Gestalt Coaching or Gestalt Therapy?

Ethical and Professional Considerations on Entering the

Emotional World of the Coaching Client

Marion Gillie & Marjorie Shackleton

Synopsis

Gestalt offers a way of being and engaging with the world which both supports

and promotes self awareness on the part of the coach and coachee with a

consideration of the co-created relationship – the heart of any effective and impactful

coaching. Psychological competency, underpinned by Gestalt, enhances the coach’s

capability to work at a deeper, more psychological level which helps bring about

powerful shifts in clients’ perceptions of themselves and others. This in turn generates

a number of questions for the Gestalt oriented coach regarding the boundaries of

professional practice. This paper sets out the dilemmas and received wisdom of what

are ‘professionally acceptable’ arenas of work for Gestalt coaches particularly when it

comes to dealing with the emotional life of the coachee. We explore the following

questions:

• What are the differences between Gestalt Coaching1 and Gestalt Therapy and

the resulting implications for the coaching contract?

• What does the coach need to attend to when dealing with the emotional world

of their coachee?

1
In this paper we are referring to Executive Coaching, i.e. coaching senior executives within the
context of their organisations, and where the coaching is funded by the company, as opposed to, say,
Life Coaching which is generally self-funded.

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 • Is a Gestalt oriented coach more likely to evoke emotional responses than

other ‘flavours’ of coaching?

We offer both discussion and case study material which is intended to guide thinking

and professional practice as each one of us attempts to make whatever decision is

right in the moment for the particular context and coachee we are working with.

Background

The use of executive coaching has grown exponentially in the last ten years

(Jarvis et. al. 2006, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 2008,

American Management Association 2008). It is arguably the most powerful method

for developing managers’ capacity for leadership (Lee 2003) and for supporting

existing leaders to negotiate the ambiguity and complexity of 21st century

organisational life. Many coaches come with backgrounds in organisation

development, learning and development, adult learning, occupational and sports

psychology and increasingly through psychotherapy – including Gestalt trained

therapists. This rich mix has led to a plethora of coaching styles as well as varieties of

coaching. A great deal of coaching is undertaken by coaches who have little or no

psychological interest or training and in the main this is appropriate for skills or

performance based coaching. However key figures within coaching (Bluckert 2006;

Lee 2003; Milan and West 2001) argue, as would the authors, that certain kinds of

coaching2 require a level of psychological competence, without necessarily requiring

coaches to become psychologists or psychotherapists.

2
E.g. Transformational / developmental coaching: preparing the executive for future demands of the
organisation, personal growth over time, often focusing more on ‘who the person is’ rather than ‘what
the person does’; Existential / transpersonal coaching: focus on self-actualisation, on the meaning of
the executive’s existence, purpose in life etc.

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 While originally developed as a psychotherapeutic model (Perls, Hefferline and

Goodman, 1951/1994) Gestalt thinking has made significant contributions to the

world of organisational development (e.g. Herman & Korenich, 1977; Nevis, 1987) –

as a lens through which to view individuals and the organisations in which they work.

In coaching, Gestalt is not so much a model as a way of seeing and being in the world

– encouraging and supporting individuals to have choice and take full responsibility

for how they manage their lives. A key feature is the enhancement of client

awareness, itself a powerful intervention, leading to the uncovering of redundant

behavioural patterns which inhibit the client’s innate capacity to identify their needs

and achieve desired goals. Gestalt coaching also offers a safe holding environment in

which feelings and behaviours which might be considered as ‘unsafe’ or dangerous in

other contexts can be explored and given meaning. It is in this area of vulnerability,

with the potential for strong emotional reactions that growth is at its most fertile and

where Gestalt coaches need to pay particular attention to the boundaries of their

professional practice with full awareness of their own capabilities and intent.

The boundary between Gestalt Coaching and Gestalt Therapy

Both coaching and therapy are what Richard Kilburg calls ‘enabling

relationships’ (Kilburg 2004) requiring an engagement with the personal and the

practical. Both Gestalt therapy and Gestalt coaching share a common set of beliefs

which support individuals through change (Bluckert 2006; Gillie 2008; Sills et al

1995). These can be translated into coaching skills and practices (Stevenson 2005;

Siminovitch and Van Eron 2006) which are likely to be commonly owned by both

Gestalt trained coaches and therapists. What makes something ‘therapy’, however, is

an interesting grey area. As practitioners, the authors of this paper are clear about their

intentions when working as Gestalt coaches. Our clients employ us as ‘business

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 consultants’, not as practising psychologists, counsellors or therapists, and as long as

we continuously hold in mind that the coaching context is the client’s current

effectiveness at work, their identity as leaders or their career aspirations for

themselves in the future, then we are likely to be on safe ground. However, a client of

one of the authors jokingly refers to her to his colleagues as ‘my shrink’, which

prompts the question: if the client experiences the work as therapeutic, is it therapy?

