as
only a reflection of the individual and will put the person in the role of the ‘identified patient’,
which will undoubtedly lead to the treatment of symptoms.

Giving away one of the poles

The next phenomenon in groups that I would like to describe is the tendency in groups or
teams to attribute specific qualities or poles to just one group or team member. And of course
this will be done with the team member who has a specific connection to this quality or pole.
In a team which is afraid of conflicts and where nobody expresses any criticism, the team
member who resonates with hidden criticism will pick up this denied pole and express criticism
to others. When this person does his ‘task’ well, the team will attribute the pole of ‘being

85
critical’ to this individual, while the rest of this team can stay friendly.
Unfortunately we often see two reinforcing tendencies occurring in this kind of situations:
1. because the team tried to avoid the expression of criticism, they will not be happy with the
critical behavior of this individual team member; they will try to avoid or isolate him;
2. because this team member is not only expressing criticism for himself but is actually
expressing (all the hidden) criticism for the whole team, he risks becoming over-critical.
These two tendencies will reinforce each other and will finally lead to a situation where this
individual team member will become the ‘black sheep’ of the team. We can say that the ‘black
sheep’ in a team very often represents the taboo or the hidden pole of a team. And of course
the next step is often that this ‘black sheep’ is sacrificed as a ‘scapegoat’ (after all he is to
blame for the bad atmosphere in the team) in the hope that all problems will be now solved. In
other words, we just eliminate the ‘bad guy’.

Unfortunately, people do not understand that this solution is only temporary and that this team
has actually amputated itself. They eliminated an essential, indispensable half of a polarity and
therefore it can only be a temporary solution because the team, as a Gestalt, will strive to
become whole again. Within a short while another team member will pick up the amputated,
missing pole and represent it to find wholeness for the team. And so after a while we have a
new ‘black sheep’.
The moment we understand these phenomena as themes of the team as a whole, we can look
at them with the whole team. For example, we can invite the team to take a moment’s rest, to
become aware of these phenomena and to take responsibility for them. In this way the team
can get better insight into their own themes and dynamic, and start to re-own their amputated
pole or quality.
In this way the team serves two goals: one is that they will become whole again and so, take a
new step in their development and second, in relation to this individual, they will relieve him of
his obligation.

Group-development

There is a development in the interactions and relationships in every group or team. We can
clearly see a development in the interaction between members, beginning with uncertain and
careful feeling each other out, and ripening into a more personal, affective interaction later on.
In organizational teams, we see the same sort of development. However, this development in a
task-oriented group will normally be less intimate than in a counseling or therapy group.
Much of the literature on group development speaks of a linear process in this development.
Two well-known models are those of Schutz, who divides the process in three phases: an
inclusion-phase (do I belong to this group?), a control-phase (who is the leader here?) and an
affection-phase (how open can we be?), and the model of Tuckman who speaks of four
phases: forming, storming (conflicts because people show their uniqueness), norming (the
development of group-norms) and performing (working on the task).
Yet another kind of model is that of Bion, which is more like a spiral and based on how the
group deals with basic assumptions like dependency, fight-flight, and paring.
From the Gestalt point of view, we can speak of two kinds of process models:
 a cyclical model, like the cycle of creative adjustment, which emphasizes the fact that
groups deal with specific themes which return to the foreground time after time, until
the theme is solved;
 a ‘polarity model’, which emphasizes the fact that there are always polarities present in
the life of a group with which it has to manage. Wollants describes this phenomenon in

86
 his article on Gestalt group therapy: “The development in a group goes from ‘polarity
to paradox’, which means “ …… learning to deal with the polarities in life.” (Wollants,
page 19)
Both of these models represent a part of the dynamic in group life. When we look at the
dynamic in groups and teams, we can see that certain themes or issues emerge repeatedly and
some of these themes clearly have to do with polarities which are present in the group. The
group is struggling to deal with these polarities.
Actually we can say that in a beginning group, where people are still carefully feeling each
other out, there is a tendency to simplify reality by reducing the present polarities into ‘either –
or’ situations. Someone is sympathetic or unsympathetic. It is one or the other.
After a while, these simplifications do not work anymore and there is a growing need to see,
be seen and to express oneself as more than just a simplification. This is often the moment that
the first confrontations or conflicts occur.
These confrontations and conflicts are necessary to bring the group a step further, to seeing
and accepting the differences and newly developing norms, which leaves room for diversity.

