Professional Documents
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NLP Coaching
NLP Coaching
By Jamie Smart
By Jamie Smart
Table of Contents
Welcome to The Top 10 Secrets of NLP Coaching Langauge. My name’s Jamie Smart.
I’m an NLP trainer, author, and creator of NLP Coaching CardsTM, the world’s leading
resource for learning NLP coaching language, and I’d like to say “thank-you” to you
for reading this e-book. I’d also like to ask you to please send this e-book to your
friends and colleagues, because it will help them, it will help me to reach more
people, and because it will make you feel good too! If you’ve been sent this e-
book by someone else, then make sure that you sign up for the FREE NLP
Coaching newsletter that accompanies it, here:
www.saladltd.co.uk/nlpcoaching.htm
Once you do, you will be sent new issues on a regular basis to learn from. It will only
take a minute to read, but you’ll be amazed at the skills you start developing quickly.
This book complements our NLP Coaching CardsTM. I’ll be referring to the cards in the
newsletter, but when you buy the cards and get the patterns now, you can
unlock the massive potential this book reveals immediately.
If you want to really accelerate your learning, go to the Salad website and order
your own deck of NLP Coaching CardsTM. These cards are quite simply the fastest
way there is to develop your skills in using NLP coaching language. The insights you’ll
be getting from the newsletter complement the patterns on the cards, so when you
have both, it will really turbo-charge your learning. For more information about
how you can learn fast just by playing cards, go to
http://www.saladltd.co.uk/NLP_Coaching_Cards.htm
This e-book is for people who are interested in helping themselves to resolve issues
and reach their goals more quickly and easily, and for helping others to do the same.
It will be of particular interest to executive coaches, life coaches, therapists,
hypnotists, trainers, managers, salespeople, consultants, networkers, students of
NLP, health-workers, doctors and other healers.
Introduction
One of the first things that attracted me to Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) was
language. I’ve always loved language, and was amazed when I heard about some of
the things that you can do with it.
One of the things that was mentioned in many of the books I read was a powerful set
of language patterns called The Meta-model, a set of questioning tools modeled by
Richard Bandler and John Grinder from two of the therapeutic geniuses of the 20th
century, Fritz Perls and Virginia Satir.
It was the first creation in the field of NLP, and formed the basis for subsequent
discoveries in the field. The Meta-model works on the following principle: people
don’t experience reality directly, but rather through the ‘maps’ of reality they create
in their minds. When people have a problem or challenge, it does not typically exist
‘in reality’ - it exists in their map of reality. If you can enrich their map, their
experience of the world will become richer. Enrich their map enough, and their
problems will be solved, their challenges overcome.
The Meta-model is the principle tool for discovering where and how to enrich a
person’s map. I was hooked. I told myself “You have to learn how to do this!” So I
did. In the course of my studies, I tried lots of approaches, and experimented. I tried
things that worked, and many more that didn’t. This short e-book is a distillation of
some of the most powerful approaches I’ve learned for ensuring that your coaching
is effective.
As you read this you'll start to see ways that you can fine-tune and improve our
coaching abilities right away. Read on and I'll show you a way you can accelerate
your learning of these patterns later.
NLP Coaching language is a set of questions and linguistic tools that are amazingly
powerful for helping people to solve problems, enrich their maps of reality, and get
the results they desire. For a detailed list of the sort of linguistic tools you can learn,
check out the NLP Coaching Cards page at
http://www.saladltd.co.uk/NLP_Coaching_Cards.htm - it contains a list of ‘features’
that will start to give you an idea of the kind of things that become possible as you
begin learning to use language in this powerful way.
NLP Coaching Language (including the infamous NLP Meta-Model) is the most
powerful set of questions and linguistic tools there is for helping people to solve
problems, make changes and get what they want. Why? Because they use the power
of a person’s unconscious mind to help them discover resources and solutions.
While the conscious mind enjoys the illusion of control, it’s actually the unconscious
that’s making the important decisions in a person’s life. That means that if you can
get in touch with someone’s unconscious (including your own), you can make an
incredible diffeence, quickly, easily and elegantly. Here are just some of the reasons
for you to learn NLP Coaching Language:
• Feel confident that you can discover the information that really matters in any
situation. People pay good money for this!
• Ask questions that amaze your clients, you colleagues, your friends and even
yourself with the quality of answers you’ll get.
• Relax, knowing that you will never be stuck for what to say or ask again.
• Overcome barriers and obstacles that have been holding people back. You’ll
see real progress!
• Feel good, knowing that you really make a difference in people’s lives.