We can attend to our intentionality and ensure that our behaviour (as we experience it)

is consistent with our intentions and values, but clearly we have no control over the

felt experience of the client. We might say that if they find our coaching valuable then

it doesn’t really matter how they frame it, as long as we know that we are clear about

our practice and boundaries. It is still disconcerting, however, to know that our

practice is occasionally being misrepresented (albeit jokingly) by clients in our client

organisations, despite our best efforts to differentiate coaching from therapy during

the contracting session.

Aside from the felt experience of the client, important distinctions do exist

between Gestalt coaching and Gestalt therapy. In general, coaching clients tend to be

defined from the outset as whole, healthy, well-functioning individuals who are

‘resource-rich’ having the capability to identify and meet their needs and therefore

achieve their goals. Therapy traditionally views the client as having less well-

developed self-regulation capability, and the aim of Gestalt therapy is the restoration

of a sense of wholeness and well-being. Clients normally seek help when triggered by

emotional distress or by increasing dissatisfaction with their current lives. Although

therapy is often a journey into the unknown, the therapeutic contract tends to be an

agreement as to the general direction of therapy – a ‘soft’ understanding about

intention or process. Confidentiality is clear and is restricted to therapist and client

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 only, and contracting is likely to be an ongoing process as the direction and purpose

of the work changes when new material emerges.

One important difference between Gestalt coaching and Gestalt therapy,

therefore, is that someone entering Gestalt therapy would generally be expecting their

personal and emotional world to be the subject of the work. This is not necessarily the

case for coaching clients, where their professional working life (at least at the start) is

figural. So whilst both Gestalt coaches and therapists share common areas of practice

and skill sets, the authors believe that one ethical consideration for Gestalt coaches at

the contracting phase is to be meticulously clear about the nature of their coaching

practice and personal style, and explicit about both their purpose and intent in

working in particular ways during the coaching programme.

Another critical difference is that executive coaching is always conducted

within a work context, in the service of enhanced performance at work, with the

client’s personal goals generally seen as ultimately in the service of the wider

organisational agenda. The inclusion of others in the organisation is a distinguishing

factor which can create complexity, i.e. with various stakeholder interests, desire for

different degrees of confidentiality, and the practice of holding three-way contracting

meetings with the sponsor, line manager and the individual coachee. This meeting

provides a critical opportunity to clarify expectations of all parties, agree how

progress will be tracked, and agree what does and does not fall within the scope of

coaching. As executive coaches, we are accountable for the needs of our coachee as

well as the various stakeholders, and so a critical question to ask when differentiating

coaching from therapy is: ‘Who is the work in service of? The therapist’s position is

clear – they are accountable only to their client, with their duty of care firmly resting

with that individual. By virtue of the coach working within the organisational setting

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 then the duty of care is to the individual, to their organisation and to the relationship

between the two – in effect there are three ‘clients’ (Hawkins and Smith 2006). The

contracted work with the coachee is also in the service of the wider organisational

objectives and is paid for by the organisation. Thus, where the Gestalt coach knows

that his or her practice is a holistic one, i.e. where the emotional and personal world of

the client is likely to emerge as an important aspect of the work, the authors believe

that good professional and ethical practice requires the Gestalt coach to have

conversations about this possibility with sponsors as well as with the coachees

themselves. Occasionally some sponsors are sceptical or suspicious of this orientation,

but we generally find that with probing, their concerns are often about ensuring that

the more personal work is relevant to the coachee’s developmental goals and that

insights and emotional shifts are translated into positive behavioural change at work.

Certainly in the United Kingdom the authors have found that having the capability to

work with personal material which impacts performance at work is often seen as a

unique selling point of Gestalt coaches. As Gestalt coaches, both authors disclose

their personal backgrounds and talk about the potential capability to work, if

appropriate, at a deeper, more psychological level in the service of bringing about

powerful shifts in their clients’ perceptions of themselves and perceptions of others.

