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Coaching approaches

Gestalt coaching

Gestalt coaching uses the present moment as its main material. The coach invites you to notice what you feel, do and avoid as it happens, and to try small experiments within the conversation. It grew out of Gestalt therapy, which Fritz and Laura Perls developed. Outcome research on Gestalt coaching itself is very thin; the controlled studies that exist test Gestalt-derived techniques inside therapy, not the coaching form.

What it is

A Gestalt coaching conversation keeps returning to what is happening now: what you notice in your body, how you are speaking, and what you are doing with the coach as you talk. Rather than explaining a problem, the coach invites you to stay with one part of it and see what comes up.

It treats awareness and contact as the core of change. Gestalt writers describe how people interrupt their own contact with others, and with their own feelings, in habitual ways. Coaching works on noticing those interruptions and trying something different. The approach relies on experiments, short practices tried inside the session or between sessions, more than on advice.

Where it comes from

The originators named for this page are Fritz Perls, Laura Perls and Dorothy Siminovitch, and Gestalt therapy is the parent tradition. The coaching form has been described more recently: Bluckert (2020) traces how a Gestalt coaching approach emerged, and Brownell (2017) gives an orientation to Gestalt-based coaching.

Gestalt therapy has a small body of controlled research on its techniques, reported in specialist and general psychology journals. None of the sources found here tests the coaching form directly.

The principles underneath

Awareness in the present

The work starts with what you notice now, in your body, in your speech and in the relationship with the coach, rather than with the story of how things came to be.

Contact and its interruptions

Contact means meeting another person, or your own experience, fully. Habits such as changing the subject, speaking in generalities or pleasing others are treated as ways contact gets interrupted, and as things to notice rather than to fix.

Experiment rather than explain

Insight is tested by doing. A small experiment, such as saying a sentence differently or staying with a feeling for a minute, shows what a habit is protecting.

Ownership of your choices

The coach does not diagnose you. You own what you say and do, and the aim is to see how you are taking your part in a situation.

How a session runs

  1. You name what you want to work on, and the coach asks what you notice about it right now.
  2. The coach invites you to describe the situation in the present tense, paying attention to where your attention moves.
  3. When something shifts, such as a change of tone or a pause, the coach asks you to stay with it and say what you are aware of.
  4. You may be invited to try a short experiment, for example speaking to an empty chair or saying something you usually leave out.
  5. You end by naming one thing you noticed that you could try before the next conversation.

When it tends to fit

  • You can describe a situation in detail but keep stepping around the part that matters most.
  • A feeling comes up in a conversation and you move on before you have looked at it.
  • You want to try something different in a relationship, and you want to practise it with someone who will notice how you are doing it.

What the research shows

Evidence: Some peer-reviewed studies

No controlled outcome study of Gestalt coaching itself turned up in the literature searched for this page. The controlled studies found here test Gestalt-derived techniques within therapy. Martinez (2002) randomly assigned 24 participants with phobias of long duration to three groups that used different forms of a Gestalt role-play technique; the two groups that role-played the aversive properties attributed to the feared stimulus were more effective in reducing their phobias than the group that role-played only their phobic responses. Paivio and Greenberg (1995) is a test of empty-chair dialogue for unresolved feelings within experiential therapy; only its title could be checked, so its results are not reported here. A 2019 systematic review of Gestalt therapy's empirical evidence exists (Raffagnino, 2019); again only the title could be checked, so its findings are not reported here.

Where the evidence is thin: Gestalt coaching has no outcome study in the literature searched for this page, so the evidence above is about Gestalt techniques inside therapy, not about coaching. Martinez's study is small and was published in a specialist Gestalt journal. The tier rests on those therapy studies alone.

Sources

  1. Bluckert, P. (2020). The emergence of a Gestalt coaching approach. In Gestalt Coaching. Routledge.
  2. Brownell, P. (2017). An Orientation to Gestalt-Based Coaching. In Gestalt Psychotherapy and Coaching for Relationships. Routledge.
  3. Martinez, M. E. (2002). Effectiveness of Operationalized Gestalt Therapy Role-Playing in the Treatment of Phobic Behaviors. Gestalt Review, 6(2), 148–167.
  4. Paivio, S. C., & Greenberg, L. S. (1995). Resolving “unfinished business”: Efficacy of experiential therapy using empty-chair dialogue. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 63(3), 419–425.
  5. Raffagnino, R. (2019). Gestalt Therapy Effectiveness: A Systematic Review of Empirical Evidence. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 7(6), 66–83.

Where it stops

Gestalt work asks you to stay with feelings as they arise. If your history includes trauma, or a strong reaction that unsettles you for days, a trained, trauma-informed clinician is a better place to start.

Experiments such as speaking to an empty chair can bring up more than a coaching conversation can hold. If something intense surfaces, pause and seek support from a qualified professional.

Because the approach works with what is happening between you and the coach, it depends on that relationship. It does not replace a qualified clinician when depression, self-harm or a crisis is involved.

Practices for this approach

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