Another polarity, which often exists in the beginning, is: “Do I isolate myself or do I become
part of this group?”. Later on this polarity changes into the paradox: “I can only be a true
member of this group, when I stay in touch with myself.”
It takes some time before a group reaches this level of quality and until that moment, the
theme of ‘being oneself versus being part of the group’ will come back in different forms.
Underneath this polarity lies a more basic polarity which becomes foreground from time to
time in all phases of group life: the fear of isolation on the one hand versus the fear of
confluence on the other.
‘Solving’ these kinds of polarities is only possible if the group as a whole develops towards a
situation where they can handle these polarities as paradoxes, as ‘and – and’ situations, e.g.
there can only be togetherness and intimacy if it is based on the acknowledgement of identity.
So in the beginning of a group, people will perceive the polarities as a conflict between two
opposing choices; later on they will perceive them and deal with them more as two connected
qualities; one can not exist without the other.
Along this path, confrontations and conflicts about different issues will occur many times,
therefore they will look like different confrontations or conflicts but actually they are an
expression of the cyclical group theme: ‘finding a creative adjustment to the question, how do
we deal with this polarity of isolation versus confluence?’

Working with the combination of a cyclical model and a polarity model, instead of working
with a linear model, implies that we cannot predict or prescribe the next step or phase in the
development of a group. We just have to be open for what happens and see how this is related
to development within the group and the possible themes that are present.
This calls for a phenomenological approach: not looking for what is happening or should
happen according to the model, but being open for what is happening and what need or needs
the group expresses through that kind of behavior.
The risk of working with a more linear model is that the phases can work like a prescription or
fixed procedure and we end up only looking at whether the group is developing according to
these phases. Instead of this, we can work with awareness of team members and our self. By
looking and sharing what we are aware of in this situation, and from there looking at the
actual themes we explore together what might be necessary for the team.
To find out what the team needs, we can actually follow two paths:
 we can ask the team directly by inviting the individual members to express what they
need and see what common themes come out of this. I deliberately use the word

87
 ‘express’ because it is not only a matter of verbalizing the need, but a matter of
expressing the need in more than one way, e.g. also physically or with a noise like
standing up and moving around or going out of the room for a moment, or giving a yell
or slapping the hand on the table or whatever comes up.
 we can ask ourselves what we would need in this situation. After all we are also part of
the same field and therefore the need of the field can be expressed through us as well.
Both these interventions are based on the same common assumption, that if a group member
or team member really takes responsibility and care, for his own needs, he will not only help
himself, but he will also help the total field and therefore, the whole group or team.
This might sound a bit contradictory to how many of us were raised, namely, that it is
important to take good care of others and that taking care of oneself is selfish. However,
practice shows that team members who are always busy taking care of and pleasing others are
blocking rather than improving the group process.
I want to stress here that I am not judging this kind of behavior because when it is present in a
group, this behavior too represents a need or theme that is present in the field. So this
behavior also requires exploration of the connection between the needs that are expressed and
the themes present in the total field. Therefore, I would like to repeat what I have written
before: it is better to explore and facilitate whatever is happening in a group or team, than to
judge and correct it, because everything that is happening in a team is part of the total field
created by team and its environment, and therefore the behavior or issue always has a function
in this team and its development.

Levels of intervention

It should be clear by now that from a Gestalt point of view on groups, we are mainly
interested in the dynamic of the group or team as a whole and how this dynamic is expressed
by the individual members. This focus requires that we are able to look at what is happening in
the team on several levels. We are not only focused on what each individual team member is
saying or doing, but we are also focused on what is happening between the team members and
on what becomes a figure against this ground as an transcending theme of the whole team.
George Wollants once presented a scheme, which illustrates these different ways of looking at
and intervening in a group.
The three vertical columns represent the three possible levels of focus; the three horizontal
rows represent the same levels, but now as three possible access points for interventions.

Looking at the levels of focus, we can differentiate the following three levels:
1. the individual level, where we are focused on what the individual team member is saying or
doing.
How does John deal with his irritation in this team? What is it like for Caroline to be
new in this team?
2. the interpersonal level, where we are focused on what is happening between two or more
team members.
It is obvious that every time when Carl says something, Maria always supports him.
Jean often interrupts and corrects Saskia, when she is speaking and she does not object
this.
3. the group or team level, where we are focused on the transcending themes in the field of
the team as a whole.
It appears that the team is responding in a very restless way and with fear every time a
team member expresses a deviant opinion.