We hold that central to the code of ethics held by the Gestalt coach should be a clearly

articulated definition (to give clarity to the coach and to articulate to the client and

sponsors) of how they personally view the boundary between coaching and therapy

when working with the emotional terrain of their clients, and how they ensure that

they work within the boundaries of their own capabilities. For example, one of the

authors openly states that “if it becomes appropriate, we could move into personal

areas or past influences in the course of our work, but the focus would be on how

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 those influences impact you now, in your work and career. It would not be appropriate

in a coaching context to spend time exploring in depth those past relationships”. In

addition, we are also clear that there may be occasions when the coachee’s energy and

focus is with material best explored within a therapeutic rather than a coaching

context. There are, of course, different ways of contracting for this. One option for the

Gestalt coach is to agree to have a ‘one-off’ session with the coachee where the focus

deliberately and explicitly shifts to work on, for example, family of origin issues or

the client’s emotional reaction to a family crisis. Both authors believe that if this is

within their field of expertise and is well contracted for, a single session only of this

kind can greatly enhance the work. A second option would be to offer the client a

referral to a counsellor or therapist thus keeping the focus of the coaching and the

deeper, more personal work of therapy separate. This is, of course, not always an easy

judgement call. Sometimes it is obvious that that the influence of the family of origin

material is so significant that it could not be ‘worked with’ in any significant way in a

one-off coaching session. Other times the judgement needs to be made on the basis of

how robust and ‘grounded’ the client generally is in terms of sense of self.

Interestingly, having looked at the codes of ethics from a number of professional

coaching bodies (notably the International Coach Federation and the European

Mentoring & Coaching Council) whilst they cite the requirement to operate within the

limits of competence and to the process of referral if appropriate, none make any clear

or useful reference to the boundary between coaching and therapy.

Gestalt Coaching and the emotional world of the client

We have established that the key differentiating factors between Gestalt

coaching and Gestalt therapy lie in purpose, context and intent. Given that coaching

clients exist within multiple levels of system – intrapersonal, interpersonal, team and

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 organisational, coaches need to be skilled at working with the client to decide where

and how to make interventions for maximum effect (Siminovich & Van Eron, 2006).

In the remainder of this article we confine ourselves to looking at work which

emerges at the level of intrapersonal or self, and of an emotional nature. So what does

this mean in practise?

As Gestalt-oriented coaches, our work is underpinned by the belief that resistances

in the form of locked emotional energy can block growth and learning, and our work

frequently includes how our clients block and limit themselves from fully achieving

what they otherwise might. We all (hopefully) start from the position of holding our

client’s best interests at heart. However, we can all cite times where the impact of an

intervention has not matched our intent or when we have suddenly found ourselves in

unfamiliar territory. Most of us are clear when we don’t have the expertise at a

content level e.g. when the client needs help developing a new business model and

our field is predominantly the world of relationships. We then coach the client in

clarifying what they need to learn and in finding out how they can get this need met.

The critical issue being examined here, however, is the emotional depth to which we

may operate as coaches (as opposed to therapists), this is far less clear.

Enquiring into how a client is feeling about their situation is the bread and butter

of the work of all but the most outcome, goal focused of coaches. What we are really

talking about here is working at ‘emotional depth’, so we need to be clear about what

we mean by this. Generally speaking we usually mean one of the following when we

used this term:

ƒ Uncovering developmental (i.e. childhood) influences;

ƒ Dealing with regressive material – childhood ‘stuff’;

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 ƒ Staying with and working through whatever emotional reaction is evoked in the

coaching session.

Uncovering developmental influences refers to any work that explores the possible

origins of the client’s current issues back in childhood, childhood history, relationship

with parents, significant events etc. Some coaches as a matter of course take a

personal history or invite the coachee to draw their ‘life-line’ (mapping the emotional

ups and downs through the passage of life to date) as a way of better understanding

what influences have shaped the person they are working with. Dealing with

regressive material refers to any emotional reaction the client has that is likely to be

linked to childhood material. Transferential material would be one example, when the

client seems to be transferring his/her fear of father onto the boss, or when the client

seems to be manipulating the coach to get approval in the same way that they did

from mother. Given as Yontef says: ‘Gestalt therapy is an art based on clear,

phenomenologically based awareness and dialogic contact and any suggestions based

on group data, such as diagnosis, are only suggestive and helpful for the therapist’s

growth in perspective’ (Yontef, 1993, p. 454), it is a moot point as to whether Gestalt

has a developmental perspective (see Gillie, 1999). Gestalt therapy certainly does not

have a clearly defined theory of development that is widely accepted and understood

as a ‘theory’ in the same way that, for example, the paradoxical theory of change

(Beisser, 1970) is understood. This makes it less likely that the Gestalt coach would

actively seek out childhood influences, but would certainly be mindful of possible

connections that become evident in the emergent work as it unfolds. Take the client

whose emotional reaction to their current boss seems disproportionately strong for the

events they describe. In inviting the client to, say, speak directly to their boss on the

empty chair, the Gestalt coach might gently ask: “Who else does this person remind

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 you of?” Immediately the boundary between coaching and therapy becomes figural.

