The Meta-Coaching System 1890001279, 9781890001476

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THE META-COACHING SYSTEM The Systematic Approach of Meta-Coaching Volume XIII 2015

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

The Meta-Coaching System © The Meta-Coaching System, L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. 2015 Originally, the first nine chapters of Coaching Change, Volume I, 2004. L. Michael Hall and Michelle Duval Completely updated and rewritten, 2015

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Copyright number pending. ISBN 1-890001-27-9 All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, etc.) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by:

NSP: Neuro-Semantics Publications P.O. Box 8 Clifton, CO. 81520-0008 USA

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. P.O. Box 8 Clifton, CO 81520 (970) 523-7877

Neuro-Semantics® is the trademark name for the International Society of NeuroSemantics (ISNS) which is the name of the international Community. NeuroSemantics began in 1996 with the vision of taking NLP to a higher level of ethics, professionalism, and quality. Neuro-Semantics today has Institutes in 20 countries with 500 Trainers who trains Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner and Master Practitioner courses, Meta-States (APG), the MetaCoaching modules, and the Self-Actualization Psychology Diploma, there are over 2,000 Meta-Coaches in 50 countries. www.neurosemantics.com

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Meta-Coaching Series In the field of Coaching, the Meta-Coaching System is a leading model in framing the process of effective coaching in a highly systematic way. The design is to provide a Professional Coach the ability to know what to do, when to do it, how to do it, with whom to do it, and why to do it. The design also is to establish the field of coaching in the unique psychology for psychologically healthy people who want to change and develop, namely, Self-Actualization Psychology. To achieve that Dr. Hall has committed to writing the models and processes in a series of books that comprise the curriculum of Meta-Coaching.

Meta-Coaching Series Volume I: II: III: IV: V: VI:

Title

Model

Coaching Change Coaching Conversations Unleashed: A Guide to Your Ultimate Self-Actualization Self-Actualization Psychology Achieving Peak Performance Unleashing Leadership:

Axes of Change Model Facilitation Model Self-Actualization Quadrants Self-Actualization Volcano Meaning–Performance Axes Axes of Leadership

Self-Actualizing Leaders and Companies

VII: VIII: IX: X: XI: XII: XIII: XIV: XV:

The Crucible The Crucible Model Benchmarking Intangibles Benchmarking Model Systemic Meta-Coaching The Matrix Model Group and Team Meta-Coaching Group Trust Spiral Executive Coaching: Coaching Life in the C-Suite Political Coaching: The Meta-Coaching System Getting Real: The Call for Authenticity Unleashing Creativity

Supplementary Books for Professional Coaching: Figuring Out People (2006) The Meta-Programs Model Secrets of Personal Mastery (1997) The Meta-States Model Winning the Inner Game (2007) The Meta-States Model The Matrix Model (2003) Neuro-Semantic Systems Model Communication Magic (1999) The Meta-Model of Language

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THE META-COACHING SYSTEM Preface

4

Part I: Overview of the System 1. The What and the Why of Coaching 2. Coaching’s Unique Distinctiveness 3. Systematic Coaching

9 10 23 34

Part II: Conceptual Premises & Frameworks 4. The Psychology of Coaching 5. The Coaching Conversation 6. The Foundation and Frameworks of Coaching

46 47 60 69

Part III: Systematic Coaching: Meta-Coaching 7. Facilitating the Conversation 8. The Art of Facilitation — Facilitative Model — Compassionate Challenging Coaching 9. In-Depth Probing Communication — Meta-States Model — 10. Coaching Systemically — The Matrix Model — 11. Coaching the Inner Game

111 126 146

12. Coaching Change: I — Axes of Change Model— 13.. Coaching Measurable Performance — Benchmarking Model — 14. Coaching Benchmarks 15. Coaching Self-Actualization — Self-Actualization Quadrants 16. Self-Actualization Assessment Scale 17. Coaching Perceptual Filters — Meta-Programs Model —

154 171 184 204 224 235

Part IV: Pulling it All Together 18. The Principles of Coaching 19. How to Become an Effective Coach 20. Applications of Meta-Coaching: Executive Coaching, Group & Team, Political 21. Meta-Coaching and Research Appendices Bibliography Author

84 93

243 261 272 278 273 / 285 287 290

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PREFACE

M

eta-Coaching is a system—it is a systematic system which presents Coaching in a structured way. If you wonder what “systemic” and “system” mean in relation to coaching, or the structures which Meta-Coaching has adopted, or how that today Meta-Coaching has become by all accounts the most systematic approach to Coaching anywhere in the world, and/or why this is important—you will discover all of that and much more in this book. There are several reasons for systematizing Coaching. The most obvious one is so that professional coaches can carry out their job in an informed and intelligent way. Then they won’t coach “by the seat of the pants.” After all, Coaching is not, and should not be reduced to, a grab-bag of tricks. The unleashing potentials of Coaching is so much more than that. To be professional in any field requires understanding the profession—the psychology that governs it, the philosophy that informs it, and the practices that actualize it. This is the purpose of this book. For a professional Coach to develop true and healthy expertise in the field of Coaching, that person needs to confidently know what he is doing at any given point, and why. If a coach cannot do that, then whatever she is doing is just a guess—and the coach is simply hoping and wishing that what he is doing has a chance of working. The coach will then be treating the coaching process as a set of tricks, reaching into his self-development bag, and pulling some technique out. Then, with fingers crossed, hoping that it will work. That’s not the way to do it if you want to be systematic or professional as a coach. In Meta-Coaching, we believe that if a coach’s approach is not systematic, it will not be professional. The coach will then not be able to confidently know -6-

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that what she is doing will work. Conversely if we can systematize the coaching process then a coach can answer the systematic question: How do you know what to do with whom at a given time and how to do that particular intervention, and why? Systematizing the coaching process also helps with training new coaches in this field so that they can learn each piece of the puzzle and engage in what Anders Ericsson (2006) calls “deliberate practice.” This is essential for developing expertise. This enables a professional Coach to keep developing her skills until she develops true expertise in the competencies. I have systematize the coaching process so that the core competencies fit together to complete the coaching approach. Recognizing this synthesis of the skills enables you also to see how they fit within the unique psychology that governs the field of Coaching—Self-Actualization Psychology. Coaching Without a Systematic Approach The complaint in almost every book on Coaching beginning in the 1990s was that in the field of Coaching, most of the approaches were not systematic. Author after author complained that too many coaches were operating as if coaching was a grab-bag of tricks—that coaches didn’t understand what they were doing, or why they were doing what they were doing. They were guessing. They relied on “gut feelings.” While outwardly confident as a coach, they were inwardly crossing their fingers and gritting their teeth in hope that something would work. As a result, they often over-promised and under-delivered. That is still happening today. It doesn’t take a genius to recognize that this is not good for a professional field. The incompetence of practitioners will not only create bad press but undermine the value of coaching. Given this awareness Meta-Coaching was designed to be as systematic as possible. Then Coaching would not be done “on the fly” or “intuitively.” This was the original impetus of the MetaCoaching System. In this book you will find something unique to most books and programs on Coaching, namely, a thorough theoretical framework for Coaching. While there are many books on “Coaching 101," few seriously explore the premises and foundations of the field of Coaching itself. I do that here in order to make coaching systematic to its psychology. What are the philosophical foundations of a true Coaching psychology? In Meta-Coaching we have -7-

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based the foundation first and foremost on Self-Actualization Psychology. I say first because it is grounded in two other psychologies—Developmental Psychology and Cognitive-Behavioral Psychology. These psychologies describe the principles for how psychologically healthy people grow, develop, and realize their potentials. In this work you will find many new models for the framework of coaching —models which we use in Meta-Coaching. All of these are based on NLP —that is, on the Communication Model of NLP. The Meta-States Model for dealing with the unique form of human consciousness—self-reflexive consciousness. The Matrix Model as a systems approach for “following a client’s energy” through his system of meaning-construction and sense of self. The Axes of Change Model and The Crucible Model for facilitating generative change rather than the remedial change of therapy. The Self-Actualization Quadrants, the Self-Actualization Assessment Scale, and the Matrix Embedded Pyramid for working with the psychology of how people actualize their highest meanings (visions and values) and their best performances. The Benchmarking Model for implementing goals and measuring the change in intangible things like values and skills. The Facilitation Model for facilitating these processes in the coaching conversation and facilitating for the client the twin factors of compassion and challenge. These governing frameworks not only inform and govern Meta-Coaching, they are also designed to raise the level of skill, competency, and artistry in the field of Coaching. Without a solid framework in the hands of a wellgrounded professional coach, Coaching can easily degrade to a fluffy chat about goals or problems. With these Neuro-Semantic Models we are able to set benchmarks for quality coaching —coaching that’s effective and transformative because it is both systematic (structured) and systemic (whole and complete) as it works with a client who is a human system and who lives within multiple systems. This highlights the importance of benchmarking as a critical coaching skill. Why does benchmarking play an essential role in coaching? Answer— benchmarking is the ability to quantify the client’s terms and operationalize the skills and processes required to achieve a client’s outcome. Without this, a coach will be hard put to demonstrate the value and benefit of the -8-

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coaching’s ROI. Benchmarking enables you to mark and measure the difference that coaching makes and so validate its return on investment. Coaching is still a new and exciting field uniquely focused on personal enrichment and organizational empowerment. Its purpose and design is to mobilize a client to identify and develop internal and external resources so the client can achieve desired outcomes. Coaching does this by tapping into and awakening hidden and undeveloped potentials so clients can take their skills to new levels of performance and expertise. This enables people, groups, organizations, and communities to self-actualize— to become their highest and best. The systematic approach of Meta-Coaching enables a specific coaching methodology for working at a higher, or meta, level to a client’s experience. We call this coaching “Inner Game Coaching” using Tim Gallwey’s emphasis as we facilitate change within the realm of the client’s meaning-making construct. The term meta here means “higher” and refers to what is higher in a client’s experience. And higher to the performance is the client’s internal structure of meaning. This is where the best coaches work. In this way Meta-Coaching, as a systematic approach, is a premier process in that it directly focuses on actualizing a client’s potentials and talents. Here a coach directs a client’s attention to a level higher to performance, state, attitude, and belief to work with the structures of the mind-body-emotion system which governs peak performances. These structures comprise the client’s Inner Game. Since knowing comes from doing, each chapter ends with a call to action: What are Your Take Aways? This uses the coaching methodology itself to invite you to take something away and do something about what you learned. In this way, you can feel the heart of the power of coaching— facilitating people to take effective action. What will you Get from this Book? There are lots of benefits to be derived from this book. Among them are these: The unique Psychology of Coaching which separates it from other professions. The core competencies of Coaching and dozens of advanced skills. A model for working with generative change. -9-

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A complete description of a systematic approach to Coaching. A description of coaching as a special form communication and relating—a fierce tranformative conversation. An understanding of coaching as a not-normal conversation. The principles that govern the process of Coaching. The process of how human potentials can be identified, developed, and unleashed. The critical role of meaning and meaning-making in human experience and how coaching coaches centrally to meaning. How Coaching deals with emotions and emotional intelligence. How the quantitative idea of measurement plays a central role in effective Coaching and how to benchmark intangible qualities.

