Being self-aware, using orientation checks and process tools to identify obstructive patterns and figures of interest, and to then use our awareness to act in the world with clarity and purpose is the mastery now called for. The skills and techniques of awareness management seem invisible until masterful practice reveals them to be vital competencies. Gestalt coaching shows how these core awareness skills and techniques can be taught, practiced, and made visibly powerful. For Gestalt coaches and for their leadership clients, self-awareness and strategic use of self are experienced as illumination and transformation.

If our presence strongly embodies our values and best intentions, our presence alone may be enough to make a difference: people may feel calmed or supported or inspired just by being in our presence. Whether in coaching or in the workplace, though, we need to use strategic use of self practices to accomplish specific goals. Gestalt coaching interventions are organic, relevant, resonant, and uniquely suited to give today’s leaders the support and practices for the vision, understanding, clarity, and agility necessary today. Coaches and leaders need to respond from a self-aware, embodied presence and with a masterful use of self to spur change, optimism, and opportunity.

Published in Gestalt Practice: Living and Working in Pursuit of wHolism, edited by Mary Ann Rainey and Brenda B. Jones. Oxfordshire, UK: Libri Publishing, 201