The case study that follows picks up this very issue. We hold that in coaching,

ethically we need to be really clear why we are initiating this enquiry. We see that the

intention has to be that of the raising of the client’s awareness of the influences at play

with a view to loosening the grip the past has on the present, and helping the client

become more effective in their current working relationships. Whether or not you

invite the client to put the parent in question in an empty chair is a matter of debate

(see the discussion following the case study below). Both authors would view this as

crossing the boundary between Gestalt coaching and Gestalt therapy. However, as

already stated, as a one-off well-bounded piece of work that is contracted as a

therapeutic intervention, it may be appropriate.

In Gestalt terms if we clearly define ‘the ground’ as the wider organisational

context, and the therapeutic process as the ‘the immediate figure of interest’, then the

meaning-making created in the session can add significant value to both the individual

and the work context. Where the duty of care lies solely with the individual, then the

work might be thought of as ‘counselling at work’. However, this too can be a tough

judgement call, as it could clearly be argued that anything that supports the

individual’s enhanced well-being will bring organisational benefits. We, of course,

agree with this, but would argue that this is not the role of the coach within a three-

way organisational contract. What is crystal clear, however, is that the work would

certainly move into the realm of therapy if the coach embarked on some kind of

‘healing process’ with the parent in question. Both authors would see this as

transgressing an ethical boundary if the contracted work is coaching not therapy.

Even in the writing of this example, however, another interesting contextual

point is raised. Many Gestalt-oriented coaches have developed their practice through

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 the Organisational Development route (e.g. via The Gestalt Institute of Cleveland in

the US, or the various centres that offer Gestalt in organisations in the UK and

Europe), whilst others come to coaching from a Gestalt psychotherapeutic base. In

discussing the case study below, the authors discovered that despite both being

Gestalt coaches, differences in their approach were rooted in differences in career

path.

So how specifically does the Gestalt coach engage with the emotional world of

the client? At the heart of the Gestalt approach lies working with the client’s

immediate phenomenology and the notion of staying with whatever emotion is

evoked during a session. Both are based on the principle that the key to raising

awareness means working with ‘what is’ rather than why it is or what it should be.

Arnold Beisser’s Paradoxical Theory of Change (1970), a big influence on Gestalt

thinking, holds that change occurs (paradoxically) when I fully become what I am,

rather that trying to be what I am not, and that lasting change cannot be attained

through coercion or persuasion. The process of healthy self-regulation is the ability to

be fully what one is and to meet one’s genuine needs, as distinguished from external

regulation (trying to be what I think I should be to meet some external demand, real or

imagined). The route to healthy self-regulation is self-awareness and Perls maintained

that awareness – by and of itself – can be curative. Take the following example: your

client arrives at a coaching session agitated and confused about a recent interaction

with a colleague. This brings us to another professional/ethical issue. In Gestalt

therapy, the therapist will generally be tracking and working with what is immediately

figural for the client. Here in coaching, what is immediately figural (his agitation with

his colleague) may be outside the scope of the work you have contracted for. As

Gestalt coaches, to manage this boundary, we need to ensure that the client takes full

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 responsibility for where the work goes, which requires a bit of ‘mini’ contracting in

the moment: “we had said that at this session we would explore how you lead your

team, yet this is what you have arrived with, which is fine. Which of these would you

like to focus on right now?” Assuming your client confirms that he wants to go ahead

with the work on his emotional reaction to his colleague, your coaching goal becomes

helping him become more fully aware of his needs and/or to mobilise his energy

towards appropriate action. Taking a Gestalt approach, you might arrive at this

awareness through interventions that bring your client as close as possible to his

experience in the here and now. You do this by paying attention to what you see and

hear your client saying and doing, and, in turn, asking your client to pay attention to

what is going on for him in the here and now – his thoughts, behaviours, and

emotions. In our example, one starting point could be to invite him to re-evoke the

memory of the interaction with his colleague, encouraging him to attend to his

experience in the immediate moment as he does so. After further ‘mini’ contacting

contracting to do this (see below) you might say something like:

Coach: “Ok, what I’d like you to do is to imagine that you are back there, in that
meeting with your colleague in front of you… (you could, if appropriate, even ask
your client to close his eyes, we normally find that even the most senior executive is
prepared to try this)… take a long look at your colleague, what do you notice? Her
tone of voice… what do you notice about your own reactions, feelings, sensations,
thoughts…”

A similar starting point could be:

Coach: “As you are talking about your colleague right now, what do you become
aware of? (you could add the following prompts… in your body, what images come to
mind, what thoughts, sounds, emotions).

