Contact and Context

New Directions in Gestalt Coaching

Ty Francis, Malcolm Parlett, Ty Francis, Malcolm Parlett

• Publisher: Gestalt Press
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781351790826
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This collection brings together some leading figures in Gestalt coaching to take stock of the field and consider how it might move forward. It covers the principles of Gestalt coaching and encourages practitioners to rethink the application of Gestalt in new ways and new settings – e.g. leadership, management and team development. Individual chapters also explore radical and personal perspectives on Gestalt coaching, from considering the place of embodiment to 'being' in coaching practice and looking at the transformational micro-moments of the client encounter.

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Introduction

Ty Francis PhD and Malcolm Parlett PhD

Coaching is an expanding field of professional practice – and possibly the fastest-growing arena of applied psychology in organisations today. Increasingly, leaders, managers, consultants and other clients are exploring issues of meaning, purpose, and identity that arise at the complex intersections of work and life. Contemporary coaches no longer simply focus on ‘straightforward’ issues of performance improvement. The role of the coach is thus changing, but the focus on organisational issues remains paramount: coaching is not a substitute for therapy, nor for management.

This book is specifically about Gestalt coaching. Many readers may be asking – what is Gestalt? Or what does Gestalt coaching offer that is distinctive? The purpose of the book is to respond to these questions, through presenting a range of accounts from organisational coaches describing how they ground their practice in Gestalt theory and methods; how they apply the basic principles in their coaching relationships; and how they are working creatively within the broad scope of this versatile and powerful approach. We hope that these varied practitioners’ tales will demonstrate the breadth and depth of organisational Gestalt coaching, and inspire readers to re-examine their own coaching practice in the light of what they discover here.

The chapters of Contact and Context reveal a signature feature of Gestalt – that there is no standard coaching template that we draw on – no generic model of Gestalt coaching that provides a uniform and convenient ‘how to…’ answer. It is a strength of the Gestalt approach that it is a ‘bespoke’ product, tailoring what is done to the combination of people, environments and conditions presented in different client situations. This is precisely why we describe Gestalt as a ‘relational’ approach, sensitive to the unique construction and demands of each setting. Gestalt coaches ‘creatively adjust’ their stance and methodology to the conditions and defined needs that are present, while at the same time remaining authentic and dialogic – both hallmark capacities of an experienced Gestalt coach.

Why is this approach so relevant to the climate of today? Because the complexity of contemporary organisational life and the demands it makes on us, both personally and professionally, frequently call for more than conventional consultancy and coaching techniques: simplistic frameworks and change models are altogether insufficient. Rather than prescribe techniques or protocols, Gestalt suggests that we focus on illuminating two dominant themes in particular – one, about contact, or the ways we turn up in relationships; and the other, about context, the physical, psychological, and organisational environments that influence the quality of relating and handling of differences.

However, the exquisite responsiveness of Gestalt – while a strength – is also problematic. It is not always easy to pin down ‘the Gestalt brand’ so that it is easily communicated nor to teach a single Gestalt orientation. However, we believe the accounts of coaching practice within this volume will help demystify Gestalt and demonstrate the range of contemporary Gestalt thinking. For readers who are less familiar with this increasingly popular modality, we offer here some further explication of the philosophy.

Some Gestalt principles

The German word gestalt doesn’t translate well: but roughly speaking means a ‘whole configuration’. Gestalt can be seen, therefore, as an approach that preferences ‘seeing wholes’ and working with ‘wholeness’. Thus, if we look down on a village from the top of a mountain, we see the village as a whole, not the individual buildings and roads that we put together in order to see the village as a whole: we see it at once as a totality, as a gestalt. Similarly, when a client brings an issue for exploration to a Gestalt coach, the coach does not focus on the problem in isolation, but considers it as arising from, and being in relationship to, the complexity of the client’s whole situation. As Kurt Lewin – one of the founders of Gestalt – once explained, B = f (P,E); behaviour is a function of both the person and their environment. Without this ‘bigger picture’ consideration, any solution is likely to be piecemeal and result in difficulties elsewhere for our clients or others.

Gestalt coaches therefore lean in the opposite direction to splitting things up into their parts – the way in which reductionist approaches to management proceed, with their attention to elements, cells, variables, identified causes, results, and marketing data points. Gestalt coaches stay as close as possible to how human beings experience their reality, which is in the form of complex and meaningful configurations of experience that are changing all the time. Drawing upon Kurt Lewin’s ideas, we call this organised experience the person’s ‘field’ – a term that readers will find widely used in this book.

In attending to our client’s field – their whole construction of experience, or the ‘world’ in which they exist – the complexity of possibilities could obviously be overwhelming. How do we know where to begin, or what to pay attention to? Well, there is a brilliant Gestalt discovery and method that enables some of the complex patterning of experience to be revealed in a very straightforward way. At any point in time, there is something which Gestaltists call the ‘figure’ – something which stands out from the rest of the field (which we call the ‘ground’) – and attending to this relationship between figure and ground shows how the client’s field as a whole is presently organised. Thus, if hungry, we notice restaurants: they stand out as figural; when we have eaten lunch, they no longer do so; when a conflict arises within a team and interrupts workflow, resolving the breakdown in the relationship assumes importance: when harmony is restored, the team can attend to other matters. Our field reorganises around a different figure when a different need arises.

