I belong to the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy (NYIGT). This is where gestalt therapy as a cohesive approach to psychotherapy began.In New York, in the early 1950s, Fritz and Laura Perls met with a number of people to form the original study group that spawned training groups and institutes in Cleveland, Ohio and Los Angeles, California. Fritz eventually left New York to demonstrate gestalt therapy while in residence at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California.In New York the basic theory of gestalt therapy became all the more established as the New York institute took to intensive study of the somewhat difficult to understand book, ‘Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth In the Human Personality', written by Fritz Perls, Ralph Hefferline and Paul Goodman.That book was published in 1951 and it was ahead of its time in several respects.It foreshadowed psychotherapy's move to the current moment, the intersubjective relationship between client and therapist and the experience of contact between the individual person and his or her biopsychosocial context. It spoke of mindfulness as awareness. It described acceptance of the current moment and Arnold Biesser later wrote a now classic chapter in a book expanding on that to call this gestalt therapy's theory of change it is paradoxical: a concentration on being aware of what is going on now, actualising oneself in the immediate. To be oneself in the current moment, or as the gestaltists were want of saying, the “here and now”, is the first step to becoming something new in the future.So, anyway, it all got started in New York. The last of the original group, Richard Kitzler, died in January of 2009. He had been the holder of the traditional flame. Many of his friends and colleagues from the New York area say even today that they walk along the sidewalk in his general neighbourhood and half expect to see him there.In the passing of a generation, and in the advent of technology that allows people to connect across time and physical distance, the New York institute has begun to experience the influence of members who live outside of New York.Thus, the institute now has active members from France, Italy, other states in the USA like Indiana and Wyoming, and also from Bermuda, and they meet in the online environment to discuss theory and practice. It is a kind of collegial, group supervision or consultation.Why do I bring this up? What is the big deal about change coming to a bunch of psychotherapists living in New York?It's because of change itself. The issues involved with change that they are discussing, as they take an active and intentional look at the processes of change at work in their organisation, are common across organisations, geography and time zones.When the passage of an era comes to an organisation, the typical issues include things like the following:n How to assimilate new people.n How to make best use of new ideas and influences without losing the distinctive “brand” of the organisation.n How to honour the past without being subjugated by it.n How to regulate the rate of change.People can scuttle important change when they become territorial and seek to limit needed change, attempting to preserve their privileges, prerogatives, and prestige.Sometimes an organisation will attempt to implement change in order to be competitive (but this does not always, in itself, signify a changing era). There are numerous systems that claim to be effective means of managing change.Just go online and put “organisational change” into the search box. When I did that, I came up with 5,410,000 references to it. Wikipedia summarises organisational change by saying, “Change management is a structured approach to shifting/transitioning individuals, teams, and organisations from a current state to a desired future state. It is an organisational process aimed at empowering employees to accept and embrace changes in their current business environment. In project management, change management refers to a project management process where changes to a project are formally introduced and approved.”It would be possible for an old guard to implement managed change in order to increase profit margin and basically maintain the status quo with regard to its leadership.That would not necessarily involve much of a paradigm shift. In contrast, and at other times, change comes upon an organisation when it is not expecting nor looking for it. This is what the world currently sees in various Arab nations first Tunisia and then other countries such as Yemen and Jordan, the most dramatic being Egypt.Those people are experiencing a “bottom-up” groundswell of demand for change. It is ending governments and leading to limits on existing tenures for various leaders. It is led by a younger generation that is facilitated by the social networking technology that defies absolute control. Such things do not usually happen without difficulty and some sacrifice; so, some people have died.Further, contrary to most attempts to bring about change from the top down, such organisational change cannot be controlled.It emerges and evolves with a life of its own. When organisations attempt to implement change in order to increase profits or position themselves for the future, they refer to the term “change management”.However, emergent change like we see happening is not manageable (in the sense, once again of initiating and channelling momentum exactly where a person wants it).These two perspectives on change affect one's approach to leadership.There is leadership of an older perspective, in which the bold, charismatic individual with vision marches ahead of his team and waves back at them, saying, “Follow me!”However, the leadership of a more contemporary perspective is ground-up.In that perspective the leader emerges from the group and is heavily influenced by it, being one with it and not separate from it, trying to do something to it to achieve goals he or she has set in isolation.In this type of leadership the leader has significant contact and relationships with the people who comprise the working team and receives needed information and influence from the group as a whole.The impetus is from the group to the leader, rather than from the leader to the group.So, I am a member of the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy, and I am watching it usher in a new era.I am watching the leadership emerge through the meetings and discussions taking place in the whole group. It's a little bit of theory becoming practical.