Yet another way in might be to use your own observations:

Coach: “As you are talking about your colleague, I notice you clench your fist and
you look as though you are tensing your arms (at this point, the coach would be very
likely to mirror the movement as a way of focusing on the phenomenon rather than
drawing too much attention to the verbal interpretation). How about you try staying

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 with that movement and exaggerate it (again mirroring the movement). What comes
up for you as you do that… (as before, image, thoughts, sound, emotion).

The underlying principle of the phenomenological method is to heighten awareness

by staying with actual experience without interference or interpretation on the part of

the coach. To ensure that the work stays on the appropriate side of the

coaching/therapy boundary, we hold that it is essential to contract in the moment for

the work. This would require the coach to be explicit about the experiment that is

being suggested and the intention behind the invitation, leaving it totally up to the

client to accept or decline the option of working in this way. This might sound

something like: “As you move closer to your actual experience at the time, and the

range of feelings evoked, it is possible that you will become clearer about your own

needs in the situation, which might help you identify how you would like to move

forward from this confusing place you are currently in.” As the work unfolds, it is

very possible that the client may experience a heightened emotional reaction (anger,

shame, tears). This raises two more important ethical considerations related to the

degree of choice a client needs to have to feel safe. First, we believe that an important

aspect of the contracting for such experimentation is to be open about the possibility

that the work could move into emotional territory and check if the client is prepared

for this to happen. Second, at the point that the client is expressing their emotion, it is

crucial to check if they are OK with continuing to explore this material. Bear in mind,

however, that it is incredibly difficult for a client to say ‘no’ at this juncture. You need

to phrase your question with care. Simply asking “Are you alright to continue with

this?” is likely to elicit an automatic ‘yes’. Asking “Think carefully about what you

want to do right now, stay with it or move on?” will get a more considered reply.

We believe that this way of working distinguishes the Gestalt coach from

coaches from other backgrounds, e.g. Cognitive Behavioural coaching which

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 would invite the client to explore their thinking patterns and assumptions triggered by

the encounter; or Outcome Focused coaching which might ask the client how he

would like things to be different with this colleague and explore what would need

happen to bring about the change. Given that the human body is such a gateway to the

client’s affect, we hold the hypothesis that a Gestalt oriented coach is more likely to

evoke emotional responses in their clients than many other ‘flavours’ of coaching.

The benefits of this are substantial. For example, when the client is stuck somewhere

in the cycle of experience (e.g. because they are not aware enough of the need or they

are aware but unable to act) your task is to help the client explore how they are

creating this blockage. This involves surfacing, listening to and experiencing being

stuck. Paradoxically, if you and the client can stay with the block / stuckness /

resistance and fully experience it (often by exaggerating it) we generally find that it

will either dissolve or transform, thus freeing the client up to move forward. Clearly,

this work is often transformational. It brings with it, however, responsibilities. As

mentioned before, the work needs to be clearly explained and contracted for in the

moment. The Gestalt coach needs to ensure that the context, including the physical

space in which the work takes place, is supportive of the client. What might be

appropriate in a private consulting room may be wholly inappropriate in a meeting

room in the client’s organisation. The coach needs to know how to ‘re-ground’ the

client if a strong emotional reaction is evoked, e.g. encouraging the client to attend to

their breathing if it has become shallow, inviting them to become fully-present in the

room by feeling their feet on the floor and taking in their present surroundings, etc.

Furthermore, within the context of the overall direction of the coaching work, the

Gestalt coach needs to know how to ‘anchor’ the outcomes of these experiments

within the client’s organisational situation, by inviting him or her to reflect on what

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 new awareness the experiment brings and what meaning it has in the context of the

agreed coaching contract. Finally above all, the coach needs to be clear about their

own purpose and intentions in working in this particular way.

The emotional world of the client: a case study

We can never predict when a client is going to have a strong emotional

response to the work we do with them as coaches. Indeed to work through certain

issues it may well be necessary for the client to stay with and experience as fully as

they can their emotionality. For example to help a client work through their transition

following major change including redundancies, the client may cry and/or need to

vent their rage before they are fully able to move on.

