Dale Hunter and his colleagues at Zenergy, a management consultancy based in New Zealand (where this work was first published by Tandem Press in 1999), are well‐known for bringing together, in credible and practicable ways, a holistic approach to personal development on the one side and organisational decision making and change on the other. Their other books (The Zen of Change, Gower, 1992, and The Facilitation of Groups, Gower, 1994, deal with group dynamics and planning. Co‐operacy, Gower, 1998, deals with reaching group consensus without losing a whole‐person perspective) lead naturally to Handling Groups in Action.
This focuses on making distinctions (i.e. knowing the difference between one thing and another), above all what is missing or lacking from the workplace. Just as Bourdieu applied distinctions to cultural competence, so Hunter applies it to managerial competence. Handling Groups is therefore an excellent diagnostic for the health of the organisation – interpersonal relationships, group effectiveness, leadership and management style, structure and communication.
Step by step it makes key points and indicates what to look out for as “missing”. Are there safety and trust (or are there merely superficial niceness and defensive behaviour?)? Do people really listen (or do they blame, complain, gossip, put each other down, make light of serious things?)? How is power used (do a few dominate, some not take part, are there factions, is there scapegoating?)? What intentions do employees have (are they unwilling to “own” ideas and projects, are things merely “good enough”, have people given up?)? How much emotional competence exists (can they deal with anger, understand hurt, recognise distress in others?)? You can take the Zen dimension or not, as you choose, but these are key questions to ask of any team, project, department, organisation, particularly if it’s going wrong. There are plenty of self‐tests and individual/group activities in the book.
Handling Groups is also about facilitation. Effective facilitation is a way of dealing with what is missing. Developing ideas from their earlier book Co‐operacy, Hunter and his colleagues discuss what successful facilitators should be able to do, supplying what is missing in the workplace. Changing company culture is never easy: employees may be used to hiding emotions, discounting choices, merely tolerating unfairness. There may well be no formal or emotional infrastructure for change. Facilitation aims to create and build commitment, responsibility, affirmation at things achieved together. A “missing” workplace will be full of resentment and fragmentation, unfinished business, people feeling unappreciated, people who have stopped trying, low esteem and mutual blame, disconnection.
Drawing on their own experience and work by writers like Scott Peck, John Heron, Charles Margerison, and Peter Senge, Hunter and his colleagues put a convincing case for the transformative effect of good facilitation. It works best in groups where trust, skill, confidence, and a desire to change and grow can be built up. Clear structure, regular comparisons between what is missing and what can be achieved through facilitation, credible and useful exercises, make Handling Groups more than just facilitating groups: it takes its case for whole‐person empowerment in the learning organisation right across the spectrum from personal reflection and growth, through working effectively and meaningfully in groups, to ways of dealing with explicit and implicit malaise in the organisation. Managers reading it will recognise the missing factors: their solutions will be their own but facilitation will certainly be a key part of them. Real value‐for‐money, eluding the mere “new age” glow and pseudo‐counselling that some books in this “touchy‐feely” area of management sometimes have.