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PART I: AN OVERVIEW OF THE SYSTEM

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Chapter 1

THE WHAT AND WHY OF COACHING Coaching is a systemic collaborative partnership—a meta-relationship. The coach develops just as much as does the client. Michelle Duval Coaching is self-actualization technology for the twenty-first century; it is a technology that enables people to unleash and actualize their potentials. L. Michael Hall

T

he beginning point for understanding the Meta-Coaching System is to identify what we are talking about when we refer to coaching. After that, we need to establish the reason why coaching is important. I’m using this format because it is the same format that any effective coach uses in beginning a coaching conversation: “What do you want? Why is that important to you?” So with regard to this book: What is coaching and why is it important? What is the heart and soul of coaching that distinguishes it? What differentiates coaching from consulting, mentoring, therapy, and training? What are the unique benefits and values of coaching? -12-

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The What & Why of Coaching

Coaching — Do You Want to Know What It is? If you ask the question, “What is coaching?” to a group of coaches, or even coaching clients, you will undoubtedly get a whole range of answers. That is, in part, a reflection of where the emerging field of Coaching is today. It is still working out its identity and, depending on what any given coach cares most about, or where that coach learned his basic skills, some will define coaching as a version of consulting, training, mentoring, or even therapy. Now we have a problem. What’s the problem? The problem is that if Coaching does not uniquely differ from any of these other helping professions, then it has no unique and distinct area of operation. Then Coaching is just another name for something else. And there are both coaches and researchers who hold that view. They think of it in eclectic terms. I do not. In Meta-Coaching we started by identifying the unique and distinct area where Coaching applies. One of our initial questions was, “How is Coaching not a form of consulting, mentoring, counseling, or training?” “How does it differ?” What then is Coaching? What does it seek to do that these other professions do not do and cannot do? What are the gaps left open by the other helping professional disciplines which Coaching uniquely fills? An Unique Population: Coaching is uniquely devoted to those who are psychologically healthy, who do not need expert advice for solving problems of personality (personality disordered). 1 It is for those who embrace change, want to be challenged, long to be stretched, and are living at the being level in the hierarchy of human needs (via Maslow’s model) or at least beginning to live there and wanting to live there. An Unique Objective: Coaching is designed to promote human development and learning, to accelerate adult learning, and to be as the methodology of Self-Actualization Psychology. What the first Human Potential Movement (1960-1985) failed to discover, was a specific dependable methodology for unleashing potentials in people who are already “up to okay” and who want to be more effective. Today coaching is the new methodology for doing precisely this—facilitating the self-actualization process. -13-

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The unique objective of Coaching in organizations is to actualize Maslow and McGregor’s Theory Y of management and leadership so that groups, companies, and corporations become self-actualizing companies. Of course, to do that requires executive and managerial leaders to become self-actualizing leaders.2 An Unique Psychology: Coaching operates from a different psychology than the psychology that informs and governs consulting, mentoring, therapy, and training. It is founded in the humanistic psychology, the positive psychology of the first Human Potential Movement that Maslow, Rogers, May, and many others developed. It is founded on the concepts that we are made for change, growth, learning, and ongoing development. An Unique Set of Competencies: Coaching, to be truly different, also requires a special skill set. Given that it is for the psychologically healthy who want more challenge, it centers in challenging and confronting. It centers in a special kind dialogue whereby the client discovers via the challenging questions that confront him or her about possibilities. It centers in an intense, intimate, and fierce conversation that gets the client to discover and mobilize latent potentials which then unleashes the person to become his or her own best version. The Field of Coaching Today, Coaching is a new and fast growing industry. In 1999 and for many years thereafter, Coaching was the second fastest growing industry in the USA, following behind IT. No wonder hundreds of Coach Training Schools have popped up on every continent to service this ever-increasing demand. Yet in spite of this, the great majority of graduates do not open up sustainable coaching practices. In 2004, and continuing to today, research by the International Coach Federation (ICF) revealed that within 12 months of completing their training, 80% of graduates (from their Accredited Coach Training Schools) were not coaching professionally. They had dropped out. Currently the field of Coaching is an unregulated industry in most places without government or other external regulations to preserve ethics, practices, and entry qualifications. Without such regulations, the field is without barriers of entry. This means that in most countries any individual, with or without coach training, can start a coaching practice and provide coaching -14-

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services. (Since writing that in 2004, there is now legislation in many of the US states as well as in several countries, with more coming on line all the time.)3 In the year 2000 pioneering academic Anthony Grant, Ph.D., Director of the Coaching Psychology Unit at Sydney University set out to provide an academic foundation for the field. He did so by offering the first Post Graduate Degree in Coaching. Since then, more than a hundred Universities around the world are now offering degree programs in Coaching. To provide quantitative evidence for the efficacy of a modality, any new field needs researchers to test the psychological premises and frameworks of the models. This is part of our vision in Meta-Coaching and the legacy we are leaving so the field will become recognized as a respected profession. (See chapter 21). Without a unifying psychological framework in the field, coaches are left to treat the coaching process as a mere grab-bag of tricks. If they want to make it sound more sophisticated, they say, “I’m eclectic in my approach.” Yet eclectic in this context means that they do not have a theory, or a set of premises about coaching, how it works, the variables, the hypothesis, etc. Those conditions make it difficult for a field to evolve. These conditions undermine a field preventing it from becoming a profession. Consequently those who are professional will leave the field, or will simply “coach” under the guise of other modalities, such as therapy, training, consulting, or mentoring. The Boundaries of Coaching As we define what coaching is, we also have to identify what coaching is not. Any definition of coaching needs to specify its unique identity and distinguish it so that we are equally clear about what coaching is not designed to do. This is important. Otherwise we will not know the boundaries—what is in and what is outside of the area of coaching. Actually this describes where the field of Coaching is today—a mine field of conflicting definitions. Today there is not an unanimous definition of what coaching is. What is the essence of coaching? Where are its boundaries? Where does coaching exist and where does it end? Where does another form of facilitating resources (consulting, mentoring, counseling, training, etc.) begin and end? -15-

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Assuming that it is critically important that we know both what coaching is and is not, we have in Meta-Coaching sorted out these distinctions as Figure 1:1 indicates. Michelle Duval, who assisted in co-creating the original MetaCoaching System, created this diagram to distinguish coaching from the other helping professions of consulting, mentoring, counseling or therapy, and training.4 The central circle represents the field of coaching with the other helping professions surrounding it. The smaller circles represent the other professional fields for personal growth and development. The design of this diagram is to define Coaching as a separate and unique profession from the others. The overlap between coaching and the other professions indicate where you, as a coach, may dance in and out, depending of the need and context of working and interacting with a client. Figure 1:1

Consulting

Mentoring

COACHING Counseling

Training

In what follows, I have identified the core competency of each profession in order to distinguish it from the field of Coaching. This allows you to know when to take off the hat of a coach and to put on another hat, such as the consulting hat. This enables you to make distinctions and to communicate when you are in a coaching role and when you are not. -16-

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1) Consulting — Giving Expert Advice What is a consultant? What does a consultant do? What is a consultant’s core competency? At its core, consulting involves giving advice from one’s expertise in a given field. The consultant provides diagnosis, recommendations, specific technical information about a field, and advice to the client regarding what the client ought to do. Insight and understanding is primarily directed to the client from the consultant. Consultancy can be facilitative and when it is, it facilitates a client coming to understand the value and importance of the expert advice. This makes consulting mostly directive and prescriptive and so includes conducting needs analysis, diagnosing of problems, giving advice of a step-by-step process for implementation. When I consult with a legal expert (an attorney), a medical expert (doctor), a tax expert (certified accountant), exercise expert (personal trainer), etc., I am looking for, and willing to pay, some expert advice. Because I don’t want to spend time and effort to learn, I am paying for is expert knowledge. I just want the expert to tell me the answer regarding things that I don’t know. So, if Coaching is not consulting, we now know one thing that coaching is not, Coaching is not giving advice. This brings us back to our fundamental question: What is coaching? 2) Mentoring — Guiding a Protégé with Expert Experience What is a mentor? What does a mentor do? What is a mentor’s core competency? Mentoring involves someone (the mentor) who has particular skills, knowledge, or experience and a protégé to whom the mentor transfers the knowledge and skills. Again, there is an expert and a learner. In mentoring, the transference occurs through giving advice, guidance, and sharing one’s own personal story. In mentoring the relationship is unequal rather than mutual. Mentoring typically involves a very close and personal relationship between the experienced person who transmits his or her expertise to the new or inexperienced person. The mentor is the expert who passes on specific information to a less experienced person. Seldom are mentors paid for the expertise and guidance. In organizations, senior or more experienced managers are often appointed to mentor a new hire to bring him or her up to speed. The core competency then of a mentor is using one’s experience to guide someone new to that experience. This gives us another distinction -17-

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about what Coaching is not—Coaching is not guiding from your own experience. So, again, if Coaching is not mentoring, then what is Coaching? 3) Counseling and Psychotherapy — Healing or Re-Parenting the Traumatized What is a counselor or therapist? What does a therapist do? What is a therapist’s core competency? The focus of therapy is primarily on problems—on things that hurt, violate, and/or cause a person to become psychologically stuck. The therapist is the expert who understands about the pathology of certain problems, their sources, symptoms, symptomatic defenses, how people become broken and dysfunctional, diagnosis of such disorders, and the therapeutic process for healing the hurts and bringing resolution to personal pain. Historically, the therapeutic relationship also implies an unequal relationship, one in which one person (the therapist) has “power” or “authority,” and the other person does not. It is for that reason that the relationship is governed by various regulatory boards in most states and countries. This regulation is designed to prevent abuse or misuse of that power relationship. Almost everywhere laws forbid dual relationships between therapists and clients. Accordingly, therapists have to learn how to evoke a transference and how to avoid counter-transference. The transference enables the therapist to utilize an authority figure role so he or she can essentially re-parent a client to eventually complete the unfinished business of the past. The assumption in therapy is that there’s something wrong, or broken, or traumatized in the client and the therapist has the skills to facilitate a rectifying that problem. The focus is on developing the ego-strength to face reality and to become okay in oneself. In the process it deals with a whole range of strong debilitating emotions such as anxiety, depression, anger, fear, etc. While coaching also deals with negative emotions, the ordinary emotions of normal people are not debilitating—they are just emotions. Emotions, even the negative ones, and even intensely negative ones, are a normal part of life, and even part of the self-actualizing life. Even self-actualizing people feel negative emotions. They register them and work through them. The mere presence of grief, tears, hurt, sadness, anger, and fear is not in itself a signal for therapy. Here is another thing Coaching is not—Coaching is not healing, -18-

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fixing, or re-parenting childhood traumas. So, if Coaching is not therapy, then what is Coaching? 4) Training — Skill Development and Skill Transference What is a trainer? What does a trainer do? What is a trainer’s core competency? What does a trainer do that is unique and special? Training focuses on skills and especially on developing new skills. Training involves instructing, teaching, presentation, and dialogue, yet at the heart is practice, drills, role-playing, review, reflection, and experiential learning so that a person develops the new skills and then transfers that knowledge back to the workplace or other context. In training there is an expert (the trainer) who knows what the client doesn’t know. So the trainer puts participants through various drills as the trainer sequences the learning, and then tests the client in evaluating the development of the competence. If the core competency of training is expertise in skill development, here is yet another thing that Coaching is not—Coaching is not training. If Coaching is not training, then what is Coaching? So, What is Coaching? In defining coaching, we now know what it is not. So what is it? The best books and articles on coaching describe and define coaching in a variety of ways: Coaching is a person-focused conversation that awakens visions, values, and meanings from deep within the person. Coaching ennobles people by calling forth their best and challenging people to step up to their potentials. Coaching accelerates learning in adults to be more creative and innovative in their lives and careers. Coaching is a solution-focus orientation to life’s challenges and problems. Coaching is a process for empowering oneself to take charge of one’s life and live more fully and authentically. Coaching is a new managerial methodology for managing people by encouraging self-management and self-leadership. Coaching is a process for maximizing potentials in people and enabling them to tap into their intellectual and creative potentials. Coaching is a conversation for setting and achieving goals to enhance the quality of life.