88
In addressing our interventions we can also differentiate the same three levels as possible
points of access:
1. the individual level, where we address our intervention(s) to just one team member.
Caroline, what is it like for you to be the new member of this team?
2. the interpersonal level, where we address our intervention(s) to two or more team members
Saskia and Jean, I have noticed that you, Jean are often interrupting and correcting
Saskia and that you, Saskia allow him to do so. I wonder what is going on between you
two?
3. the group or team level, where we address our intervention(s) to the team as a whole.
I am aware of the silence in the team and it seems to me that you are all processing
what has happened this morning.

When we bring these two components together, we get the following scheme:

Focus of intervention ...

Individual Interpersonal Group / Team

Individual The intervention is The intervention is The intervention is

addressed to one person addressed to one person addressed to one
and focused on the and focused on the person and focused on
behavior of this person. interaction between two what is happening in
or more persons. the team as a whole.

Intervention Interpersonal The intervention is The intervention is The intervention is

addressed to .... addressed to two or addressed to two or addressed to two or
more persons and more persons and more persons and
focused on the behavior focused on what is focused on what is
of one individual. happening between happening in the team
them. as a whole.

Group The intervention is The intervention is The intervention is

addressed to the team as addressed to the team addressed to the team
a whole and focused on as a whole and focused as a whole and
the behavior of an on what is happening focused on what is
individual between two or more happening in the team
persons. as a whole.

The level of focus and point of access for our interventions in a team depends on our position,
assignment and mandate in the first place.
As a trainer in computer skills, we will mainly address ourselves to individuals and also our
focus will be on the individual level, the individual skills. But when we are asked to lead a
project on team building or team coaching, it is clear that we will address and focus our
interventions mainly on the group level.
As a manager of a team, we actually should be able to deal with all three levels in a flexible
way. One moment we may be asked to address and focus on the individual and just a moment
later we have to shift our focus and address the whole team.
Another criterion for the choice of level is the task and development of the team. If, in a team
of professionals, the team members work mainly independently on their task, like some
engineers do, and hardly have anything to do with their colleagues, the interventions will also
be more addressed to and focused on the individual level.

89
At the same time it is good to remember that whatever level we choose for addressing our
intervention, we will always influence the total field. After all, the moment we influence a part
of a field, this will immediately influence the total field and vice versa. So the choice is not,
who we want to influence, but rather to whom will we address ourselves according to our
position, assignment, mandate and goals.

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Conclusion

In this book I have tried to translate the Gestalt approach, which originally was developed as a
psychotherapeutic approach, into an approach to working with individuals and teams in
organizations. The process I went through when writing this book and subsequently when
translating it into English has become quite an exciting discovery for me. It gave me the
chance to study and review the concepts of the Gestalt approach again from another point of
view and to evaluate the interchange between my practical experiences and the theory.
A very important part in this were the discussions I had with colleagues about the concepts
and their consequences upon developing and executing programs on teaching the Gestalt
approach to managers, coaches, consultants and trainers.
Therefore I like to address a special thanks to my colleagues of the Gestalt Institute
MultidiMens in Belgium where I have been working in the department on Gestalt and
Organizations for more than fifteen years, and especially to my colleague Ernst Knijff who was
willing to read my manuscript and give me feedback.
I like to address special thanks also to Vicki de Klerck who was willing to read my translation.
She did a great job in correcting and improving the text.

I hope that the final result of my discovery process can be a source of inspiration to others, so
that they will also become motivated to explore the possibilities of using the Gestalt approach
in organizations (again).
Like every book, this book is just a momentary expression of my thoughts and ideas. The
process goes on. The moment a book is printed, new thoughts will have been born. A lot of
time will have elapsed between the moment of writing the final period and the moment the
book will be in the bookstore, a time span in which new impulses and experiences will lead to
new insights and new questions. Therefore, I would like to invite readers to give their vision
and comments on what I have written, so that it can inspire me again to go on exploring and
developing this exciting approach to organizations.

But now, first it is the time to stand still ………. and enjoy. The cycle of the creative process
is completed.

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Literature

Baalen, D. van Gestalt diagnostiek

in Gestalt, Dutch Flemish Journal for
Gestalttherapy, 1998
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New York, 1974
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New York, 1980
Freire, P. Pedagogie der onderdrukten
Baarn, 1972
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Amsterdam, 1984
Knijff, E. De therapeut als clown
Berchem, 2000
Lambrechts, G. Gestalttherapie tussen toen en straks
Berchem, 2001
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Cleveland, 1990
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Amsterdam, 1978
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93
Index