Before you set out to coach someone, it’s important to prepare yourself. There are
three things that you can do in advance to make a huge difference in the quality of
the coaching experience, whether you’re coaching yourself or another person. They
are:
Go quiet inside
Internal dialogue significantly hampers sensory acuity, so turn it off. Minimise your
internal dialogue by breathing deeply, relaxing your throat muscles, placing the tip of
your tongue just behind your upper front teeth and letting your jaw drop slightly.
You’ll see and hear more! If your internal dialogue interrupts your awareness, say
“Shut the &*!% up!” inside your head.” Repeat as necessary.
This may take some practice at first, but as you persevere, you will be amazed at
how much you are able to see and hear which used to be invisible. For a number of
methods for turning off your internal dialogue, check out NLP for Business &
Personal Success
Your beliefs about yourself and the world have a massive effect on how you respond.
Your beliefs about your client will be communicated to them in everything you say
and do. If you believe that your client won’t go into a trance, then they won’t. If you
believe that they’re an excellent hypnotic subject, then they’re much more likely to
be.
If you have difficulty believing that your client can find the solutions to all their
problems, and live an amazing life, then just pretend. Milton Erickson used to say
“You can pretend anything and master it”, so while you’re at it, pretend that you’re
an extraordinarily fast learner, and have already begun to master NLP Coaching
Language.
This idea of ‘pretending’ may seem a bit ‘low-tech’, but it actually has a proven track
record. You see, your unconscious mind doesn’t distinguish between a real
experience and a vividly imagined one. If you vividly imagine that your client is
capable of making changes, your unconscious will start to communicate that belief to
them. These communications will come out in the language you use, the gestures
you employ, your voice tone etc.
The amazing thing is that these subtle communications are exactly the sort of thing
that their unconscious mind will pick up on! It’s actually a far more powerful level of
communication than just saying to someone “You are capable of far more than you
think you are”, so it’s well worth exploring.
For more about belief change, visit the Salad archive or check out our Art of Being
CDs.
When I’m coaching someone, I do various things to ‘set the frame’ in a general,
positive way before setting / eliciting a specific direction for the interaction. I got this
idea from a book which said something like “The fact that you’re reading this means
you can easily incorporate these new ideas into your life”. I set the frame by saying
things like this:
• “The fact that you’ve come here today means you’ll be able to make whatever
changes you want in your life.”
The logicians among you will recognise that these statements wouldn’t pass a logic
test, but the unconscious mind isn’t too stringent about logic. If the person accepts
the statement as true (and they usually do), then the unconscious will act
accordingly. The structure of these frame-setting statements is this:
X means Y
A causes B
So, who do you want to positively influence? It could be actual coaching clients,
other clients, employees, friends, family etc. As you take a few moments to think
about the situation, you can start to become aware of some ideas you could use. One
of my favourites for almost any coaching situation is something like this:
“You learned to walk and talk, and you don’t even know how you did it. That means
that the things you’ll be learning today are going to be really straightforward for
you.”
I use these all the time, and the ONLY time I get rumbled is by experienced NLP
Practitioners (and even then, it’s usually only the ones I’ve trained to pay close
attention to language). One of the things you start to find after you spend some time
on a training course with me or listen to some Salad CDs is that it becomes a lot
more fun to listen. Sometimes my assistants and more experienced students have
trouble keeping a straight face on trainings when I’m embedding positive
suggestions in seemingly ‘innocent’ stories and sentences!
Rapport has been described as what happens when we get the attention of
someone’s unconscious mind, and meet them at ‘their map of the world.’ It is more
commonly understood as the sense of ease and connection that develops when you
are interacting with someone you trust and feel comfortable with.
Being able to get into rapport with other people isn't just a key for successful
coaching; it's also one of the most fun, enjoyable and relaxing skills you can learn.
People like to be around people who get into rapport with them.
NLP Coaching Language works most effectively when you are in rapport with the
person or people you are communicating with.
Why is it important?
People are social creatures, and we often need to work with other people to achieve
what we want. This means that an ability to communicate influentially is one of the
most valuable skills a person can have. Warning: If you use NLP Coaching
Language and meta-model questions without rapport, the other person may
become defensive.
These are examples of meeting someone at their map of the world using verbal
techniques. There are many ways to get into rapport both verbally and non-verbally,
using behavioural techniques, vocal flexibility and internal shifts of consciousness.
For details and exercises, check out NLP for Business & Personal Success
#5 – Set A Direction
Human neurology is ‘goal-seeking’ and will always tend to organise around a specific
result or set of results. These results are referred to in NLP as ‘outcomes’. Whether
you help a person work on a specific outcome (eg earning a million dollars) or help
them explore a certain direction (Eg. becoming financially free), it’s important for
them to have something to aim at.