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Coaching is a process for facilitating change so that people can think more, feel more, know more, speak more, do more, achieve more, and give more. Coaching is a collaborative partnership that gets to the heart of a person’s meanings and values to facilitate greater meaningfulness for self-actualization. Wow! No wonder people everywhere are getting excited about coaching and seeking to introduce it into everyday life, into couple relationships, into organizations, executive board rooms, groups, politics, etc. But are these things that different and distinct from the other helping professions? What makes Coaching distinct? If we can identify the core competencies in each of these professions, then what is the core competency of Coaching? Before answering, here is our definition of coaching in the Meta-Coaching System: Coaching is the art of facilitating with a client a ruthlessly compassionate conversation to an agreed upon outcome that’s specific and exciting. It is a fierce conversation that is entirely clientfocused which gets to the heart of things for the client— his meanings and values. The conversation identifies and mobilizes her internal and external resources for generative change that unleashes and actualizes potentials. What is the core competency of Coaching that distinguishes it as a separate profession? Coaching facilitates the processes which are required for unleashing a client’s potentials. This stands in contradistinction to consulting, mentoring, psychotherapy, and training because this is not just facilitating some expert content or model, Coaching involves a different kind of facilitation; Coaching is process facilitation. Can You Dance Between the Professional Modalities? Did you notice the over-lap between Coaching and the helping professions in Figure 1:1? Does that mean that there are times when you, as a Coach, can use one or more of these other ways to interact with your client? The diagram presents the interface between these helping professions. These enable a coach to be able to distinguish the professional boundaries between Coaching and the other professions. When you know that, then you can dance in and out gracefully. You can take off the coach’s hat and put on the hat of another profession. -20-

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This means that there is a small place, potentially, for engaging in these noncoaching functions. Now, as a coach, there will be times when you will be called upon to step aside from coaching and shift to providing some skill development (training), healing of some hurt emotion (therapy), giving suggestions about how to arrange things (consulting), and even treating the other as a protégé (mentoring). Now for the critical question: Should you stop coaching and do one of these other things? If you decide to dance out of coaching and move into one of the other helping professions, be sure you have a crystal clear answer to these questions: Why are you doing this? What’s your purpose in stepping out of coaching? What are you seeking to do? Do you have the training and expertise to do this? Will this support your client in the long-term? Are you doing this because you don’t know how to coach the client at that moment? When you do this, it’s important to be conscious of what you are doing, when you are doing it, with whom, and why. There are no absolute rules for this—so let your mindfulness be your guide. Figure 1:2

Solution

Focus

Now of all the roles, Problem Direct --- Style ---Indirect the one that is very difficult to negotiate is therapy. I always recommend against it. The therapeutic relationship is so different in nature from the coaching relationship that it is best to refer to someone else rather than attempt to do it yourself. Therapy is about caring, -21-

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nurturing, re-parenting, fixing, and is problem-centered; Coaching is about challenging, stretching, pushing, and is solution-centered. Therapy involves transference and counter-transference; Coaching does not assume an authority role with or over the client. If you are being mindful about when you move in and out of the different roles then you to know what you are doing at any given moment and how it fits into the long-term strategic plan with your client. Knowing that will enable you to dance between the roles gracefully. To dance between the various supportive professions for learning and growing requires that you discern where one set of skills start and another stops, what lies at the heart of each, and where the boundaries are blurred or overlapped. Now we have another question— a systematic one: If Coaching is not consulting, mentoring, therapy, or training, but at times a coach may dance into at least three of these modalities, how do we tell when to do which of these? The Professional Quadrants To answer the question and to more thoroughly understand the professional modalities, let’s use two axes. These axes of focus and directness is represented in Figure 1:2. The Focus Axis: The kind and degree of the kind of focus—from problem-focus to solution-focus. The Directness Axis: The degree of directness or indirectness in how a coach facilitates the helping process. On the Focus axis, a coach can move from a problem-focus to a solutionfocus. Obviously therapy is much more problem focus whereas training, mentoring, and coaching are more solution focus. On the directness axis we have the polar opposites of being direct versus indirect. Consulting is less direct and more facilitative then training, as is coaching. Consulting also tends to focus on problems which need expert knowledge or skill to solve. Coaching is in the quadrant of being of more solution-focused and more facilitative. The most insightful distinction which comes out of this, namely, that what characterizes all of the other professions is that the helper is the expert in the content of their area. They know their field, they are knowledgeable and skilled—in it they are the experts of the content. By way of contrast, the coach is not the expert of the content in Coaching—the client is the expert of -22-

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him or herself and what the client wants. What does that leave the Coach to be an expert of? The processes for enabling the client to discover self, lead self, manage self, develop self, unleash self, and become one’s best self. In this way, the coach is the expert of process facilitation. As a coach you facilitate the communicational and psychological processes which will enable the client to discover what he truly wants, make a wellthought out decision as a commitment, create a plan for how to actualize the objective, access the needed resources, and generate the required change to unleash her highest and best. Figure 1:3 The Professional Quadrants

Sol utio n-Foc us

Trainin g

C oaching

Mentorin g

Therapy

Co nsu lting

Prob lem-Fo cus

Direc t

Indi rect

What are Your Take Aways? First and foremost, I hope that you will take away an appreciation about the power, wonder, and mystery of Coaching. It is a very -23-

special field— one that is most unique. It is uniquely designed for facilitating self-actualization. I hope that you will take away just how unique Coaching is from the other helping professions of consulting, mentoring, training, and psychotherapy. Coaching therefore requires a very different set of skills. It requires the core competency of facilitating the selfactualizing processes of individuals and organizations. Take away also the insight that Coaching can be, and should be, treated systemically so that it can be all that Coaching can be as indicated by the seven central things that Coaching is—which is the subject of the next chapter.

End of Chapter Notes 1. For more about working with personality disorders, see the book, Personality Ordering and Disordering Using NLP and Neuro-Semantics (2001). 2. For more about this see the previous volumes of Meta-Coaching: Unleashed, SelfActualization Psychology, and Unleashing Leadership. 3. This statement was true in 2004 when the first edition of the book was written, and continues to be true in 2012 at this printing. 4. A similar diagram was used in the Coaching Research presentation of the ICF in 2004.**

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COACHING’S UNIQUE DISTINCTIVENESS

A

s you probably detected in the previous chapter, I have not yet completed what I began there. There are several questions and distinctions still to be addressed. One is about the core competency of coaching—process facilitation, the other is about when to step in and out of coaching—the boundaries of coaching. These, in turn, highlight the psychology at the core of Coaching—Self-Actualization Psychology. The exploration of these enable us, in this chapter, to focus on another unique factor of Coaching as a profession. Process Facilitation The first uniqueness of Coaching as a separate professional field lies in how the coach is not a content expert, but a process expert. This explains why a coach does not need to know very much about the client’s content, he may be completely uninformed all about the area of the client’s concern. Timothy Gallwey demonstrated this in his books on the Inner Game. In fact, knowing too much about a field can actually hinder and get in the way of effective coaching.1 -25-

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What you, as the coach, need to know concerns the processes of learning, unlearning, growing and developing as a person, finding, developing, and unleashing potentials, changing external behaviors and internal frames of mind (beliefs, values, identities, etc.), and so on. The coach’s expertise lies in the processes of human functioning which enable a person to grow, take on challenges, and become the best that she can become. Unleashing human potentials in this way is the domain of Coaching. While Process Facilitation will be the theme of chapter 8, it distinguishes Coaching in a peculiar way. While all of the other professions entails expertise in the client’s content, coaching does not. This is de-emphasized in Coaching which thereby calls upon the client to become his or her own best expert. At the same time, it calls upon the coach to focus on the hidden and invisible structures, forms, and processes by which the client goes about his life. Content refers to the details and the specifics that comprise what’s on a client’s mind. It is about the client’s story. Form refers to the process, structure, and the format of the story. Once you have a story about something, then you can ask: • Is the story told as if the client is inside it or outside and observing it? • Is the story told in first person or narrated by another person? • Is the story told in a direct and succinct way or in a talkative, chatty, or even convoluted way? • Is the story represented so it is close or far, in color or in black-andwhite? • What belief supports the story? What decision? What assumptions, expectations, identities, etc.? When Does a Coach Consult? Now back to our question about when does a coach step out of the coaching role and may step into any of the other helping profession roles? First of all, coaches will inevitably and naturally consult in the process of creating the coaching contract with individuals and corporate clients. As a coach, you use consultation when you inform your client what Coaching is, how it works, your focus, style, expertise, and preferred way of working. You consult in order to set up the contract for who you will coach, frequency, objective, reporting, length, etc.

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As a coach then, you do consult. The way you set up the coaching relationship is through the consulting process. In this way, you negotiate with a client about how he will engage in the business arrangement (when, where, cost, etc.). You consult in order so that your client understands what she is buying, what to expect regarding the professional boundaries of coaching, and what will happen if either party fails to fulfill the contract. Then after the original consulting and contracting, the coach will generally not consult. The coaching begins with consulting in order so that you and your client can develop a mutually acceptable, win/win coaching contract in the first place. The coaching does not start prior to this contracting with a client. Prior to coaching, the consulting reinforces the benefits and values that will be derived from the coaching. As a coach, you may engage in an explorative needs analysis, client profiling, 360-feedback, or use other assessment tools in order to then make recommendations or even suggestions that will help the client to develop an outcome that is well-formed. There is a good bit of affinity between coaching and consulting. In both you work with a client to facilitate clarity about goals, resources, and choices. In both, you aim to facilitate the client’s learning so that next time, the client will possibly not need you. The kind of coaching that is closest to consulting is Business Coaching. There the coach has expertise in business and so may, at times, take off the coaching hat and ask to put on the consulting hat to provide some expert knowledge about some facet of business. Business coaches generally have expert knowledge of business, management, leadership, business plans, groups and team building, social psychology, marketing, etc. Yet the distinction remains: As the coach you are not the expert of the content, you are an expert in process—in how to get the best results from the client. The client is his or her own expert of what is desired or needed and about the tasks of the business at hand. Generally, external coaches brought in to work in an organization will not need expert knowledge about that business. Obviously, they will need a general sense of the industry, some of the basic challenges in that area, and the ability to use the language of that industry. The expertise of the coach lies in the human functioning in communicating, changing, relating, learning, etc. For other coaches, for the personal or life coach, the executive coach, etc. the use of consultancy skills will mostly be utilized when the coach is working on his or her own business. The coach will need consultancy skills for -27-