Gestalt coaches who have therapy/counselling/clinical training (should) know,

via their training when it is appropriate (for the client) to encourage the client to focus

on rather than move away from their emotions and should be able to facilitate the

client’s process through to completion. Gestalt coaches without such clinical training

(e.g. those who have come via the Gestalt OD route) may acquire this understanding

through experience. However, this is often experience that is difficult to acquire,

firstly, because such reactions are encountered relatively infrequently in a coaching

setting, and second, because when it does occur, unless the coach has established a

sound basis for coach supervision, then he or she is likely to be working alone without

the support of experienced colleagues to learn from. It is in this learning phase that the

coach is most vulnerable, e.g. to working clumsily with a client’s emotions at one

level and to being manipulated or seduced into a collusive relationship with a client at

another. For this reason, we believe it is the ethical responsibility of all coaches,

especially those who practise a Gestalt (or other potentially therapeutic) orientation,

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 or who are early on in the learning curve, to ensure that they receive regular

professional supervision by a clinically trained coach or a very experienced Gestalt

coach. As both authors are strong advocates of coach supervision, they now offer the

following case that was brought by a colleague into the supervision group that both

authors belong to. Following the session description, you will see an example of the

kind of supervisory conversation that can really help to support a coach in their work

and which serves to illustrate some of the points already raised in this paper.

The case
The coach described work with a senior financial executive (LW) for whom the
coaching was in support of a major change he was leading in his organisation and
which was emotionally challenging for him. Relevant to this was the recent birth of
his second child, his working long hours and not getting much sleep, with life being
generally stressful. Earlier coaching sessions had explored his relationship with a
female boss whom he felt had an unhealthy dependence on him, and who he overly
protected. In the session in question, the coach experienced LW being extremely self-
critical, which she reflected back to him. At this point, the coach asked him whose
voice he was hearing, to which he replied “My mother’s”, and the coach offered an
intervention in support of developing a more compassionate voice, followed by more
exploration around his strategies for self-management. LW then brought his attention
back to his mother and proceeded to tell his story about an over-critical mother who
was largely absent with depression during his childhood, which he felt was due to his
own inadequacies, and shared his perpetual fear that he might do something which
would cause her to disappear again. It was clear to the coach and to LW that these
‘introjected’ messages from mother were having a substantial impact on him at work,
especially in his relationship with his boss. The coach invited LW to think about
where he wanted to go with the session, giving one option of working on these
maternal messages. What ensued was an experiment, offered by the coach, where the
client put his mother on the empty chair, to have a dialogue with her. Tracking the
energy of the work, the coach noticed LW drumming his fingers on the table which
the coach suggested he exaggerate, which eventually lead to LW ripping sheets of
paper into small pieces as he accessed his hurt, anger and frustration. The work ended
by the coach inviting LW to see what he might want to say to his mother now, which
enabled him to be clear about his feelings and to be really honest for the first time
with himself. The coach was careful then to bring LW back to his work situation and
to help him make sense of his discovery in his current context. Of most importance in
his meaning making was that his needs really did matter.

Supervision conversation
MS: What was your thinking in facilitating the work to move into this
territory?
Coach: The ground was prepared. We had been ‘matched’ by a mutual

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 colleague who knew that LW wanted a coach with psychological
capability, and emotional issues had been flagged up in the request for
coaching. During our initial session we had discussed the possibility
of personal issues coming into the work, and so I was clear that LW
was interested in working in this way. I remember him saying that he
knew the work may take him into uncomfortable territory.
MS: What about the wider organisational context?
Coach: I had already worked with a number of executives in the organisation
and knew it well, knew the challenges. LW’s boss was supportive of
his goals and understood that the challenges he faced included how he
was coping with the emotional pressure of home and work.
MG: That overall contractual context sounds very clear. Can I take you
back to the point where you asked whose voice he heard, can you
remember what was going on for you at that moment?
Coach: I was feeling a huge empathy, and a great desire to be enabling…
based on my own experience, I made a light remark that he might find
it helpful to turn the volume down.
MS: Is that something you’d found helpful in your own work on yourself?
Coach: Yes… and as I say that, I am wondering if I became confluent with
him in that moment. I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but I can see that
my comment was based on what had worked for me. I am suddenly
remembering a coach supervisor once asking me “What do you do
when your ‘personal process’ is the same as the client’s”, and now I
realise that this is a fine question if you are aware of it in the moment,
but at that moment I wasn’t aware.
MG: So, what you know now is that when you aren’t aware that your
process mirrors that of the client, one thing you do (as you did here) is
to be ‘helpful’, which might be fine if it is your conscious choice.
When it is in awareness it gives the option of labelling what the client
evokes in you, thus using your presence as a coach.
Coach: Well, after this I will certainly be more mindful about all of this,
which will help me make a more informed decision. Even if the
decision is the same, it will be made consciously.
MG: Sounds like a good insight. Can I ask you to say some more about
your thinking in suggesting the experiment about bringing his mother
into the room?
Coach: When his mother as ‘figure’ first arose, I made a suggestion about
how he might manage the critical voice and then proceeded to support
his under-developed compassionate voice. It was only when he
brought his focus back to his mother that I realised how much energy
he had for that figure, especially given the increased communication
he was having with his parents in the wake of his new baby. Mother
was definitely in the room. In that moment it was clear to me that the
link he’d made between his critical voice and his mother was so
figural for him that other options would be unlikely to hold much
energy. I tried as much as possible to lay out all possible options and

