Peter marked out 3 essential elements to coaching:

Direction    Contrast     Intention

 

Peter’s starting point was to question whether, as coaches and NLP practitioners, we take our role of helping people a bit too seriously. He explored NLP pre-suppositions to help us understand that a coaching session is about the client making some sort change and when this happens, our success or failure is irrelevant. We also discussed rapport and empathy with the client’s state and concluded that we want to be in rapport with the client, not their problem. Even more, our aim is to be in rapport with where they want to be, not where they are now. Which frees us from mirroring or matching a less than resourceful state - we can use our sense of fun to pace and lead our clients in the DIRECTION they want to go.    What fun!

 

Time for us to play then, with a couple of exercises based on CONTRAST - firstly between a time when we were a bit disappointed,  compared with a time when we felt a little bit smug and then between worry and excitement. With a little prompting we noticed a subtle SWISH pattern in this approach.

 

We finished with another exercise, using Peter’s problem ‘Unsticker’. With the right INTENTION, coaches, facilitators, therapists, anyone, can ask questions that on the face of it seem nonsensical. After just a few questions that send you somewhere else for an answer, the problem disappears or changes - like magic, change magic.   

 

 

NLP-South 1 May 2008

‘Laughing at life’s problems, coaching fun!’

with Peter Freeth of
Excellerate Business Performance and Change Magic

Resources

Peter brought along his latest book ‘The Unsticker’ hot off the press for the May meeting. You can find it and more of his wonderfully easy to read books on his site at http://www.ciauk.com

And we do have some copies in the NLP-South library - though they are proving very popular!

 

Information about the SWISH pattern is easily accessible on the Internet.

Useful books include:

Heart of the Mind - Connirae and Steve Andreas

Introducing NLP - Joseph O’Connor and John Seymour

Basic techniques Book II - Clifford Wright  

 

Bandler and Grinder set out the NLP Presuppositions in the Structure of Magic. They feature in all NLP training courses, although like the game Chinese Whispers, they have often been subtly altered or added to. The following link takes you to the original set:

http://www.purenlp.com/nlpresp.htm