Gestalt Coaching

Book excerpt: Gestalt Coaching: Distinctive Features makes Gestalt principles, values, and philosophy accessible to coaches of all backgrounds and explains how to apply them in practice. Peter Bluckert introduces 30 distinctive features of this approach, divided equally between theory and practice. The book provides concise but clear summaries of core concepts such as awareness and contact, the nature and power of unfinished situations, the Field perspective, the phenomenological approach, The Gestalt Cycle of Experience, and the nature of strategic and intimate interactions. Bluckert provides a set of practice guidelines and watch-outs for the Gestalt coach, information on training and development and several case examples to bring the approach to life. Gestalt Coaching reveals how this approach can be used in individual development, such as executive coaching, with groups and teams, and in wider social and political contexts. With a focus on personal growth and development and enhancing co-operation, dialogue, and relationships, this book will be an invaluable tool for coaches of all backgrounds in practice and in training, academics and students of coaching, and anyone interested in learning more about how to apply Gestalt principles in their personal and professional life.