How to Coach Yourself and Others Techniques For Coaching | Page 218

experience when I am with my best friend etc. The implication of this
for coaching is that you, as coach, are a critical aspect of the client’s
experience and how you ‘show up’ will inform (not necessarily
consciously) what the client chooses to reveal. Two aspects of the way
you work as a Gestalt coach are critical: your presence/use of self and
your ability to engage in dialogue.
Presence is much more than how ‘professional’ you are as a coach. It
includes how ‘grounded’ you are in yourself and your work, how able
you are to ‘contact’ the client, even when they are difficult to reach. It is
the ability to be in the here and now, i.e. to tune into what is going on
within yourself (your reactions to your client, what they evoke in you,
what images come to mind, what sensations are stimulated) as you are
impacted by them, and to disclose some of this in order to ‘make
contact’.
I am listening to Jane who has returned to work after a miscarriage and
is struggling as a new partner in a professional services firm. She talks
in a jolly, light, cheerful manner and I notice that I am struggling to stay
present. Suddenly the image of a bird comes to mind. I see it skimming
along the top of the hedgerow, never really coming to land anywhere. I
share this image with Jane, owning that it is my image, and ask if it has
any meaning for her in her world.
I trust that because this vivid image has arisen within the interaction
between me and my client it is reasonable to assume that it has some
relevance to the client’s situation and is worth checking out.
You do this of course in the service of their awareness and part of the
process is to find out what impact your disclosure has had on them.
This opened the door to a fruitful exploration of how she has been
trying to ‘make light’ of her situation with her colleagues and how in
our session we both have been staying in a ‘light, frothy’ place (the
parallel process). My disclosure enabled Jane and I to make contact, i.e.
relate in a different way, to move from ‘skimming the surface’ to
something more helpful to her and to us.

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