Finding out what someone wants sets a direction for the coaching session. Ways of
finding this out include the following:
All of these have different presuppositions (“What’s the problem” presupposes that
the person has some problem they’ve come to solve, and may not be useful in many
situations, but in some it is. Frank Farrelly, creator of Provocative Therapy, uses this
question as his starting point).
My fave is still “What do you want?”, but the others all have value in different
situations.
Once you know what someone wants, you can further clarify their goal using other
queries which you’ll find on the NLP Coaching CardsTM
The key is to help a person get a clear idea of how they would like things to be. Once
you have this, you have a direction for the process.
To hear this being used with a group and with individuals, check out
NLP for Business & Personal Success
“Watch and listen?!?” I hear you ask. “How dull”. But wait. According to NLP co-
developer Richard Bandler, 95% of NLP is information-gathering.
I often get emails from people asking things like “What technique do you use to help
a one-eyed mother of four overcome her inexplicable fear of dwarves which emerges
when she’s doing the dishes?” The technique I use is…watch and listen.
I believe that when you’re working with someone and you have the attention of their
unconscious mind (rapport), the unconscious will do everything within its power to
tell you exactly what you need to know in order to help the person make he
necessary changes. The coach’s role involves having the sensory acuity to intercept
those messages from the unconscious. So how are those messages sent?
I’d like you to consider the possibility that your clients are offering you a wealth of
clues to help them find solutions to their problems and the paths to their desires.
And the most useful set of questions out there is…The Meta Model.
The Meta Model (created by Bandler and Grinder) is the most powerful set of
questions there is for helping people enrich their maps of the world. Bandler credits it
as being the tool which helped them create all the other NLP models.
Astonishingly (to me) the Meta Model is not taught in depth on most Practitioner
trainings these days. This is because it’s traditionally seen as being “difficult”, but it’s
not! We’ve pioneered using approaches for learning the Meta Model quickly and
easily using games which make it fun. The great thing is, by the time you realise how
easily you can do it, the learnings have already gone in.
When you’re coaching someone, you can assume that they have already tried
whatever they’ve been able to think of consciously to make the changes they want to
make – that’s why they’re talking to you!
Part of your role as coach is to help someone set a clear direction, then gather the
resources they’ll need for the journey, and clear obstacles out of the way.
There are some ‘NLP Presuppositions’ that are particularly useful – pretend that
these are true (if you don’t believe them already):
When you ‘believe’ these in relation to yourself and your coaching clients, you
suddenly start to find answers appearing that may previously have evaded you. Of
course, there are specific question that are particularly useful, for example:
If someone has an obstacle, and says “I can’t…”, you can ask “What stops you?”, or
“What would happen if you did / could?”
“What stops you?” will get you information about the obstacle, both verbal and non-
verbal.
“What would happen if you did / could?” gets the person to imagine going beyond
the obstacle, which is often something they’ve never imagined.
When you go through your NLP Coaching Cards, you’ll find variations on thes
questions that can help you to clear obstacles, gather resources, and often make
changes instantly (sometimes helping people let go of something that’s held them
back for years, just by well-chosen questions!) Learn about all the tools you get
here: http://www.saladltd.co.uk/NLP_Coaching_Cards.htm
#8 – Use Softeners
Legend has it that when Bandler and Grinder first taught the Meta-Model to a group
of university students, the students immediately went out and alienated friends and
family by using the questions inappropriately, and without gaining rapport (“I love
you.” – “What would happen if you didn’t?” etc). As a result, NLP Practitioners are
now taught to build rapport before being taught the Meta-Model!
NLP Coaching language is so powerful and revealing that it can seem intrusive and
even ‘bullying’ if not asked in an appropriate way (remember, body language and
voice tone make up a significant amount of what you communicate to someone). So
I suggest that people:
Softeners are short phrases that you can put at the beginning of a question that
make it more gentle and palatable. For instance:
When you combine the softeners with a gentle, curious voice tone and rapport,
people really start to open up and give you the information you are looking for. Of
course, mind and body are one system, so one way to ensure that your voice tone is
curious is to get into a curious state, or a state of what Eric Robbie (top NLP trainer)
calls “I wonder…”
This makes the difference between an interrogation and a positive inquiry, and the
results will speak for themselves.
#9 – Gather Evidence
One of my favourite NLP queries is “How do you know?” While I love using it for
information gathering, I was pleasantly surprised back in February when someone on
our NLP Practitioner training asked me “How do you know when someone you’re
working with has experienced a real change?”