So the Gestalt coach tends to begin from what is ‘figural’ for the client at the time of meeting: it may have to do with the meeting itself, especially in the beginning of the coaching relationship when everything is novel and uncertain. In time, the meeting with the coach is likely to become something which moves in to the background – relied upon as a supportive resource; when this occurs, work issues of many different kinds can then surface as figural, each one revealing a preoccupation, concern, or source of excitement that is ‘organising the client’s experience’ – even when they had not always realised it was doing so in advance of the coaching session.

The extraordinary diversity of what is possible to explore is part of what makes Gestalt coaching satisfying, instructive, and unforced. It is a way of tapping into a person’s (or team’s) actual concerns and priorities, rather than what they ’should’ be thinking about, as defined by others. This does not mean ignoring key concerns for the organisation, but these are approached ‘phenomenologically’ – that is, through how the client is actually experiencing them: perhaps ignoring them, or thinking about them rationally, or reacting to them with some personal agenda.

Given the huge possibilities of how each coaching session could unfold, each can seem an adventure in its own right. However, usually key themes as well as patterns of relating tend to surface repeatedly, and these can provide more of a long-term focus for inquiry. Refining the ‘bespoke’ experience is part of the excitement and power of the Gestalt approach, as clients experience it – and which keeps coaches themselves at their creative edge.

Because we take a view of the whole situation of which our clients are a part, the Gestalt coach has a quite particular perspective on the subject of change and how it comes about:

• We reject the role of ‘Change Agent’ and don’t try to change anything! Instead, we bring greater awareness to the realities of how our clients (individuals, teams and whole enterprises) actually function. While this can seem at odds with organisational imperatives to meet short-term goals and targets, the sometimes dramatic nature of outcomes that do arise often surprises clients in their apt relevance! A classic Gestalt stance is one of ‘creative indifference’ to outcomes – of holding an energised interest in what our clients are attempting, while not investing too heavily in any preferred solutions and results: instead, staying scrupulously close to what is actually happening between us as coach and client. Our focus is the present experience of people as they engage in work and life tasks.
• Change happens in the here-and-now, so we use the coaching relationship as a microcosm of how the client relates and interacts elsewhere in his or her work life. So, changes in our ways of relating as coach and client can ripple out, although not necessarily in a simple cause/effect manner. Our experience of clients’ behaviours, assumptions, unconscious habits and patterns of interaction that we encounter as coaches can be shared selectively with our client; equally, we can use our own ‘presence’ to provide different ways of responding than might be expected by our client. Frank exchanges help to disturb familiar ways of thinking, and challenge ingrained patterns of behaviour. However, this works both ways – the client is also invited to heighten contact by sharing his or her experiences of the coach. The whole approach emphasises dialogue, with a ‘horizontal’ relationship more than a ‘vertical’ one in which the client becomes over-dependent on the coach. This models openness and appreciation of authenticity, although it is not always comfortable for either party!
• Change comes about organically, influenced by the quality of contact we have with ourselves (for example, how aware and ‘in touch’ we are regarding our needs, feelings, concerns, assumptions and so on) as well as at the ‘contact boundary’ with others – the intersection between our self, colleagues, significant others and the different environments we find ourselves in. As Gestaltists we believe that growth and development occur at this intersection of the known and unknown. One of the ways in which we work to enable change at this contact boundary is through a method called ‘the creative experiment’. This is a suggestion to do something differently – to take an action either in the room or later, and to explore what emerges. The purpose of a creative experiment is to provide heightened awareness and insight through trying out something different from what is more familiar. Creative experiments are jointly-created, novel experiences that are influential in disturbing the status quo: they are not techniques that are cut-and-pasted between different client encounters, but original suggestions arising in the here-and-now of the relationship, often challenging the client’s patterns of behaviour.
• Gestalt coaches recognise that all change requires us to contend with multiple realities. In doing so, the first imperative is to surface the different realities so that change happens with fewest ‘drag factors’. For instance, there are institutional realities (things accepted throughout the organisation); sub-system realities (marketers see client entertainment as an investment; accountants see it is as an overhead cost; engineers may see it is unnecessary and inefficient…); and individual realities (each person’s construction of his or her world). In most change efforts, resistance is seen by those driving change as an opposing and deviant reality. Significant and lasting change for Gestaltists is accomplished by dealing with multiple realities in a way that produces a joining around a new, shared understanding (a new ‘figure’). This involves recognising that other views exist and must be surfaced, accommodated and engaged with openly (which is core in the outlook of phenomenology that is so central to Gestalt inquiry: there is no ‘reality’ that cannot be re-conceived). Change is an attempt to alter what people experience as reality – not just a matter of redefining work structures, processes or methods. It involves shifting people’s consciousness of how they experience themselves and others. Consequently changes sometimes lead to painful disturbances of the ‘taken-for-granted’ realm and to raising questions of values and even of identity, calling for additional support.
• Change is made in direct relationship to the amount of ‘support’ available for that change. While support is needed at all times – ‘support is that which enables…’ – the nature of support requires fine-tuning: what one person might find supportive would be off-putting or even disrespectful to another.
• There are dangers in introducing changes that undermine people’s sources of support. People resist change because it threatens their self-support. The Paradoxical Theory of Change (Beisser, 1970) suggests that rather than intentionally pushing for changes, people need to deepen their sense of themselves and their current reality – an approach that is more about revitalising than re-engineering.