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managing the business of coaching, getting business, administrating business, dealing with partners, colleagues, assistants, suppliers, perhaps employees, etc. Advice giving is both the core competency of the consultant and the temptation of the coach. How tempted will you be to give advice? What shifts in your mental framework about coaching do you need to make in order to reduce that temptation? Generally, the more you respect the client, the more you believe in the client’s capacity to learn, and the more you enable the client to discover in his own way— the less will be the seduction to give advice. When Does a Coach Train? Sometimes when a client lacks a particular skill, you may, as a coach either refer, or if you have the required ability to train that skill, ask permission to take off the coaching hat and put on the training hat. You could then move into providing the information of the models and knowledge as well as the skills and the skill development of a trainer. If as coach you not only have that skill and ability and the meta-skill of being able to train it, and the time and disposition to dance from coaching into training, then training could become a useful response. If you, as the coach, happen to have the content expertise of a specific skill, or knowledge base for a strategy, then you may want to shift from coaching to training to provide a specific model and skills for the client. After you have done that, then simply shift back to coaching the skill into application and implementation. If you, as the coach, do not have the requisite expertise, then you may want to set up a tasking assignment whereby your client can develop the particular skill or refer to someone who can provide the training of that skill. When Does a Coach Mentor? Because coaching is about helping clients to open new possibilities and exploring untapped potentials, often a client will venture into a brand new and unvisited territory. As they take their first tentative steps across new terrain, they may have little awareness of the options and choices available to them, what to consider, or what to take stock of, or look out for. At these times, if you as the coach have experience and expertise in that specific domain, you may want to step into the role of a mentor to share your personal story of a relevant experience and the learnings, ideas, and/or suggestions that -28-

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you derived from it. The purpose of this is to open the client up to what is possible in that domain. When you have put on the mentor hat, you then show the person the ropes of that area and share your own personal experiences. Of course, the seduction for you as the coach/mentor is to get lost in the content of your personal story and experience or in your client’s experience. If that happens, then you may be doing too much storytelling and miss the point of coaching—enabling your client to improve and change his or her life. In these domains of consulting, mentoring, and training, while there is the possibility of shifting out of one role into another, the best coaches do not do so. Instead, they do what we call pure coaching. There’s a reason for that. It is because of the Socratic principle of effectively questioning to draw out of a person the information that you would otherwise tell them. This identifies one of the wonderful discoveries about Coaching: anything I could tell, teach, guide, or give advice about, I can also facilitate so that the client discovers it. What is the primary tool for this? Asking questions! Then, when a client discovers something — it is hers. It belongs to her and she will be far less likely to forget it. When Does a Coach Counsel or do Therapy? The best and easiest answer is—Never! Shifting hats from the coaching hat to the therapy hat is one of the most challenging shifts to make. That’s because the relationship between coach and client and the relationship between therapist and client are very, very different. As a coach, you challenge. You push, provoke, tease, stretch, encourage risk taking, challenge, etc. As a therapy, you mostly nurture and re-parent. To do that you will elicit and use transference which means getting the client to transfer his or her feelings about authority figures of the past to you. This explains why we speak about a therapist’s role as a “power” position as already noted. Now true enough, coaching often elicit memories and emotions, new experiences, challenges, etc. which may invite the client to fall back to an old pattern and become unresourceful. Older issues may arise about not being okay, not having the ego-strength to face something, falling back to living in the past—these are the things best dealt with by therapy rather than coaching. The boundary between coaching and therapy is not always easy to discern. After all, there is a gray area between the two where one could easily go one -29-

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way or the other. In Meta-Coaching we use the following questions to distinguish coaching from therapy: Does the person have the ego-strength to face a given issue without falling apart (without either caving in or getting aggressive)? Is the person mostly living in the present or does the person mostly live in the past? Is the person generally and usually okay, or does the person feel notokay, and becoming okay is his or her foremost need and focus? Is the person willing to face the emotion or memory or issue or does the person mostly just want it to go away and to have peace? Is the person in a problem-solving mode or in a defense posture wanting safety and security? Is the client using defense mechanisms for protection or coping mechanisms for growth and development? How closed or open to change is the client? Doing therapy under the guise of “coaching” today is a problem for the field of Coaching. Why? One reason is that many coaches come into coaching from the field of mental health and therefore have a bias for using their therapeutic perspective and skills when dealing with clients. No wonder they can so easily be seduced into focus on a negative emotion or a problematic “issue,” and then slowly slide into doing therapy. This can not only be a challenge to the coach, it can be dangerous and even illegal. A coach can get in “over his or her head,” and attempt treatments for which he or she does not have the necessary training or understanding. And because coaches challenge, that challenging can make a sensitive traumatic issue worse. The answers to these questions are not always clear and simple. We use therapy to handle the therapeutic issues of thought-emotion which undermines a client’s ability to be in the moment and take responsibility from a position of power and optimism. In Meta-Coaching, we recommended that even people trained in psychotherapy refer out to someone else rather than attempt to play both roles with the same client. Question: Does coaching have a therapeutic effect on clients? Yes, of course, and well it should! By listening attentively in a caring way, by being present to a person, asking supportive questions, giving support and sensory-based feedback, by setting frames that “the person is not the problem, the frame is the problem,” and so on, all of these things will have a therapeutic or healing effect. Yet the heart of therapy is more explicit. It is to heal past hurts, re-30-

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parent mistakes from childhood, and build up ego-strength. Simply doing therapeutic things does not make you a therapist. It makes you a person who has a healing influence. A Reflective Meta-Moment Having now covered what coaching is, what it is not, when to possibly shift out of coaching into consulting, mentoring, and/or training, you now have a general description for determining how to use the professional boundaries and when. Now it’s time to make sure that Coaching, as a profession, has a strong grounding in substantial theory. Grounding Coaching Psychology in Theory Getting clear about Coaching is critical for another reason. In spite of many good, and even excellent, definitions of coaching, very few definitions ground themselves in a substantial theory. They speak about facilitating change, engaging in a conversation that gets to the heart of things, and eliciting the client’s own inner vision, talent, passion, and knowledge. In book after book on coaching, you can read about coaching having an unique focus, one focused on: The person growing, developing, and becoming, actualizing one’s potentials in self, in talents and skills, intelligence, creativity, etc. A person achieving success in his or her unique way. Goal setting—figuring out how to effectively achieve one’s objectives. Performance—taking skills to the next level for greater competence. Developing excellence in one’s area of expertise. An insight and evocative conversation that creates “Aha” insights! Questions and questioning—to ask provocative questions to open up new possibilities. Change—for the next level of development. Meaning— finding what is truly meaningful and significant in life. If coaching is all of these things and more, then what does it assume? What does coaching assume about people, human nature, learning, growth, development, work, career, goal-setting, and self-actualization? What are the over-arching frameworks which support this approach to empowering people to discover and actualize their own visions, values, and development? What does it assume about how and why coaching works to achieve these results?

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This is where Self-Actualization Psychology comes in. Given that coaching is not therapy, the older psychologies that focused on how people get wounded and how people can be restored to health do not fit the new emergent field of Coaching. What’s needed is not the psychologies which work with abnormal human functioning, nor even normal, but the psychologies that map out what’s possible in human nature. 2 In Meta-Coaching, we base Coaching Psychology on the humanistic psychology of Maslow, Rogers, and other pioneering thinkers who created “The Third Force” in psychology. This is the psychology that starts from the assumption that all people have a self-actualization drive within and as they develop, they satisfy their basic coping needs (the lower needs) and move to the place where they want to be challenged for the higher needs and values (the B-values). The psychology assumes that once a person has settled the coping-for-survival issues, the questions of meaning and meaningfulness then arise. The focus now shifts from merely surviving to thriving as they live a meaningful life. “What shall I live for? What passions are lurking within to be released?” These self-actualization questions lie at the heart of coaching. They arise from the basic theme of self-actualization, namely, that we humans are designed to grow into self-actualizing and self empowered people. This is the focus in chapters three and four where we will explore the premises and principles of coaching. This is important if we are to have a complete definition which includes the theoretical frameworks. Without it those who practice coaching will be unable to clearly identify the boundaries of this profession and distinguish it from the other helping professions. Lacking discernment between these different modalities of support in human growth and development will prevent the coach from knowing what to do, when to do it, with whom, how to do it, when to refer, and why to do it. This is the systematic question again, the question that has driven the creation of Meta-Coaching: How do you know what to do, when to do that, with whom to do that, how to pull it off in an effective way, and why to do that? Here’s another reason. Without a complete definition that describes both theory and practice, coaches will adopt and use techniques that are fitting for the other professions and so will easily be seduced to subtly and unexpectedly slip into doing things other than coaching. This is already happening in the -32-

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field of Coaching. In fact, as you will discover in the chapter about change, every coaching approach apart from Meta-Coaching has adopted wholesale change models from therapy.3 For example, those using the Trans-Theoretical Model of change, Transactional Analysis model, etc. are, to a good extent, actually doing therapy under the guise of coaching. In using such change models, the coach is being seduced into saying things about change, and believing things about change, that’s fully appropriate for working with people who need healing from the past, resolution of traumas, and psychotherapy. What are the things which they are saying? The list includes: “Change is hard,” “Change is painful,” and “Be on guard for resistance.” “It probably won’t last, you are likely to relapse to the old pattern.” In other words, their way and style of coaching assumes all of the premises which govern psychotherapy, not coaching. Coaching psychology focuses on generative change, not remedial. It is founded on the premises and principles of working with people who are psychologically healthy, who have plenty of ego-strength, and whose attitude is that of being a change-embracer. What difference does this make? Imagine the difference. Imagine working with people who are whole, integrated, self-actualizing, and who are searching for peak experiences, who are not playing it safe. Contrast that with working with people who are defensive about change, who want to get back to a comfort zone, who are defensive, and afraid of change. It’s a big difference! Change embracers love to learn, grow, and change. They long to move to the next level of development. They plan to make changes. They hunger to grow and learn. For them, change is an adventure. To use an old model of change, built for people who are damaged by trauma and stuck and who need healing, comfort, security, is uses the wrong model. Every coaching program and book that I have examined acknowledges and confirms that “Coaching is not therapy.” Yet only a few define the difference in any detail. Even fewer actually use those differences in coaching for selfactualizing change in a consistent and congruent way. Coaching is not merely a warm and fuzzy chat that talks about hopes and wishes about one’s goals. Effective and masterful coaching is much more intentional and directive than that. It is entirely client-focused, intense, -33-

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intimate, and at times even fierce. Powerful coaching facilitates a conversation that emerges into a profound dialogue through probing questions, meta-questions, and mirroring feedback. An effective coach works with language, semantic-loaded gestures, and conversations—these are the processes that the coach needs to be an expert. That is, the coach’s expertise is in the meta-processes above and beyond the specific content which the client offers. As a process expert, a coach enables the client to reach inside and tap potentials that the client may not even believe he or she has. The coach works at a level above (or meta) that content. How does an effective coach bring out the best in the client and enable him to refine his skills so that he can take his game to a new level of performance? How does the skilled coach work with her to get her to produce the best performances that she can create and awaken in her higher motivations and meanings that makes the whole experience rich and fulfilling? The answers to these questions make up the heart of the Coaching profession. What are Your Take Aways? Be sure to take away that Coaching is a “psychological” discipline. It deals with human functioning, thinking, feeling, believing, valuing, and performing. Yet the kind of psychology that informs and governs coaching differs from the psychology that informs psychotherapy. Coaching also focuses first and foremost on the form and structure of an experience. It maintains a double-focus on both the outer game of performance (hence, performance coaching) and the inner game of frames and the matrix of our frames (hence developmental and transformational coaching). Take away that while there can be some overlap with the other helping professions—pure coaching stays within the Coaching methodology. That is the ideal. End of Chapter Notes: 1. See Chapter 11 for an example of this. 2. The title of one of Maslow’s books speaks to this: The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (1971). 3. See Chapter 12 on Change for more details about the change models that are prevalent in the field of Coaching today and how they are derived from therapy.

