Our Founder

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Peter Bluckert
Founder and Executive Chairman

Known for breaking new ground, Peter is the founder of Courage and Spark®, pioneers and thought-leaders in the Gestalt approach to vertical development. He has created and led four international organisation development consultancies during a consultancy and coaching career spanning nearly forty years. He has worked with executives and teams from a wide range of private companies, public-sector organisations and not-for-profits, and built a reputation as an innovative designer of transformational learning experiences. He was one of the early influencers on business coaching in the UK and his desire to see improved standards in the field of executive coaching led him to join with other leading coaches to co-found the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) in 2000, and become a founder member of the Association of Executive Coaches and Supervisors (APECS).

A practitioner and writer, rather than academic, he nonetheless believes that sound theory strengthens good practice and has published three coaching books (Psychological Dimensions of Executive Coaching, Gestalt Coaching: Right Here Right Now, and Gestalt Coaching: Distinctive Features), a number of book chapters, and several journal articles. He has also published two mini-books on vertical development (A Comprehensive Guide to Vertical Development, and Vertical Development in the Workplace).

Whilst Peter continues to coach and deliver vertical development programmes to current and next-generation organizational leaders, his work now extends into the ecological and environmental spheres, as well as locally-based democratic campaigns. In these spaces, he looks to bring developmental perspectives and practices to larger scale cultural change and social justice movements.

Peter lives in Yorkshire with his wife, Lesley, has two grown-up sons and two grandchildren. He is a musician and a lover of the natural world - often to be found in the English Lake District, the Highlands of Scotland, and the West of Ireland.