No short account of Gestalt principles can do this subject justice. In the rest of this book, a much fuller picture can be assembled: each reader can ‘gestalt’ their own understanding of the approach, drawing on what they already know, and according to their interests, needs, priorities, and values, add to it to gain a fuller picture.

Overview of chapters

While it is possible to ‘dip in’ to this book randomly, and approach each chapter according to which topics and writers you feel drawn to, it is also possible to read it in a more structured way. We have arranged the flow of chapters in a way that might help readers who are less acquainted with Gestalt theory, methods and practice.

The first three chapters not only lay out more extensively the principles of Gestalt coaching; they also invite experienced Gestalt practitioners to rethink the application of Gestalt in important new ways. Sally Denham-Vaughan and Mark Gawlinski describe their attempts to teach rapidly a set of Gestalt-based coaching skills, to large numbers of managers and clinicians in a one-day training environment; Malcolm Parlett reframes Gestalt practice as seeking to enhance five dimensions of ‘whole intelligence’ through pursuit of different ‘explorations’ – of practical use for both coach and client – in ways he describes; and Frances Johnston’s chapter describes a personal research project undertaken to account for the success of a faculty of Gestalt-influenced coaches who delivered a programme over several years for a major global corporation. Each of these chapters identifies and elaborates key elements of a Gestalt coaching orientation.

The next four chapters explore the application of Gestalt coaching to leadership, management and team development. Mark Fairfield and Maggie Shelton tell the story of ‘insider coaching’ – where Mark (as founder and Executive Director of a non-profit organisation) engaged Maggie (as a staff member) to coach him through some leadership challenges on a series of difficult change projects; Sue Congram amplifies a view held by all contributors – that leadership is an emergent relational practice, rather than an individual skill or ability, and she describes how using imagery and engaging the imagination enables her to work in depth with her clients; Rob Farrands substantiates his claim that coaching provides the best developmental process available to managers, through presenting a parallel exploration of both coaching and managing; and Catherine Carlson and Robert Kolodny describe how their coaching of groups has been challenged and changed by embracing a relational Gestalt approach.

The final three chapters provide some even more radical and personal perspectives on Gestalt coaching. The interview with Georges Wollants challenges us to take seriously the place of embodiment in coaching and to approach coaching from a less individualist, cause-and-effect set of assumptions. Wollants also, controversially, substantiates his view that it is no use asking questions in coaching! Seán Gaffney’s chapter has a distinctively personal note as he shifts our attention from what we do and how we do it as coaches, to how we can be in our practice; finally, Ty Francis explores the transformational micro-moments of the client encounter: he encourages us not only to pay attention to our ‘felt sense’ of when a moment is alive with significance and therefore the potential for change, but also believes that we can be more proactive as coaches in creating the conditions for breakthrough and transformation.

Conclusion

As editors, we are proud to present these varied chapters, and think they will stimulate thought and be interesting and useful to read both for organisational coaches interested in Gestalt, and also for Gestalt practitioners who do not have experience of working in organisational settings. While satisfied with how the collection has come together, we are also aware that there are certain themes and topics which are missing – for instance, the issues of virtual coaching, including by phone or Skype; and team coaching. However, had we included even more topics and chapters, it would have perhaps become a different kind of book – longer and maybe ‘heavier’ – so we are happy with how it has turned out to be, and now warmly invite you to read on…

References

Beisser, A. (1970). The Paradoxical Theory of Change. Fagan J. & Shepherd, I. (eds) Gestalt Therapy Now, Penguin, London.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Field-Relational Coaching for Gestalt Beginners: The PAIR Model
• 3. 'Whole Intelligence' in Coaching
• 4. The Aesthetics of Transformational Gestalt Coaching: A Heartfelt Research Project
• 5. Breakdown and Possibility in Managerial Work: Reflections for Coaches
• 6. Resources for Relational Leadership
• 7. Working with the Imaginal Field
• 8. Making the Relational Turn: Some New Perspectives on Coaching Groups
• 9. The Bodying Forth of the Situation
• 10. The Art and Craft of the Field Attuner
• 11. 'Living Moments' in the Art of Coaching
• Editor Biographies
• Contributor Biographies