acknowledging, 18, 20, 32, 33, 38, 67, 70, 71

action, 7, 8, 10, 11, 15, 19, 26, 30, 31, 42, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 62, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 92,
98
amputated, 38, 47, 86
amputation, 68
assignment, 64, 65, 66, 67, 70, 89, 90
awareness, 5, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 25, 28, 30, 31, 34, 37, 42, 44, 45,
46, 47, 51, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 67, 69, 70, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 83, 87,
97
black sheep, 86, 97
blockades, 38, 42
boundary, 7, 16, 19, 23, 41, 92
causality, 18, 20
celebrating, 35, 82
closure rituals, 82
clown, 11, 59, 60, 73, 92
confluencing, 13, 14, 43
constellations, 18, 76
contact, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 25, 27, 29, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 41,
42, 43, 44, 46, 48, 49, 51, 53, 54, 55, 58, 59, 62, 65, 66, 68, 70, 71, 79, 81
contact-cycle, 5, 10, 14, 15
contacting, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13
contact-mechanisms, 13
correcting experiences, 40
creative adjustment, 5, 13, 16, 19, 23, 26, 35, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 52, 55, 57, 69, 71, 86, 87
creative indifference, 11, 14, 30, 61, 97
creative process, 5, 10, 28, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 42, 45, 55, 57, 58, 59, 60, 64, 70, 72, 74, 82,
91
cycle of experience, 5, 10, 71, 82
cyclical model, 86, 87
De Roeck, 42
deflecting, 13, 15
denied pole, 85
deus ex machina, 43, 49
differentiation, 11, 46, 72, 73
egotism, 55, 98
exceeding dynamic, 84
existential, 17, 34, 77
existential phenomenology, 17
exploring, 31, 64, 71, 74, 88, 91
facilitate, 5, 20, 52, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 64, 71, 72, 73, 77, 83, 84, 88
facilitating management, 24, 26, 57, 58, 60, 62, 63, 64, 67
fear, 15, 24, 28, 39, 40, 42, 45, 46, 69, 70, 74, 75, 77, 87, 88
field, 5, 8, 9, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 32, 33, 34, 36, 38, 39, 41, 45,
46, 47, 57, 59, 60, 63, 65, 67, 68, 69, 71, 76, 80, 84, 85, 88, 90
field theory, 5, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 32, 38, 45
figure, 8, 9, 11, 12, 18, 19, 23, 28, 30, 32, 46, 51, 53, 67, 74, 85, 88
figure-ground constellation, 9

94
final contact, 8, 12, 32, 53, 81
fixed adjustment, 37, 41, 46, 66, 69, 70, 71, 72, 77
fore contact, 8
formal mandate, 66
Fremd-körper, 44
Friedländer, 11
fruitful emptiness, 11, 27, 28, 55, 57, 72, 97
fulfillment, 12, 14, 19, 20, 23, 26, 32, 34, 35, 51, 53, 54, 55, 72, 81, 82
Gestalt-formation, 19
giving away one pole, 67
goodbye, 82, 98
Goodman, 16, 19, 20, 37, 92
ground, 8, 9, 11, 18, 19, 23, 30, 34, 46, 54, 67, 85, 88
group as a whole, 27, 70, 84, 87
group dynamic, 84
group-development, 84, 86
holistic, 17
identified patient, 38, 85
illness, 28, 38, 98
impasse, 31, 43, 57, 72, 73, 77, 97
increase the awareness, 74, 78
informal leaders, 80
innocent, 73, 74
interventions, 5, 13, 29, 31, 38, 47, 55, 56, 57, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 70, 72, 77, 78, 81, 82, 83,
88, 89
introjecting, 13, 14, 44, 45
Knijff, 59, 60, 91, 92
Lambrechts, 11, 13, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, 92
levels of focus, 88
Lewin, 16, 18
low-energy systems, 48
Luijpen, 17
madness, 78, 80
managing by walking around, 29, 97
mandate, 58, 64, 65, 66, 70, 78, 80, 89, 90
Merry & Brown, 42, 44, 45, 48, 50, 81
missing pole, 67, 68, 86
mobilizing energy, 15, 42, 48, 62, 76
neurotic, 13, 15, 77, 92
Nevis, 5, 10, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 92
organismic selfregulation, 20, 21, 24
paradoxes, 87
perfectionist organization, 54
Perls, 8, 11, 13, 30, 34, 37, 45, 55, 84, 92
phenomenological, 17, 20, 25, 59, 71, 87
polarities, 13, 14, 67, 68, 86, 87
polarity-model, 86
position, 55, 57, 64, 65, 67, 76, 78, 89, 90
post contact, 8
Prägnanz, 19, 23
presence, 8, 25, 30, 57, 58, 70, 77