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 give him the choice.
MS: What other options did you layout for him?
Coach: Work more with his resistances – for example exploring the nature of
his relationships with his boss and different conversations he might
have with her; undoing his retroflections and becoming more
expressive; how he is coping (or not) with the pressure, and his self-
limiting beliefs – that under-dog voice…
MS: I imagine that we’d all agree that this work is definitely at the
boundary between coaching and therapy. How do you define that
boundary for yourself?
Coach: I have clinical as well as therapeutic and coaching skills so I know I
often operate in that grey area. I am clear that my duty of care as a
coach is to both the client and the organisation and how I can facilitate
their relationship. My belief was that enabling closure on this very
figural relationship would greatly impact his effectiveness in key
relationships at work and would then lead to significant movement
towards what he wanted to achieve with coaching. My judgement was
that this would be the most effective way for him to, for example,
differentiate his boss from his mother. I saw this as a limited piece of
work. If family of origin had been figural in later sessions I would
have suggested a therapy referral. Also I knew that the physical
setting was supportive of the work. Actually, through my own
supervision, my boundaries have shifted somewhat. Once I would
have defined this specific work with LW as ‘coaching’. I now reframe
this now as ‘therapeutic work in service of the wider organisational
goals’ which I feel is a legitimate area of coaching for someone with
my level of skill and supervision support. Otherwise it becomes
‘counselling at work’ which is definitely not coaching.
MG: This gets me thinking about my own practice… I realise that it would
be rare for me to bring a parent into the room in a coaching session
and I am wondering about that boundary for me, because your
definition is clear and makes sense. For one thing, I am usually
working on the client’s own premises rather than in my own
‘consulting room’ and need to take account of the client’s capacity to
emerge from such a session into his world of work and of how thin
the walls can be. Perhaps one difference between us is where we draw
the boundary. I know that both of you would contract for a one-off
session like this, but I would more than likely go down the referral
route. I can never be certain what might be evoked by moving into
parental territory and how it could be contained within a three-way
coaching contract.
Coach: So what would you have done instead in the session?
MG: I’d certainly use some of the Gestalt methods you use, but the content
might differ. It is very likely that the work I would do would involve
some empty chair work with boss (e.g. “you are not my mother” –
helping him to see the ways in which they are different). I would also
work on helping him find his self-compassion, his under-developed

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 polarity, possibly by having him exaggerate his critical self, then
move to a second chair to observe what he is doing to himself. I might
invite the ‘nurturing self’ to talk to the ‘critical self’, whilst helping
the ‘critical self’ find a way of hearing what is being said. Thus in
terms of boundaries, I would focus on his here and now relationship
with himself and how this interferes with his current working
relationships.
MS: All useful options. What I am hearing here though is that the clearest
figure of interest for the client was his mother’s critical voice. This
raises another issue for me, there is clearly a limit to how much ‘out
there’ or ‘back there’ material is appropriate in a three-way coaching
contract, can I ask how you are managing this with LW?
Coach: I was clear that we would limit this work to this session. If ‘mother’
comes up in subsequent sessions, I will definitely suggest that he
takes the work to a different professional and offer a referral.
MG: I am interested in exploring with both of you what you wouldn’t work
with in a coaching session, i.e. what for you would be a clear breach
of the ethical boundary?
Coach: Good question. Well in this case, I made sure that he was dealing with
his mother from his current, adult self. I would definitely not have
invited him to engage with her from a regressive, child place. I
wouldn’t have moved into attempting to mend anything with his
mother, either by inviting him to speak as her, or to tryout what he
might have said to her for real.
MG: Nothing else occurs to me right now. What this conversation has done
for me is to get me to look again at how I define the boundary
between coaching and therapy and to re-evaluate my rationale.