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Chapter 3

SYSTEMATIC COACHING Making Coaching Systematic

“Systems reveal themselves as patterns, not isolated incidents or data points. ... Pattern recognition requires that we sit together reflectively and patiently.” Margaret Wheatley (1999, p. 125-126)

I

introduced the systematic question in the first chapter. It was this question that, in fact, guided the original impetuous and creation of MetaCoaching. This was the question for which I sought to create a complete answer when I was first designing the Meta-Coaching System: How do you know what to do, when to do that, with whom to do that, how to pull it off in an effective way, and why to do that? The Beginning of Meta-Coaching It all began with a modeling project. Meta-Coaching began in 2001 when I modeled three expert coaches in Sydney Australia. Prior to that I had interviewed and model a professor, Dan Bagley, Ph.D., who had become an Executive Coach. That was 1997. At the time, I really didn’t understand why a tenured professor would do that. The interview with him completely changed my understanding and perspective about Coaching. A few years later, I met three exceptional individuals in Sydney Australia who allowed me to interview them about their coaching specialities: Graham Richardson as an -36-

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Executive Coach, Michelle Duval as a Personal Coach, and Cheryl Gilroy as a Group and Team Coach. After the interviewing and modeling I did a literature review in the field of Coaching which I then read and studied extensively. That led to developing the Meta-Coaching System based on Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and Neuro-Semantics. Later, in 2002, I invited all three of the exceptional expert coaches to participate with me in the very first Meta-Coach Training in Sydney, Australia. I was not the only person wanting to make Coaching systematic. Many of the early authors of books on Coaching argued that the field of Coaching desperately needed a more systematic approach. When I shared this with Michelle Duval, I found that she was equally definitive on this subject and so I invited her to sit down and think through the question of what would make a coaching approach systematic. Out of that conversation, we came up with a definition of coaching that we thought was both sufficient and necessary for a coaching conversation to be a truly, fully, and exclusively a coaching conversation. That list of the five (and later seven) that identify things “what coaching is” then led us over the next six years to create a thoroughly systematic approach to coaching. Originally, I wrote many of the chapters of this book first in 2004 after having written the first book Coaching Conversations (2003/2011). Having written that book I realized that it needed an introduction. So while writing on coaching change using the Axes of Change model, I wrote nine chapters to introduce Meta-Coaching as a system. Once that was done, I re-numbered the books. I made Coaching Conversations the second book and Coaching Change the first. Later, when the time came to update those early volumes (2015), because I had learned so many new things over the years of training Meta-Coaching, I decided to create two books out of that original volume. Today, these two books are: Coaching Change, Volume I. The Meta-Coaching System, Volume XIII. Identifying the Over-Arching Framework To have a truly substantial foundation for the field of Coaching, we need both theoretical and practical frameworks. Given that, what are the frameworks that we can use for Coaching? I got this idea while interviewing Michelle -37-

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Figure 3:1 COACHING —— 1) Communication 2) In-depth Communication Self-Reflexivity Layering 3) Systems 4) Change and Learning 4) Implementation / Embodiment 6) Self-Actualization 7) Process Facilitation

THE META-COACHING MODELS The NLP Communication Model The Meta-States Model The Matrix Model The Axes of Change model The Crucible Model The Benchmarking Model The Matrix of Self-Actualization The Self-Actualization Quadrants Self-Actualization Assessment Scale The Facilitation Model

Duval in 2001 when first conceptualizing Meta-Coaching. Together we identified five things that define what coaching is: Conversation, Reflexivity, Change, Systems Thinking, and SelfActualization. As the years passed, I expanded that definition to include Implementation, Measurement, and Facilitation. Now we had the seven things that are necessary and sufficient for Coaching as a separate modality: Conversation Reflexivity Systems — Systems Thinking Change and Transformation Implementation and measurement Self-Actualization of potentials Facilitation of processes The Seven Things that Coaching Is Today we use these seven things the describe what Coaching is to identify the over-arching framework that we use in Meta-Coaching for understanding Coaching as a field. From that we began developing specific practices and skills for being able to use these distinctions in coaching. 1) Conversation: Coaching is Communication — a Dialogue Conversation -38-

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First and foremost, coaching is a conversation. It involves a wide range of communication skills, and is communication by its very nature, so as coach and client attempt to understand each other they co-create a dialogue to promote the client’s development. That’s what a coach primarily does— facilitates a coaching conversation with a client. The purpose is to discover what the client understands about his or her situation, what the client wants, what the client has tried, and what the client wants to achieve from the coaching process. For a conversation to be a coaching conversation, the coach directs the client’s focus to the here-and-now, to the client’s intentions, hopes, dreams, perhaps fears and apprehensions, to the client’s responses and responsibilities, and to the client’s choices about what to do. This makes coaching a focused, intense, and intimate conversation.

Figure 3:2 KINDS OF COACHING CONVERSATIONS Core Coaching Conversations with Individuals 1) The Clarity Conversation 2) The Decision Conversation 3) Planning Conversation 4) Experience/ Resource Conversation 5) Change/ Transformation Convers. 6) Confrontation Conversation Coaching Conversations for Groups: 7) The Mediation Conversation 8) The Meta-Conversation 9) The Rounds Conversation 10) The Problem-Solving Conversation 11) The Collective Learning Convers. 12) The Productive Conflict Convers. Executive Coaching Conversations *6) A Confrontational Conversation *8) The Meta or Reflective Convers. 13) The Sounding Board Conversation 14) The Systems Conversation 15) The Paradox Conversation 16) The Outcome Conversation 17) The Feedback Conversation 18) The Unleashing Potentials Convers. 19) The Integration Conversation Political Conversations 20) The Philosophical Conversation 21) The Power Conversation *12) The Productive Conflict Convers. 22) The Responsibility Conversation *5) The Change Conversation *19) The Integrity Conversation

Yet not all conversations are the same. In Meta-Coaching I began noticing a number of different kinds of conversations. As I did, I began classifying the conversations and over the years, this led to identify six core conversations with individuals. Later when working on the group and team coaching book, I identified six group and team coaching conversations. After that, again, working on the next book, I identified more than six kinds of executive coaching conversations (see Figure 3:2). -39-

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2) Reflexivity: Coaching is a Deep Self-Reflexive Conversation. The conversation that the coach has with a client would be superficial and a surface conversation if it wasn’t for the special kind of consciousness that we humans have. Given our self-reflexive consciousness, the coaching conversation not only involves the first thoughts and feelings that a client has about something. It also involves the client’s the second level of thoughts and feelings about the first level, and then a third level about the second, and so on. It is this reflexivity that makes human thinking-and-feeling layered, rich, complex, and systemic. The uniqueness of Coaching is that it embraces this self-reflexivity of the human mind and invites the client to identify what’s going on in the back of his mind. This quality makes the coaching intense and personally intimate. Effective coaching flushes out the deep unspoken thoughts as it holds a subject and exclusively focuses on it. As it does this, the coaching gets to the heart of things—the meanings of the client which create her reality. This is precisely what often makes coaching fiercely confrontative. Because coaching deals with all of the thoughts and feelings we have about our immediate and surface thoughts-and-feelings, it invites a deep selfexploration and understanding. This is not an easy conversation to facilitate precisely because many client’s don’t know how to go there. In spite of that, this is what the coach facilitates and in the process, the client eventually learns how to go there on his own. As a client learns to self-coach, he first becomes more self-aware and mindful. Then the process contributes to his own self-leadership and self-management. 3) Systems: Coaching is Systemic Thinking and Working. Coaching involves thinking and working systemically with the mind-bodyemotion system of a human being. For this reason, coaching is not and cannot be described linearly (in a straight-line linear way). It’s much too fluid, dynamic, and complex for that. So one of the ways we talk about this is through the use of the metaphor of a dance: coaching is like dancing with a client in communicating, understanding, listening, questioning, and engaging a client at both the primary level of thinking-and-feeling and at all the higher or meta-levels of awareness.

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An effective coach also works holistically with a client’s mind-body-emotion system. An effective coach takes into consideration all of the other systems that the client lives within—the client’s family system, business system, language system, ethnic system, racial system, religious system, etc. What makes this challenging is that all of these systems are simultaneously active, some are just barely conscious, and others are entirely outside-ofconsciousness. Yet they are all operational at the same time and are mostly invisible to our inspection. And to these systems, a coach coaches. 4) Change and Transformation: Coaching is Change. The intense, intimate, and fierce coaching conversation generates change. The awareness, the self-discovery, and the exposure of the frames in the back of the mind which reveal the structures of meaning facilitates change— change of meaning, of beliefs, of understandings, change of behavior, change of habits, etc. So most fundamentally a coach is a change agent. After all, clients come to coaching in order to change from being just good at something, even very good at something, to being their best, to being the best they can be, even excellent. The coaching conversation is quintessentially about change and itself will initiate change. One reason for this is because the very presence of the coach will affect and influence the client’s system. It’s a systems principle—an observer in a system affects that system. The conversation also changes things because it is a fierce conversation that gets to the heart of things, the client’s meanings and it enables her to speak her truth as never before. 5) Implementation and Measurement: Coaching is Executed Embodiment. The reason for a coach to facilitate an intense and intimate coaching conversation is to enter the system, change it, and then implement the desired changes into everyday life. In this way coaching aims to get results. It executes what a person knows and believes and the meanings that a person wants to make real in life. For coaching to be relevant and significant, the coach invites the client to identify the principles, concepts, and beliefs that the person wants to commission his mind-body-emotion system to experience. This mind-to-muscle experience translates great ideas into neurology so it becomes an embodied experience. And if the ideas are real and legitimate, they can be embodied, and if they can be embodied as practices, skills, ways of being in the world, then they can be measured. Effective coaching does all -41-

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of this—it executes intangible mental models into embodied experiences. Then it assists the client in measuring the presence of that change in the real world. This establishes and legitimizes the benefits of coaching. 6) Self-Actualization: Coaching is Self-Actualization. Coaching seeks to identify, develop, facilitate, and unleash human potential so that clients become fully alive, fully human, and the best version of themselves. We call this self-actualization. Unlike therapy that is designed to get people over the past and up to the present so that they can be “okay,” coaching goes much further. It goes much, much further. Coaching looks for, and activates, all of the hidden potentials which a person may not even suspect to be available. It works to empower him to actualize (make real) those potentials. It makes real (actualizes) what is possible as a potential within a person or a group. Coaching self-actualization requires that you believe in people, often much more than they believe in themselves. You believe in their potentials— their intellectual, creative, social, relational, and so on potentials. Then you awaken it, challenge it, and evoke it. 7) Facilitation: Coaching is Process Facilitation. Coaching is this intense and fierce conversation that evokes clients to discover, develop, and unleash a person’s highest meanings of vision and values so that it becomes the person’s best performances. Coaching does this through the facilitation of all of the previously mentioned processes. Unlike content facilitation which facilitates the learning and development of an explicit model, process facilitation is content-free from the coach’s perspective. That’s because you, as the coach, use the client’s content (meanings, values, objectives, goals) and then as an expert in processes, you facilitate the client’s motivation, decisions, creativity, integration, etc. The Systematic Question Now back to the systematic question: How do you know what to do, when to do it, with whom to do it, and why? Here’s how we answer it in the MetaCoaching System. What we do with a client — This is about content. We engage the person, relate, get rapport and then launch into a coaching conversation which in itself induces states and facilitates processes. While we ask questions and meta-42-

