ABSTRACT
Group analysis is above all the art of conversation. It provides a potent framework for organizational consulting and coaching. The chapter gives an account of discovering this framework. It explores the creative potential of free-floating dialogue, how the rich picture built by many perspectives interacting can enable the coach and the leader alike to work with organizational systems more effectively. There is a passage of dialogue among the book’s contributors, exploring the meaning of the ideas. The group analytic concept ‘matrix’ is described: persons seen as both individual and inescapably social, part of a complex web of relationships which influence thoughts, feelings and action; the concept allows the complex interactions of factors in modern organizational life to be thought about. The chapter reviews prior group analytic writing about organizational work, and introduces each of the other chapters in the book.