Some conclusions

To sum up, in terms of the ethical and professional considerations on entering

the emotional world of the client, we believe that the Gestalt coach needs to: first, be

really clear and well-grounded in their own practice and to have the ability to

‘account’ for their work in the way the authors have done here. We all know that the

internalised messages from childhood, when they become unhelpful (fixed gestalts /

unfinished business) can really get in the way of productive, healthy working

relationships. As coaches we can never predict when a client will raise such issues in

a coaching session, and helping them to make links e.g. between having a critical

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 father and the propensity to perfectionism may be very helpful. Gestalt coaches who

have a contract with the client to work with the ‘whole’ person often use

methodologies that focus on the affective world (“what are you aware of right now in

your body?” / “Stay with that movement for a moment, what happens…?” etc.). As

long as the purpose is clear, which is to gain insights into the client’s current

functioning and the main focus is on what this means in the current context, then the

Gestalt coach is likely to be on safe ground. Safe, that is, as long as he or she knows

how to ‘re–ground’ the client in the here and now if the exploration triggers an

emotional response. The Gestalt coach who doesn’t have clinical training has to be

crystal clear why they are encouraging a cathartic reaction, and how such an outcome

might be of benefit to the client. Catharsis for the sake of it is invariably driven by

some need or belief of the coach, rather than the client.

Second, the coach needs to ensure that they have access to their own

professional support (and challenge) in the shape of coach supervision. Those without

any formally recognised clinical training need to be particularly self–aware in terms

of their own intent in working with the client’s emotional affect, and professional

supervision is essential in ensuring that the work is relevant to the current presented

coaching issue. Supervision can be used to develop an understanding of how to work

ethically with emotional material and how to re–ground an emotionally ‘wobbly’

client.

Third, they need to attend to what has and has not been explicitly contracted

for. As mentioned, when someone comes to therapy, exploration of affect is (usually)

expected as part of the territory, which is not necessarily the case for coaching and

therefore, it absolutely must be explicitly contracted for. This needs to happen at two

junctures. First at the beginning of the coaching contract when it is important to say

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 that the work could potentially touch on emotional territory and check if the client is

prepared for this to happen; and second, at the point that the client is expressing their

emotion, it is crucial to check if they are OK with continuing to explore this material.

Fourth, the Gestalt coach needs to ensure that their work remains within their

level of competence when it comes to the emotional world of the client. When a client

makes an important connection between something from the past, as happened in this

case study, the ‘safest’ and sometimes most appropriate response for a Gestalt coach

who isn’t clinically trained may be to acknowledge the importance of the insight and

move the exploration on to the meaning of the insight in the client’s current working

life. The ‘safest’ option of all for someone who is unsure is to deal with the client’s

emotional reactions first by careful listening then working sensitively to move the

client away from their emotions towards a cognitive / thinking processing of what has

happened. New Gestalt oriented coaches need to be careful not to be drawn into a

client’s emotional material until they have explored how to do so with their supervisor

and/or have been through an advanced coaching programme.

If the Gestalt coach attends to the ethical and professional considerations

discussed in this paper, we are in full agreement with Siminovich and Van Eron

(2006, p50): “The Gestalt coaching encounter offers a safe arena where vulnerability,

strong emotions, and failure can play themselves out in the service of learning and

growth”.

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 Bluckert, P. (2006), Psychological Dimensions of Executive Coaching. London: Open
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Marion Gillie has a background in organisation development, works internationally

as a coach and organisational consultant, and is based in the UK. She is a Chartered
Occupational Psychologist and Gestalt Psychotherapist, with Masters degrees in
Organisational Psychology and Gestalt Psychotherapy. She is Programme Director of
the Postgraduate Diploma in Advanced Executive Coaching and the Master
Practitioner Programme at the Academy of Executive Coaching in the UK, and she is
a coach supervisor for programmes at Oxford Brookes University Business School.

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 Marion is also a ‘Next Generation’ Faculty member of the Gestalt International Study
Centre in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Marjorie Shackleton has a Masters degree in Social Work from the University of
Kansas. She spent the first part of her career as a clinical social worker and systemic
family therapist in the U.S. before returning to the UK where she trained and
practised as a Gestalt Psychotherapist before taking advanced coach training. She now
works as an executive coach and coach supervisor. She is a senior Faculty member of
The Academy of Executive Coaching and core faculty for Certificate Programmes in
Gestalt Coaching Skills and the Psychology of Coaching. She also teaches on the MSc
in Executive Coaching at the University of Portsmouth Business School.

Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge Nick Kitchen and Peter Burditt for their support
during the writing of this paper.

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