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questions, we use meta-processes for facilitating the client to access and mobilize the needed resources so he can achieve his objectives. This get to the heart of things— his meaning frames. It also gets to her style of meaning-construction—thinking patterns including cognitive biases and distortions. When to do what we do— This is about timing. When is the right moment to do something and how can you tell? The beginning is the right time to get a wellformed outcome which sets the relevancy of the conversations which follow. Then during the conversation we look for those coachable moments when the client’s readiness for change and/or selfactualization suddenly appears. The timing for change depends on where the person is on the Axes of Change: motivation, decision, creation, or integration. We also check on the client’s timing by noting where the client is in her Matrix. Using the areas of the Matrix Model—State, Meaning, Intention, Self, Power, Others, Time, or World—we note the area or areas activated in the client’s experience. This informs us about where the person is and what’s the right time to bring up one of these eight dimensions of experience. With whom we do so — This is about personality. Given that personality is what we do, we “read” or calibrate to a client’s states, meta-states, frames, metaprograms, etc. By calibrating to these things, we can detect the personality patterns and style of the client and take that into account. Using the Meta-Programs model, we generally seek to match the client’s unique constellation of perceptual lens (e.g., meta-programs) which form the way a person thinks, feels, and responds verbally and behaviorally. How we know what to do — This is about the coach’s skills. That’s because specialized knowledge is required for recognizing the choices and possibilities for working with a client, and each model offers information and insight about how to pull off a given process. The Facilitation Model enables the coach to balance compassion and challenge. Then the hundreds of patterns or processes in NLP and Neuro-Semantics offer tested strategies which a coach can conversationally facilitate a specific process. Each of these patterns has one or more elicitation -43-

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questions which identify the contexts for when and when not to use the pattern.1 Why we make the choices— This is about theory. To function effectively we need theoretical frameworks as psychological models in working to facilitate clarity, decision, creation, integration, change, self-actualization of individuals and organizations. With the larger framework, a coach can now work strategically knowing where she is with a client, the processes to use, and the reason to use any one of them at a given moment. For each factor, the governing model offers a theoretical explanation about the pattern. Coaching Beliefs It’s impossible to understanding coaching, to facilitate effective coaching, and to coach in a systematic way without understanding the phenomenon that we call beliefs. That’s because, ultimately, we coach to beliefs and we coach new beliefs into existence which will enhance the client and his experience. To do this effectively we need to know what a belief is, how it differs from thinking, and how to co-construct or de-construct a belief. First, what is a belief? “Belief” is the common everyday term for our higher level meanings, frames, or mental maps. The term “belief” itself refers to the thoughts or ideas that we take and allow (“lylan,” “lefan”) it to be (“be-”) within us (“be-lief”). That is, beliefs are the ideas that we live with—that we allow to exist or to be in our mind as the content of what we consider real, valid, and true. Once established they operate as our mental atmosphere which we take so much for granted that most of the time we never notice them. Next, do beliefs differ from thoughts? Yes, definitely. After all, can you read the newspaper, or watch the news, or view a movie, and think what those media triggered you to think without believing in those thoughts? I hope so! If you have to believe everything you think, you’re in deep do-do? Thoughts differ from beliefs in that a thought is an idea or representation that you entertain in the theater of your mind. Thinking sends signals to your body which activates the emotions which you then experience. Yet if you don’t believe the thought you’re thinking, then the signals will be harmless. Then it is just a thought— just a representation and nothing more. Then -44-

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because it is just a signal and not a command, it is not consist of an order to the body (to your nervous system) to make it real. This prevents it from doing any semantic damage. It also prevents you from commissioning the body how to feel an idea so that it becomes your way of being in the world. So, while a thought is just a signal to the body, a belief is a command to the nervous system. Once you allow an idea to be, to exist inside you as your idea of what’s real, what’s true, what’s validate—once you confirm the idea, you thereby transform it into a “belief.” This elevation and transformation of a thought into a belief radically changes things. The thought now operates as a mental frame of reference. It classifies things and thereby attributes what things mean and how they operate. This is the structure of a belief: a belief is a confirming thought that validates a previous level thought. There’s something else. Beliefs almost never occur alone. They come in levels. You do not just have a belief, you have beliefs-about-your-beliefs. This creates what we call belief-systems or what we call in MetaCoaching—the Matrix of your meaning frames. And, all of your frames are belief frames. These mental maps of the world convey your inside sense of reality. When you believe something, that’s what you become. In this way, beliefs become and operate as self-fulfilling prophecies. So be careful what you believe. In believing, you commission a thought to become a command to your neurology.2 This explains why coaches focus on, and coach to, beliefs. In coaching the focus goes to what a person believes about things—him or herself, what he can do or can not do, what she wants to do or wants to avoid. It goes to beliefs about career, life, others, relationships, risks, change, money, and a thousand other subjects. When a person mentally maps a belief about something, that person creates the internal and external structures of his or her experiences. Then, because in every experience there is a dynamic structure, it is comprised of the structures of one’s beliefs. For this reason, there’s a structure to every experience. There’s a structure in how a person depresses, procrastinates, delegates effectively, creates new products and services, etc. In a systematic approach to coaching, an effective and skilled coach starts by finding the structure of the client’s experience. -45-

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What is the pattern of thinking, emoting, speaking, and acting of your client by which she creates a given experience? Does the dynamic structure of my client’s experience support or sabotage his self-actualization? What are the critical variables (processes and frames) in this experience that enable us to replicate and/or refine it? Given that these belief frames create this experience, is it effective or useful? Does it enhance life? Does it bring out a person’s best? This premise enables us to discover how to make change easy and elegant. If we are not our maps, if we do not over-invest our sense of self and destiny into our maps, but maintain a distance so that we’re ready and open to reexamine our maps, then we will not semantically overload “changing the maps” as carrying a loss of self or loss of values. Then, change will mean nothing about us as persons and everything about the maps we use. Then tossing out an old, out-dated, and inadequate map can be a piece of cake. If we are not invested in the problem, if it’s not about us, then we can more dispassionately and objectively just update our map. The same applies to what we call “problems.” When we know that problems are mental constructs, generated by our maps, and a function of how we have framed things, it become easy to step aside from them and experience them objectively. It becomes easy to evaluate them non-judgmentally. How we can look at the problem and embrace ourselves with acceptance, appreciation, and esteem and use a non-judgmental awareness to make more enhancing choices about how to live. As we make maps about self, life, others, work, etc., we never just create one map, we create multiple maps. We also create maps about maps— metamaps. We have beliefs about beliefs, we have belief systems. We also have all kinds of beliefs about things—understandings, memories, imaginations, expectations, intentions, decisions, etc. When we put all of these embedded beliefs together we have a matrix of frames that hold a system of thoughts. All these are embedded within our larger Matrix—the ultimate subject of coaching. What are Your Take Aways? Take away that Coaching as a field can be systematic. To make that happen, in Meta-Coaching we have identified what coaching -46-

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is, and then we have specified the features of the structure and the models which can inform and guide us. The seven descriptions of what Coaching is have, in MetaCoaching, been addressed by finding models for each of these factors. Then by making them explicit we have made this systematic approach open to examination as well as ongoing development. Take away that the Coaching Conversation is ultimately a conversation about beliefs which make up the client’s current sense of reality.

End of the Chapter Notes: 1. For books about these patterns, see Sourcebook of Magic, Volumes I and II. Volume I has 77 of the most basic NLP patterns. Volume II has 143 Meta-State Patterns. 2. In NLP, the idea that a belief is “a command to the nervous system” comes from Richard Bandler, Using Your Brain for a Change (1985) which I developed further by contrasting it to a mere thought and from which came the Belief Change pattern of Meta-Yes, that is in the book, Sub-Modalities Going Meta (1997/ 2005).

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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF COACHING “Healthy people are more integrated in another way. In them the conative, the cognitive, the affective and the motor are less separated from each other, and are more synergic, i.e., working collaboratively without conflict to the same ends.” Abraham Maslow (1968) p. 208

I

s there is a Psychology that uniquely informs and governs Coaching? Is there an unique psychology that we can claim as the source of Coaching as a profession? If there is, what kind of psychology is it? How does it relate to the older psychologies? Is it completely different from the early Psychology models or is it a special facet of them? All of these questions sets in motion a search—a search for the Psychology uniquely fit for what we seek to do in Coaching. Now it is not news, that coaching involves psychology. Of course it does! In coaching we deal with human nature and human functioning so we are using psychology and we are assuming numerous premises about human nature. But what kind of psychology is this? What kind of psychology do we need? -49-

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We have to ask this because there are many different kinds of psychology. Yet all that is called psychology is not the same. Freudian psychology significantly differs from Behaviorism, from Cognitive Psychology, from Developmental, Gestalt, Adlerian Psychology, etc. There are many schools of psychology, kinds of psychology, and areas of psychology (child, adult, abnormal, industrial, group, social, leadership, etc.). Each of these different psychologies operate from its own set of assumptions and beliefs about people, human nature, change, growth, learning, and a dozen other key areas that effect how a change-agent works. Some psychologies are highly deterministic in nature (Psychoanalysis, Behaviorism) while others present human nature as highly fluid and changeable (Cognitive, Logotherapy, Reality, Brief Psychotherapy, etc.). In Coaching Psychology we assume that people are both sane and well. We assume that our clients are not broken, wounded, sick, pathological, defensive, or stuck at a historical stage of development. So one thing we definitely know is this: Coaching psychology is not about abnormal psychology. It is not about pathology or about human brokenness. Not at all! Coaching psychology is the psychology of human health and high level functioning. It is about people who are in the growth needs and growth motivation, who are self-actualizing, seeking ever-new peak performances, who are change-embracers, and who are fascinated and excited about all of the new possibilities yet to emerge in their personalities and experiences. For the most part, these are the people who are already great learners, who are already successful in various areas, and who simply want more. They want to think more, know more, understand more, belief more, feel more, speak more, do more, experience more, have more, and give more. Do these people have no problems? Of course they do. To be human is to have problems! To be alive is to have problems. The distinction is the kind and quality of problems which they experience. The problems that they do not have are those that call for the invention of psychotherapy in the first place— psychological dysfunction, trauma, and pathology. The problems which they do have are those which are blocking and interfering them reaching one of their visionary goals. So instead of dealing with the serious problems of self, the problems are either those about growing and selfactualizing or those of solving an external problem in the world. -50-

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The Search for a Coaching Psychology I began my search for Coaching Psychology in 2003 after we had launched the Meta-Coaching System. What I wanted to do was to make explicit what the psychology of coaching would entail. As I started my search, I had already incorporated the Cognitive Psychology inherent in NLP, the Humanistic Psychology of Maslow and Rogers, and Developmental Psychology. I knew that in searching for the unique psychology of Coaching that it would be solution-focused, it would involve the Positive Psychology of the Human Potential Movement known as Humanistic Psychology or Self-Actualization Psychology. So when I began, I started by asking a set of exploration questions: What and/or how does Humanistic Psychology contribute to this new field of Coaching? What models did the Human Potential Movement (HPM) create to guide the process of unleashing of potentials? What patterns or processes did they create? Which ones have proven the most effective? Which ones did not work? What did that “Third Force” in Psychology create that would uniquely fit Coaching? What is new in this field? Figure 4:1 ______________ Coaching Psychology ________________ / /

