Acknowledgements

This book would have been impossible without the help and support of many people.

First of all, I want to thank Ingeborg and Thomas Dietz and their clients for making this study possible in the first place by allowing me access to their sensitive and emotionally challenging coaching work. The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) supported this project for three years with an Elise Richter Habilitationsstipendium and, among other things, financed the transcription of more than 100 hours of authentic coaching data.

As regards discussing, amending and refining my ideas and analytic categories, my grateful thanks go Ina Pick, Yasmin Aksu, Monika Wastian, Marlene Sator, Joanna Pawelczyk, Florian Schulz, Alexander Onysko and Thomas Spranz-Fogasy, as well as to many coaching colleagues who commented on my work on various occasions.

A very special ‘thank you’ to Helen Heaney for her fast and thorough translating and proof reading as well as her helpful comments, to Elke Brandner and Melanie Fleischhacker for their wonderful work on and with the transcripts and to Johanna Lalouschek for being by my side from beginning to end and for her empathic, supportive and constructive feedback on the whole book.

My best friend Christiane Hunstein is responsible for the good looks of the original manuscript, but much more than that, she accompanied me through very difficult times at certain points in the project. Thank you!

And finally, my deepest thanks go to Lisl Graf for her eternal optimism and Thomas Maisel for preparing breakfast, taking me for walks, making me laugh when I felt like crying and for so much more…