ABSTRACT
This chapter defines and describes professional coaching. It depicts the typical elements found in a coaching session: defining the topic, identifying the outcome, pointing to the meaning, measuring success, tracking progress, assimilating learning, and holding the coachee accountable. Gestalt coaching is first coaching. Coaching is not therapy, nor is it mentoring or consulting. Coaching is a relational process in which one person helps another to achieve pragmatic goals related to various meaningful values and aspirations. That said, gestalt coaching is also gestalt and proceeds according to an application of gestalt therapy theory. So it includes a phenomenological method, a dialogical relationship featuring coaching presence, a strategic use of the field, and existential behavioral experiments. Gestalt coach and coachee are attempting to achieve some goals. They will be able to measure success by the completion of such goals–something gestalt practitioners might call the satisfaction of figures of interest.