Self-Actualization Psychology Developmental Psychology Cognitive-Behavioral / Communication Existential Psychology Social Psychology: Anthropology, Sociology, Systems

\ \

Compassion & Challenge

For

Relationship —> Conversation Intimate Intense/ Fierce Focused Experiential Nature:

Clarity / Decision Plan / Resource / Change

Performance Development Change Unleashing Potentials Design:

Then, as I began my readings, a whole new series of questions began to arise as I began wondering about the HPM itself. What ever happened to -51-

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the Human Potential Movement which Maslow, Rogers, Assagioli, May, Fromm, Frankl, et. al initiated? Didn’t the Third Force arise after Behaviorism and Psychoanalysis to shift the focus from trauma and pathology to health and growth? So what happened over the decades to that movement? It was at that point that I realized that I had not heard about that movement in some years. So in 2003 I began a search that I thought would take a month or two. As it turned out, it took more than a decade. 1 What did I find? In researching the HPM I traced it from the early days in the 1930s with Abraham Maslow’s modeling of the original two selfactualizing people (Max Wertheimer and Ruth Benedict) and Carl Roger’s discovery of his three healing factors (unconditional positive regard, accurate empathy, and authenticity). In reading everything that both Maslow and Rogers wrote, I traced their activities through the 1940s and 1950s and how they pulled together a whole range of pioneer thinkers and developers who expanded a description of human nature—Eric Fromm, Rollo May, Assagioli, Allport, etc. Then in 1954 Maslow’s work went international with the publication of his magnus opus, Motivation and Personality. In the 1960s, Douglas McGregor translated the Hierarchy of Human Needs into the business context and Aldous Huxley began urging a movement for promoting human potentials. Michael Murphy and Richard Price took him up on that and, in 1962, created Esalen to be “the think tank” of the Human Potential Movement. After that, the movement exploded onto the American scene throughout the 1960s and 1970s. “Growth Centers” sprang up everywhere around the world by the early 1970s. But then that “Me Generation” New Age movement burst and the 400 Growth Centers disappeared. Esalen went bankrupt in 1975 and reorganized under a different theme. By 1985, the President of the Humanistic Association announced that the Human Potential Movement was dead and gone. 2 Bright-Side Psychology How strange! The very psychology that created the tremendous paradigm shift in the field of Psychology, and which informs the field of Coaching, was not able to create a sustainable singular movement for itself. The psychology which moved the field from studying the dark-side of human experience—trauma, hurt, dysfunction, etc.—to the bright-side of human nature—what’s possible, “the farther reaches of human nature” (the title of one of Maslow’s books), etc., failed to create a cohesive community. 3 -52-

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The movement started from Maslow’s studies healthy or growth-oriented people which he called “self-actualizing people.” For decades the movement generated so many new forms of psychology, new patterns, processes, and yet in the end, the movement lacked the kind and quality of leaders to hold them together. So when the movement ended, it dispersed into dozens and dozens of sub-groups— NLP being a central one. So what went wrong? Here are some possibilities regarding what went wrong that led to the demise of the first Human Potential Movement: Perhaps they were overwhelmed with far too many great ideas, in fact, hundreds of them, and lacked an over-arching theoretical model which could hold all of the ideas together. There was indeed an explosion of ideas and processes—Family Systems, Gestalt, Psycho-active Drugs, Hypnosis, Meditation, Nudity, Rolfing, Encounter Groups, etc. Perhaps they lacked any dependable methodology or technique that could be reliably depended on to achieve the goals of actualizing one’s potentials. The one method that came closest to this was the Encounter Group. Perhaps the pop psychology writers who picked up on some of the most sensational facets and stressed those turned the grand vision into over-simplified psycho-fluff that diluted the actual discoveries of Maslow and Rogers. Both leaders eventually wrote critiques of Esalen for its lack of research and its superficiality. Perhaps they didn’t separate what they were doing from therapy. After all, they all seemed to have attempted to make the translation in the context and frame of therapy. In fact, most of them kept the word “therapy,” frequently in the very names that they chose to create for the new psychology of self-actualization (e.g., Gestalt Therapy, Logo-Therapy, Brief Psychotherapy, Solution Focus Therapy, etc.). Failing to distinguish the new psychology of healthy men and women from therapy inadvertently tied the new to the old assumptions of people being broken and needed to be fixed. Perhaps it was because while they had many brilliant developers, they really were not collaborative leaders. So many of the leaders in those days struggled with their egos getting in the way. This is the story that’s told in the book, Esalen (2007) by Jeffrey J. Kripal.4 Perhaps the advent of a new psychology was first taken up by people who needed therapy, rather than by “normal” people so that as a result, it functioned more as a psychotherapy than something -53-

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beyond therapy. It is telling that one of the leaders of that movement wrote a book, Actualizing Therapy, using the Humanistic Psychology themes.5 Perhaps because they didn’t even have a word for that which is beyond therapy such as “Coaching.” Now Maslow tried to invent such a word. He invented the very clumsy word, eupsychian “good psychology.” No wonder that didn’t catch on! Probably all of these things and more contributed to preventing them from creating a guiding philosophy and a dominate and dependable technique. The result is that today, there are a great many theories and psychologies that are strength-based, positive, value-oriented, and solution-oriented that came from that first HPM. Now fast forward a decade past the end of the first HPM, to the beginning of the field of Coaching— with Thomas Leonard in 1992. Coaching now begins to emerge first in the US and Europe, and then around the world, using a wide-range of these theories and orientations for its foundation. In fact, Leonard’s organization, the ICF (International Coach Federation) embraces this confusion of models—making its vision to be an eclectic association for the field of Coaching. The Mix of Coaching Psychologies What is the answer to the question about the kind of Psychology which is at the heart of the coaching process? While this is still an unanswered question in the field, after all of the search into this history, I decided to design the Meta-Coaching System with the following psychologies as the foundational theories for our understanding of human functioning at its best. 1) Self-Actualization Psychology The first and most fundamental psychology is that which created the paradigm shift as it focused on human nature in its full range of possibilities. This psychology includes our basic or “lower” needs as well as our “higher” needs. This was the incredible contribution that Maslow made in his Hierarchy of Human Needs Model (1941). To rise to one’s highest potentials a person has to learn to cope effectively with the deficiency needs of survival, safety and security, love and affection, and the self-value needs of esteem and recognition. Gratifying those needs sufficiently enables us to move on to “the growth needs” (being -54-

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needs, B-needs) of self-actualization. This psychology began by observing and modeling the healthiest of human beings to see what’s possible when a person is fully integrated and aligned, resourceful, and able to tap into and unleash his or her potentials. 2) Developmental Psychology This is the psychology that focuses the stages that people go through as they develop mentally, sexually, socially, in self development, morally, etc. It describes the process of maturing in all of these facets of ourselves. This psychology focuses on how people develop— how they find and fulfill their talents and passions. How they start with their predispositions and become well-adjusted. How they can become fully what they are capable of becoming. The early Developmentalists (Eric Erickson, Jean Piaget, etc.) studied children almost exclusively. Yet in more recent years that has changed as various researchers such as Robert Keagan have explored the stages of adult development. 3) Cognitive-Behavioral Psychology The Cognitive Psychology movement was launched in 1956 by George Miller and by Noam Chomsky. This led to the defeat of Behaviorism as it could not explain language acquisition whereas Transformational Grammar could. This psychology focuses on the primacy of thinking and behaving in influencing our experiences. It highlights that internal mental maps which we create about things, in turn, guide our actions and behaviors. Out of this psychology came Miller’s work on the T.O.T.E. strategy model as a beginning description of what happens in “the black box.” For the early NLP developers, this gave them a way to begin modeling the structure of subjective experience and provided tools for changing one’s mental maps and thereby changing one’s responses. Within Cognitive psychology is the area of communication psychology. This psychology focuses on information theory, on how we send and receive messages within ourselves (intra-personal) and with others (interpersonal) which creates states of understanding and meaning. It describes how communication works, the elements of communication, the nature of language, etc. The models that led to the NLP communication model were Transformational Grammar which led to the Meta-Model of Language as well as Korzybski’s General Semantics. 4) Social and Group Psychology — Systems -55-

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Social psychology includes many things—Anthropology (Ruth Benedict, Margaret Meade, Gregory Bateson), Sociology, Interpersonal Relationships, Group Dynamics, etc. All of these disciplines focuses on how we can work best with others as we create win/win arrangements, effective, loving, and trusting relationships, collaborations, and high performance teams. Alfred Adler’s Social Psychology was a beginning for understanding this facet of human experience. Our social psychology includes the many human processes whereby we interact with each other to create our group and organizations. It focuses on the group and social dynamics that play a significant role in such social factors as leadership, management, politics, government, etc. In business theory and application, Theory X and Theory Y have posited two kinds of workers. Theory X describes workers who don’t want to work, don’t want responsibility, challenge, accountability, and who have to be motivated, watched, and controlled. Theory Y describes workers who want to work, enjoy work, long to take responsibility, love challenge and feedback, and who only need some general support. 5) Existential Psychology From within the first HPM, there is yet another source that contributed to Self-Actualizing Psychology— Existential-Humanistic Psychology. At the heart of this form of psychology is the emphasis on the philosophical concerns regarding what it means to become fully human (Eric Fromm, Rollo May, Viktor Frankl, etc.). The aim in this is to enable people to accept awareness for themselves, their mortality, and to enter into the human experience of freedom of and responsibility for action. The central concepts include: self-awareness, freedom to choose, responsibility, anxiety, ultimate aloneness, authenticity, relationship, and the quest for meaning. Sidney Jourard (The Transparent Self, 1971) describes the client as an existential partner in the process, not an object to be diagnosed and analyzed. The therapist uses his or her own authenticity and self-disclosing to invite the client to become more authentic. Choice lies at the heart of existential-humanistic psychology. Paul Tillich said, “Man becomes truly human only at the moment of decision.” Sartre said, “We are our choices.” Nietzsche described freedom as “the capacity to become what we truly are.” Kierkegaard used the phrase, “choosing one’s self.” And, of course, from the concentration camp experience, -56-

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Frankl said that “the last human freedom is the freedom to choose one’s attitudes,” something no one can actually take from us. Along this line Rollo May (1961) wrote, “No matter how great the forces victimizing the human being, man has the capacity to know that he is being victimized and thus to influence in some way how he will relate to his fate.” (pp. 41-42) Consciousness of choice uniquely defines the human condition at its best. Yet what’s required to handle that higher level of consciousness is a willingness to embrace uncertainty and ambiguity. Not surprising is that the ability to embrace uncertainly lies at the heart of the creativity process. Roberto Assagioli who developed in Psycho-Synthesis and contributed to Transpersonal Psychology was another key person in the first HPM. Coaching as an Interdisciplinary Field The integration of all of these psychologies endows Coaching with multiple theories and a great many processes and techniques. Because of the interdisciplinary in nature of coaching, the danger is that it can become a cornucopia of a great many choices and people can subsequently treat it eclectically. When this happens then the coach as the promoter of human growth can be overwhelmed with the range of choices and unable to discern the larger structure for how to navigate a decision about what to do. What we know without question is that Coaching involves creating a close and personal relationship with a client, believing in people and human nature, and facilitating trust, care, passion, compassion, energy, development, discipline, exploration, challenge, feedback, and much more. Coaching works with people to move them to greater level of selfmanagement, self-awareness, and effectiveness. In all of this there is also a fierceness, a firmness and disciplined nature because a highly focused, in a pragmatic way, on performance and results oriented. Yet we still need a psychological framework for integrating all of this. A Psychology For Coaching, not Therapy All of the older psychologies arose to address problems of hurt and dysfunction. They arose at a time when it became obvious that what was known in medicine could not help. The older words “neurosis” and “psychosis” spoke about the confusion at that time about what was going on with a person. The discovery that something was wrong, and it was not -57-

