ABOUT THE PROGRAMME
Stress is an unavoidable part of life, when we care about our work, relationships, and impact – stress becomes inevitable.
Yet when left unmanaged, it does not only wear us down personally, it disrupts clarity, performance and connection with others, and ultimately erodes wellbeing.
In the UK, 79% of employees experience moderate-to-high stress levels while signs of burnout are becoming more common – with 63% of UK employees showing symptoms like exhaustion and disengagement (MHFA England).
In organisational settings, stress rarely occurs in isolation. It emerges through a combination of individual responses, relational patterns, cultural expectations, and structural conditions. Many professionals attempt to cope by individually pushing through, which often leads to fatigue, disengagement, and reduced performance.
What if there was another way and stress could become a source of valuable information and resilience rather than depletion?
This programme offers a practical, relational and research informed approach to understanding stress and building resilience at both individual and organisational levels.
It combines contemporary neuroscience, organisational psychology, and the humanistic and relational Gestalt approach to help participants work with stress more skilfully and sustainably.
Designed for professionals who want a grounded understanding of stress and organisational dynamics, the programme blends theory, experiential learning and practical tools. You learn how stress operates in the mind and body, how it shapes communication and collaboration, and how it circulates through teams and systems. The aim is to strengthen your understanding and adaptability, enhance your relational capability and support a healthier individual and organisational performance.
The programme consists of two separate one-day courses. You may attend the first course on its own or both courses together for a fuller understanding of stress and resilience, as you progress from personal stress management to systemic organisational resilience.
THE PROGRAMME COURSES
Understanding Stress and Resilience as Individuals and in Teams
This course offers a practical introduction to what stress is, how it develops and how to work with it effectively. The day focuses primarily on individual and relational stress and resilience. It explores responses to pressure and stress (physically, emotionally, and cognitively) and how individual experiences and presence come into play. It supports participants explore mindset and embodied awareness, also helping to identify personal patterns and work through developing healthy habits that support sustained personal wellbeing and performance. The day also introduces stress in the workplace, examining how organisational pressures shape individual responses, team dynamics and overall functioning and performance.
Enhancing Workplace Organisational Dynamics, Performance and Resilience.
This course delves deeper into how stress emerges and functions within teams and organisations as ecosystems of activity. It explores connections with systemic parameters, organisational culture, behaviours, and power dynamics. It also shares diagnostic methods that reveal how stress comes into play across organisational ecosystems.
Participants use humanistic, relational, and experiential Gestalt methods to map systemic drivers of stress and recognise relational patterns of emergence and response. The course also explores how to strengthen resilience, communication, and psychological safety in order to enhance individual and team performance.
Together, the two courses provide a coherent progression from understanding and exploring managing stress at a personal level, to navigating and shaping the wider organisational conditions that support resilience, effectiveness and healthier performance.
Whether you’re navigating work pressures, adjusting to transitions or supporting others through change, this programme offers space to recalibrate your approach to stress and enhance your capability to manage it, effectively and sustainably.
WHO IS THE PROGRAMME FOR
The programme is designed for professionals who want a clear, applied and research informed understanding of the powerful role stress plays in our relationships, well-being, workplace performance, and organisational dynamics. It is suitable for people who want both practical tools for daily use and a broader framework for improving team and organisational functioning. The programme is relevant to:
- Professionals experiencing pressure at work and want to understand their stress patterns and build resilience.
- Managers, team leaders and emerging leaders seeking practical ways to support wellbeing, communication and performance in themselves and their teams.
- Senior leaders responsible for shaping culture, psychological safety and organisational health.
- Teams or team members working in high demand, high complexity or ambiguity heavy environments.
- HR, People and Culture practitioners, coaches and OD professionals requiring a coherent model that links individual mindset, emotions and embodied presence with behaviour and the wider organisational ecosystem.
- Consultants, clinicians and coaches who want a grounded organisational frame for stress, power, relational dynamics and psychological safety.
- Professionals and practitioners, wishing to enhance relational capability in their roles working in/with teams and organisations.
The programme is suitable as a standalone professional development experience or as part of broader leadership, wellbeing or organisational development work.
No prior experience is necessary. Participants require curiosity to explore self-awareness and work with psychologically informed and relational approaches of this topic, in a supportive group setting.
At the Gestalt Centre we value equity and inclusion and welcome diversity and difference in all backgrounds, identities, cultures and voices. It is integral to who we are and how we work. If you have any accessibility requirements for this course, please let us know how we might be able to meet them.
PROGRAMME OUTCOMES
Across the two courses, participants gain personal, relational and organisational tools and tips that supports healthier stress responses, stronger collaboration and more sustainable performance. In particular,
- Understand stress as a dynamic psychophysiological and relational process rather than a fixed state.
- Recognise key factors and dynamics that contribute to stress and shape behaviour.
- Identify early physiological and emotional indicators of stress and link them to habitual patterns of behaviour.
- Apply somatic and cognitive regulation techniques that stabilise the nervous system and increase moment to moment choice.
- Build restorative habits and recovery practices for wellbeing and resilience.
- Recognise how organisational factors and cultural norms influence stress.
- Understand how individual stress responses interact with relational patterns and team dynamics.
- Understand how power, authority and informal influence shape safety, behaviour and performance.
- Identify emotional contagion and boundary erosion within teams and design containment and stabilising practices.
- Gain relational tools to improve communication, reduce friction and strengthen collaboration and the relational capability in teams and organisations.
- Use diagnostic frames from the HSE Management Standards and relational Gestalt methods to understand systemic stress patterns and intervene more effectively.
- Strengthen adaptive behaviour, role clarity and team resilience through improved structures, dialogue and more grounded leadership practices.
Taken together, the course provides a coherent progression from understanding and exploring managing stress at a personal level to navigating and shaping the wider organisational conditions that support resilience and performance.
ABOUT THE TRAINER
Carlo Draghi MA, is a UKCP accredited Gestalt psychotherapist, an EMCC accredited coach, and a consultant. Prior to this, Carlo worked for 18 years in the finance industry managing high-performing teams. Today, he integrates his corporate background, coaching and therapy training to support individuals, leaders, and teams unlock potential, enhance performance, and navigate personal and professional growth. Carlo also holds an MA in Gestalt Psychotherapy, an MSc in Organisational Psychology, and a BSc in Economics.