Gestalt Coaching for Awareness Management: The Elements of Mastery

The UOW is a process structure designed to explore an important issue revealed by the COE that’s of interest to the client. UOW invitations reveal the Gestalt coach’s mastery through their use of self to support the client’s awareness and action around what is needed, wanted, or missing. Ted, who couldn’t offer compassion to his distressed employee, failed a critical leadership opportunity to engage his employee in a heart-based interaction rooted in emotional intelligence. If the coach perceives Ted to be poorly aligned with his value around supporting his employees, he could be offered experimental situations in which to better identify, articulate, and inhabit his core values. Ted’s emotional resistance to expressing compassion might involve a breathing exercise or a dream experiment to bring him into closer contact with his emotions.

If Ted expresses being “stuck” around the issue of failure, the coach could design experiments involving emotional expression and other creative modalities. If Ted is anxious about the uncertainties of failure, he could be invited to remember and reflect on past experiences when his intuitive or emotional understanding supported his ability to move forward. If Ted feels misunderstood by his employees, the coach can work to clarify how his body language and vocabulary contribute to his “message.”

The Gestalt coach can collaboratively design experiments where Ted can safely explore his fear of failure with self-compassion, as well as experiment with small steps by which he could build his ability to express empathy. The learning for Ted would be to reassess how the practice of giving emotional support could make him a stronger leader. Ted’s case illustrates how Gestalt coaches highlight and use awareness opportunities so that clients can experientially grasp how their unaware and/or outdated beliefs are limiting their leadership.