What we do

We do not view learning as primarily rational and cognitive but rather as experiential, and therefore as a direct outcome of the group and organizational emotions and dynamics experienced in the “here-and-now” by the participants in a formative process.

Offering such a perspective fosters the initiation of change as well as the personal acceptance of responsibility. Our mode of intervention thus remains similar whether we are conducting a training event or offering a consulting service.

Over the past fifteen years, we have organized a wide range of seminars, courses, conferences and workshops on topics including: organizational counselling, stress and burnout prevention, workplace envy, executive coaching, institutional observation, management in healthcare organizations and social enterprises, primary care and Balint groups, social dreaming, and adolescent issues. Alongside theoretical presentation, these events typically offer experiential, reflexive, and self-observation sessions, which facilitate learning and the capacity to tap into the deep emotional dynamics and implicit cultures of groups and organizations. The trainers become consultants or facilitators and use predominantly interactive tools, such as interpretative hypotheses, role play, the evoking of dreams and narratives, “drawing the organization”, guided and “leaderless” groups, the “fishbowl” technique, etc.

The Group’s interventions often draw on an action-research approach, whereby the participants in the training take on the role of co-researchers within their own organization, with the aim of identifying – under the guidance of the facilitators – key grey areas, needs, and proposals for change. The purpose of this kind of contextual and experiential inquiry is to establish empirical criteria for concrete change, while the data generated can also serve to confirm theoretical concepts and inform further research.

The focuses of our psychosocial inquiry for training and development purposes include:

• group relations and the systemic-psychodynamic paradigm
• the social applications of psychoanalysis
• institutional observation
• the functioning of work groups
• the social dreaming method and its applications
• the listening post method and its applications
• clinical-organizational supervision and institutional/corporate consultancy
• occupational stress and organizational malaise (especially in the health care and “helping professions”)
• the care relationship in social and healthcare services
• executive coaching
• emotional management of safety and risk
• envy and other toxic emotions in the workplace
• relational dynamics in schools
• normal and pathological adolescence
• the therapeutic residential centre and other residential care and helping formats
• the role of emotion in economic and financial behaviour

In delivering consultancy services, we use the same tools as in our training and professional development offerings to:

• diagnose needs and facilitate organizational change
• review organizational processes and structures
• support management in their organizational roles
• foster mindfulness and emotional-relational skills in work groups and key organizational figures.

We implement a process consulting approach with a view to offering organizations tools for diagnosing issues and seeking potential solutions.

The first phase in a consultancy intervention entails careful analysis of the client’s requirements and exploration of the organizational setting. A cycle of institutional observation sessions or other diagnostic interventions may be necessary before submitting a detailed consultancy or organizational development proposal.

The consultancy intervention per se, which may be offered to a single leader, a top or middle management team, or one or more work groups, usually entails cycles of consulting, counselling, or executive coaching sessions, “in-house” seminars and experiential workshops for small or large groups of staff, institutional supervision for work groups, listening posts (groups set up to explore the patterns underlying a given social or organizational culture), social dreaming matrices, and so on.

Consultants are recruited among members of the Social Enterprise and outside practitioners, according to the experience and skills required for a given assignment, and when necessary can form multidisciplinary teams that work collaboratively with key actors in the client organization.