What is Systems-Centered Training (SCT)?

With SCT, you learn to understand and influence human dynamics. SCT indicates that each person is made up of character traits that are formed and activated in relation to the environment. Learning to see human beings in context is helpful in developing effective and enjoyable relationships. Systems-Centered Training provides practical methods for development focused on both the person and the relationship or group to which the person belongs.

Systems-Centered Training is useful when working in organizations at all levels; the employee, the team, the department and the organization as a whole. Systems-Centered Training is also applied in coaching individuals, couples, families and groups.

How does SCT work?

To discover how you yourself can contribute to system development, it is helpful to get to know your own reactions in the different phases of system dynamics.

Participants in Systems-Centered Training learn to align their contributions with the group. This requires a shift from "what is important to me" to "what is important to us.

The training is experiential; exploring one's own experience in the now is central. In doing so, participants learn the distinction between understanding intellectually and grasping emotionally. This contributes to the development of emotional intelligence of participants and group. Personal development and group development go hand in hand.

Frustration is a natural and normal part of relationships and cooperation. SCT offers a unique way in dealing with frustration with the goal of learning to use it functionally in relationships. This is fundamentally different from venting frustration, which is what we usually do.

The SCT core method: functional subgroups

'Functional subgroups' is the core method within SCT and focuses on developing connecting communication by connecting and building on each other. Participants in Systems-Centered Training always work in "subgroups. There are multiple subgroups within the group. Each subgroup explores and articulates one side of the issue while the other subgroups listen. Participants choose to participate in the subgroup that most closely matches their own perspective.
This is substantially different from our everyday interactions in which we easily get caught up in disagreements and contradictions, causing communication to become rigid and the conversation to become bogged down.

More explanation? Check it out video about Functional subgroups.

The theory behind SCT

Systems-Centered Training is based on the "Theory of Living Human Systems. This was developed by Dr. Yvonne Agazarian in the 1960s. Yvonne Agazarian first devised SAVI (System for Analyzing Verbal Interaction) with Anita Simon: a method by which verbal communication in groups could be observed and analyzed. SAVI was the basis for the "Theory of Living Human Systems.
Agazarian developed her theory building on W.R. Bion (group-as-a-whole; implicit and explicit goal; stages of group development) and Kurt Lewin ( Life Space; Goal directed behavior; Field of driving and restraining forces toward a goal). With her theory, she brought individuals and groups under one heading as "Living Human Systems" with the primary goal of "survival, development and transformation. The power of the theory is shown mainly by its operationalization in the Systems-Centered Training (SCT) method. Every intervention you do from SCT is thus also testing the theory.

Want to know more?

Watch the introductory video in English 'The edge of the unknown'.

Living human systems
Survive, develop and transform from simple to complex
by distinguishing and integrating differences - Yvonne Agazarian