A mindfulness revolution is spreading across the world in response to the fragmentation of attention caused by rapid change and disruption. The Gestalt approach, which holds awareness as core to functional well-being and new learning, is an antidote to this fragmentation. Gestalt coaching, the latest innovative application of Gestalt theory, offers coaches and their clients ways to meet 21st century challenges of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity with the adaptive competencies of vision, understanding, clarity, and agility. Gestalt coaching’s theory, methods, and techniques focus on awareness processes for perceiving and responding to our world. This chapter clarifies the awareness dimensions that activate one’s presence and the awareness choice points for use of self, which is the barometer of masterful coaching and leadership work.
Gestalt practice assumes that people are innately capable and competent, and have the necessary resources to manage personal and professional challenges. The pivotal requirement in Gestalt work is to facilitate clients’ awareness about how they are or not satisfying their needs, wants, and goals. The power of awareness is what informs the Paradoxical Theory of Change: awareness, in itself, is a catalyst toward change and growth. As an act of intervention, heightening awareness expands clients’ perceptual lenses to include more possibilities and new choices. A principal intervention is to have the client become aware of a figure of interest, the term that identifies what they are paying attention to. Figures can be clearly identifiable, or they can be obscured by too many figures or when the client is distracted by unaware resistances.
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