95
primary process, 5, 23, 24, 25, 26, 33, 34, 37, 38, 45, 52, 55, 57, 78, 80
projecting, 13, 14, 46, 48, 49, 75
projective identification, 14
reality, 9, 10, 13, 18, 20, 29, 46, 59, 71, 75, 78, 87
recognition, 63, 71
red nose, 73, 74, 78
reflection loops, 81
relational mandate, 66
re-owning projections, 75, 97
resonate, 35, 38, 85
responsibility, 12, 32, 33, 34, 40, 46, 47, 61, 71, 75, 78, 82, 86, 88, 97, 98
rest, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 19, 27, 28, 29, 35, 38, 39, 42, 44, 55, 72, 79, 86, 97
retroflecting, 13, 15, 49
Rick Maurer, 53
selective self-disclosure, 59, 60, 67
self-organizing, 64
self-regulating, 20, 24, 25, 28, 35, 52, 57, 58, 64, 76
self-regulation, 20, 21, 57
sensation, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 19, 27, 29, 37, 43, 45, 46, 72
skills, 56, 57, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 80, 89
stagnation, 13, 34, 39, 42, 45, 52, 53, 55, 72, 74, 75, 76, 79
stagnations, 19, 36, 42, 45, 55
structure of interventions, 70
stupid manager, 73
taboo, 81, 86
theaters of fleas, 53
underlying need, 19, 26, 53, 55, 69, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75
unlearning organization, 50, 51
Watzlawick, 8
withdrawal, 8, 12, 53, 63
Wollants, 39, 69, 70, 84, 85, 86, 88, 93
Zinker, 10, 93

96
Appendix

Stage Characteristics Characteristics Intervention

healthy development disturbed development
Rest ‘Sleeping organization’ * wake up

* rest * passive * stimulate the perception of

* openness * ‘sleeping’ signals
* creative indifference * indifference * invite to differentiate
* fruitful emptiness * impasse
* creative chaos * chaos

* confluence: * confluence: * support (attempts to)

* we-language * we-language differentiate
* feeling of being * uniformity /
united conformity
(grey masses)
Sensation ‘Hungry or fanatic * stimulate focusing and
organization’ awareness

* noticing * keep on gathering * come to conclusions

* perceiving signals
* collecting data
* getting ideas
* managing by walking
around
* be wondered
* no integration assigning meaning
* trend-hopper * stimulate abilities to
* many ‘fremdkörper’ criticize
* teach how to focus

* introjection: * introjection: * teach how to ‘chew’

* taking in / accepting * uncritical
ideas * dogmas / shoulds
* the ‘holy belief’
Awareness ‘Paranoid organization’ * re-owning

* assigning meaning * searching for the one and * awareness on subjectivity

* realizing
* taking decisions
* recognizing and
understanding figures and
patterns
only true meaning
* continue discussions
* forcing decisions
* fixed convictions
* blaming
* stimulate taking decisions
* stimulate risk-behavior
* taking responsibility

* projection: * projection: * re-owning projections

* assigning or * we – they thinking * teach how to differentiate
attributing * black sheep
* scapegoat

97
Stage Characteristics Characteristics Intervention
healthy development Disturbed development
Mobilizing ‘Manic depressive * concrete action
energy organization’

* creativity * low energy or too high * concrete agreements and

* making plans energy system going into action
* enthusiasm * apathy / boredom
* cynicism
* wishful thinking
* high absentee rate due to
illness

* retroflection: * retroflection: * focus energy and direct

* realization takes time * repression constructively
(being able to postpone) * unlearning
Action ‘Theatre of fleas’ * define direction and
coordination

* action * acting out * synchronization

* realizing plans * without direction * creating connection
* moving on * dealing with symptoms * define targets redefine
agreements

* deflection: * deflection: * support and coordinate

* adjust action to the need * loss of action action according to needs
and circumstances (settle
down)
Contact ‘Perfectionist org.’ * define borders

* connection * being totally involved in * evaluation of results

* taking responsibility work * assigning meaning to the
* transformation * workaholics results

* confluence: * confluence: * teach how to make a

* merge * going under / difference by drawing a
drowning line (border)
Fulfillment ‘Narcissistic organization’ * teach how to be more laid
back

* harvest / celebrate * self-adoration * teach to let go

* integrate
* learning

* egotism: * egotism: * teach to let go and to be

* satisfaction * the dialectics of progress open (wondering)
Withdrawal ‘Nihilistic organization’

* ability to put things into * indifference * saying goodbye

perspective * loneliness * mourning
* letting go * bitterness
* introducing rituals
* goodbye
* mourning

* deflection: * deflection:
* putting things into * nihilism
perspective

98