One of the things that those of you doing coaching or changework of any sort may
already have experienced is that clients often want to please you. Sometimes, this
means that they will consciously report that some sort of internal change has taken
place, even when it hasn’t. I got fooled by this a few times when I first started doing
changework with people, so over the years I’ve developed a kind of ‘spidey-sense’
about whether people have really experienced a shift, or whether they’re just trying
to please me. When the Practitioner asked me “How do you know?”, I had to go
inside my own experience & make explicit some of the things I’m responding to that
let me know a change has taken place. So, some of the things that let me know that
someone I’m working with has made a change or a shift in a certain area are:
Reality-based testing
If you do a phobia cure with someone who has a fear of dogs, go find a dog! If you
think you’ve sorted out their fear of heights, find a tall building. If they were scared
of talking to people, get them to go out & speak with strangers. Whenever I do
changework with people, I want to find the most immediate way to test my work
that I can. One of the great things about doing this is that if the change has worked,
the test creates a strong convincer for the person. If it hasn’t worked, then you know
asap that there’s more to do.
Imaginary testing
Sometimes, it isn’t practical to go out during a session and conduct a test. If you do
a phobia cure with someone who has a fear of flying, you may not want to wait until
they next fly to find out if it’s worked. Fortunately, the nervous system processes a
vividly imagined experience in a very similar way to a ‘real’ experience. Get them to
vividly imagine the context where they wanted a change (“See what you’d see, hear
what you’d hear, & feel what you’d feel etc), & notice their non-verbal responses
(skin colour, breathing rate, expression etc). If you already know how to use
hypnosis, you can intensify the experience by leading them into a trance first.
Involuntary “shifts”
When a person experiences a shift in their patterns of thought & associated
behaviours, their ‘involuntary patterns’ also change. If you are tracking these
patterns prior to the change, you can notice the differences after the change has
taken place. Examples include:
- Skin colour changes (especially around the face, neck & upper chest)
- Postural shifts (general posture, head-tilt, etc)
- Eye-accessing (the patterns of their eye-movements)
- Sensory words
- Internal strategies (their sequences of internal sensory processing)
- Meta-programs
- etc
Covert questioning
This is one of my favourites. You can use an embedded question (Eg. “With some
clients I ask ‘Has your unconscious mind really accepted this change’, but with you it
seems clear”) & observe their unconscious response. If you are in rapport, their head
will nod or shake depending on their unconscious mind’s answer to the embed ‘Has
your unconscious mind really accepted this change’. Sneaky, huh!
NLP Coaching Language (particularly the NLP Meta-Model) is the most powerful
tool there is for enriching people’s models of reality, solving problems and helping
reach goals. The great thing about it is this: the fact that you can read this book
means you already have all the skills necessary to learn NLP Coaching Language.
All that is required now is some practice. There are a number of techniques that can
help you learn to use this language with effortless elegance:
• Get a set of the language patterns to study. They are available on Salad’s NLP
Coaching CardsTM, with examples of how to use them.
• Write out examples of the language patterns to wire them in to your neurology
at a deep level. If you write out examples of the Meta-Model patterns and
challenges 100 times, it will go a long way to embedding them automatically in
your speech.
• Use Salad’s NLP Coaching CardsTM to play card games using the language
patterns. Play makes learning fast and fun, so games increase your learning
speed. Then you can become curious about just how quickly your unconscious
will begin to surprise you by allowing these patterns to emerge in your language
spontaneously!
• Choose a pattern each day, then practice using that pattern in your conversations
that day. You will be surprised at just how quickly you are able to integrate the
patterns.
• As usual, set a goal for your communication (remember the Coaching Intent!)
Then allow your unconscious to help reflect this in your questions.
See, once you have internalized these questions, you don’t have to think about them
anymore. Your unconscious will automatically come up with the best question to ask.
All you have to do (consciously) is think about where you want to go next, what
information you want to gather, and what you’d like to know. Your unconscious can
do the rest!
More Information
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• Feel confident that you can discover the information that really matters
in any situation. People pay good money for this!
• Ask questions that amaze your clients, you colleagues, your friends
and even yourself with the quality of answers you'll get.
• Relax, knowing that you will never be stuck for what to say or ask again.
• Overcome barriers and obstacles that have been holding people back.
• Feel good, knowing that you really make a difference in people's lives.
“This is a fun and friendly way to learn and master the skills of
coaching mastery.”
Michael Neill, author of “You Can Have What You Want”
Price:
NLP Coaching Cards £14.95 Click Here To Order Now
Get it RISK-FREE
with the salad
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Jamie is author of The NLP Tip, an e-zine which goes to thousands of people around
the world each week (available from www.saladltd.co.uk), as well as the creator of
Ericksonian Hypnosis CardsTM and many other products.
He lives in Leicestershire (UK). When he isn’t helping other people get what they
want, he likes going for long walks in the woods, listening to music and reading.
Acknowledgements
I’ve been fortunate to learn from a number of great NLP Trainers and other
innovative thinkers and teachers. Thanks to anyone whose efforts have made their
way into this work.