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medical, led to understanding that something was wrong mentally and emotionally and something needed to be done about it. But what? From those early psychologies then arose various forms of psycho-therapy for the purpose of dealing with the hurt and dysfunction. Psycho-therapy arose as the practical processes for how to use psychological understandings to remedy that which it postulated as wrong or broken. This explains why therapists focus on problems, hurts, wounds, traumas and on fixing that which is broken and on healing the client’s mind and emotions. In this, therapy is mostly remedial in nature—fixing what’s broken. It works to enable a person to become “okay.” True enough, over the years a light-version of therapy arose— counseling. This extended the values of therapy to people who were not damaged by trauma, but who were struggling with life’s everyday struggles. They just needed some counsel for nudging their lives in the right direction. Later with the advent of the first HPM, they infused counseling with its ideas of innate human resources and that led it to a strength-based and positiveoriented hybird—strength-based “counseling” and “Brief Psychotherapy.” Obviously Coaching needs a different psychology. Because Coaching primarily focuses on generative development and transformation, this generative orientation focuses on generating and challenging new creative responses. Coaching is for people who have their act together and who want more—more skill, more learning, more self-confidence, more expertise, more joy, more love, more health, etc. Coaching does not focus on fixing things as it does on facilitating the next stage in development in a growing person. It is not about becoming just okay, it is about becoming one’s best, everything one can become, and able to produce superior performances. No wonder challenge lies at the very center of Coaching. Coaching focuses the client on how to think better, feel better, attain higher levels of health, well-being, focus, alertness and relaxation, skill, etc. Rather than solving problems or dealing with difficulties, coaching operates with a very different focus. We call it the coaching focus: How can I make things even better? What’s the best that things can become? How can I become even more resourceful and effective? What is next in my ongoing development for greater effectiveness? What can I create and innovate to take things to the next level? -58-

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What challenge is inviting and calling to me to step up to it? What is my highest values and meanings and my best performances? The generative and self-actualizing focus of Coaching inevitably makes its psychology positive and solution-oriented. We generate new levels of competence, success, and well-being in coaching rather than the remedial use of psychology—fixing problems. A well-trained and qualified personal coach will have a good understanding and background in human psychology, and especially as applied to self-actualizing processes that enable a person to move to peak experiences and performances. Coaching focuses on refining and honing a person’s best skills and searching for potentials that the person may not even be aware of. Problems only arise as those things interfering with vision and values. The focus in coaching is not on problems. Coaching works on playing to one’s strengths and eliminating the things that get in the way or that sabotage excellence. This means that coaching is generative and solution-focused. It also makes coaching developmental in the best sense of the term. Developmental psychology explores the various stages that we go through over the lifespan in becoming fully human in the most positive and constructive sense. Whether it is the psycho-sexual stages, the psychosocial stages, the psycho-mental states, the stages of faith, spiral dynamics, etc., these are the life stages that unfold as we move through the life transitions, as our body continues to develop over the years, and as our search for meaning, love, and contribution evolves as we live within our social and cultural environments. Coaching takes a systemic approach for helping clients get their brains and bodies functioning at their best within all of the contexts within contexts which we identify as factors in our lives, factors that affect our success. For this, the personal coach needs a good understanding of systemic thinking, processes, and ways of interacting.6 The Three Domains of Coaching Inasmuch as Coaching addresses all of the domains of experience, its psychology must address the different dimensions of human experience. In Meta-Coaching, we distinguish three domains of coaching based upon what a person wants to change: -59-

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Performance Coaching Behavioral dimension Developmental Coaching Personal, Self, Identity, Meaning Transformational Coaching Direction, Vision, Values

Performance coaching relates to the behavioral dimension where we grow and change. It focuses primarily on incremental changes that a person can achieve through modifying and learning new behaviors, skills, and actions in the various contexts of life. This coaching most directly seeks to take a person’s skills to the next level in terms of quality and quantity of performance. Performance coaching focuses externally on what a client does or needs to be able to do. This is the outer game. Developmental coaching relates to the personal dimension of one’s self— identity, maturity, etc. here the focus is on the changes in one’s thinking, believing, feeling, identity, values, etc. Here the person evolves, grows, develops. Evolutionary changes occur here because the change is about a person evolving to become more rather than just doing more. It is about human becoming. This shifts the focus from outside to inside. The changes now are in the area of representations, beliefs, understandings, decisions, and other mental-emotional phenomena that work as the inner frames of mind that govern a performance. This is the inner game. Here the coach explores what a client thinks-and-feels and believes about the performance, the context, the others, a person’s self-definition and understanding, and dozens of other frames about what a person does or experiences. As a result, the focus is not first and foremost on behaviors, but on developing the person. The person not only changes what he or she does (performance), but who he or she is or is becoming developmentally. Transformational coaching relates beyond mere personal development to a person’s larger sense of reality and direction. Various models about the levels of development map the different ways of thinking about this dimension (Spiral Dynamics, Integral Coaching of Ken Wilbur, etc.). this kind of coaching deals with revolutionary changes—the changes of one’s highest frames of mind that address a person’s purpose, intention, direction, and vision. When a person makes changes here she often experiences the kind of paradigm shift that transforms everything in life—who they are (developmental) and what they do (performance).

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Psychology of Coaching

What Are You Taking Away? Be sure to take away that Coaching needs its own Psychology—a psychology fit for the population which seeks coaching—healthy people who are ready to be challenged for the adventure of life. All psychologies are not the same. The old psychologies were designed for traumatized people and simply do not offer the psychological frameworks which the field of Coaching needs as coaches challenge clients in making generative changes. Take away the fact that Coaching is inter-disciplinary. This is what makes a full systematic approach to Coaching rich and complex.

End of Chapter Notes: 1. I began in 2003 which led to discovering the history of the first HPM and with it the secret history of NLP— that NLP came directly from that movement. I created the SelfActualization Quadrants Model in 2005, we launched the new 21st century HPM, I wrote five books on Self-Actualization Psychology, and later we created the Self-Actualization workshops and Diploma. 2. See Self-Actualization Psychology for the story of the first Human Potential Movement. 3. See the article, How to Kill a Movement. This is also a chapter in the book, SelfActualization Psychology. 4. The Esalen Story is told in the book, Esalen by Jeffrey J. Kripal. From the headquarters of the first Human Potential Movement, Esalen moved to become a very different place. The Vision moved to integrating Eastern and Western religions. 5. See the book, Actualizing Therapy: Foundations for a Scientific Ethic, written by Everett L. Shostrom in 1976. 6. See the book on systems in coaching, Systemic Coaching (2012).

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Chapter 5

THE COACHING CONVERSATION “Our lives succeed or fail gradually, then suddenly, one conversation at a time. While no single conversation is guaranteed to change the trajectory of a business, a career, a marriage, or a life, any single conversation can. We effect change by engaging in robust conversations with ourselves and others. Fierce means robust, intense, strong, powerful, passionate, eager, unbridled, uncurbed, untamed. It means we come out from behind ourselves into the conversation and make it real.” Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations (2002)

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oaching is most essentially a conversation. Yes it involves a lot of psychology and philosophy (chapter 4), yet when Coaching hits the road and shows up in real life, it is a conversation. When a coach coaches, what does a coach actually do? If we video-taped a coach engaged in the process of coaching, what would we see and hear that’s going on? We would see and hear a conversation! Coach and client talk. What a coach most essentially does is facilitate a conversation. You will see and hear the coach asking questions, listening, exploring, supporting, giving feedback, framing, challenging, confirming, etc. In that video-tape you would see and hear a dialogue conversation. You would observe an -62-

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intense and highly focused dialogue between a coach and a client which cuts to the heart of things. This is the heart and soul of coaching and yet it is not a normal conversation. Now this coaching conversation may involve a number of different themes. Primarily the conversation typically starts with clarity, decision, planning, resourcing, and changing. These represent the most fundamental coaching conversations. Yet it is through the use of language, gesture, and action that an effective coach facilitates learning, change, and development. Coaching is an intimate and intense engagement between coach and client. Further, there are several truly astonishing things about this conversation which makes it especially unique and amazing. What are these things that make it so amazing? The first amazing thing is that the client does all the work. The coach facilitates the client in the “work” wherein the client gets clear, makes decisions, creates plans, designs new responses, changes beliefs, accesses resources, changes frames of mind, etc. this truly distinguishes coaching from therapy. The second amazing thing is that the client is the one who is completely responsible for getting the results that she wants. This may sound strange, even uncaring, but the coach is not responsible for the results; the client is. The coach evokes, provokes, challenges, prods, teases, holds accountable, confronts, supports, reinforces, etc. in order to get the client to access and mobilize his resources and translate into everyday life. This again differentiates coaching from therapy. Therapists at times will actually take responsibility for the client or patient, especially at first, prescribing expert advice, and even controlling, as part of nurturing and reparenting. That’s especially true in situations where the client may be in danger of doing harm to himself or another. This never happens in coaching. A third amazing thing is that the generative changes that unleash potentials in coaching occur through the conversation. The key is the conversation itself. We are linguistic beings to such an extent that we can, and do, create a great amount of our reality via the language we use, and the way we use language. Yet who among us has a license for languaging? That sounds ridiculous, right? Yet -63-

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language is not neutral. It is both semantically and neurologically loaded.1 This highlights the unique place of neuro-linguistics and neuro-semantics. These disciplines do not study linguistics as such, they study the neurological effects of language on persons. That is, how you language affects your neurology. This concerns how neurology creates, is involved in, and is influenced by linguistics and therefore how to use the best kind of language with ourselves and others to get the best results. Fourth, most of the power of the coaching occurs outside the coaching session. The conversation primarily operates to initiate a change of map— the navigation occurs in everyday life. Unless a client comes for the purpose of learning how to be a good client, the reference point of the coaching session is outside of the session— the session will be about how to get along with one’s colleagues, how to lead, how to get oneself to the gym on a regular basis, how to face life’s ups and downs, how to be resilient, how to develop one’s career, etc. KINDS OF

Empowerment COACHING CONVERSATIONS What can you and your client Core Coaching Conversations expect from a coaching 1) The Clarity Conversation conversation? What will the 2) The Decision Conversation conversation initiate? At the most 3) The Planning Conversation foundational level, it will initiate 4) Experience/ Resource Conversation 5) Change/ Transformation Convers. a sense of power, clarity, 6) The Confrontation Conversation experience, performance results, and forward movement. The See Coaching Change and Coaching reason is that coaching first and Conversations. foremost facilitates and challenges the client’s power of response (response-ability) and ownership. This is perhaps the most crucial of all coaching conversation—the Ownership Conversation. Coaching keeps the challenges and resource questions front and center for the client and does so to keep putting the client at cause. • What are you going to do? To choose? What do you want? • What do you need to be able to pull this off? • What resource is missing? Are you willing to develop it? • What part did you play in that? What are you learning? • What will you do differently next time? -64-

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The idea of “empowerment” has a turbulent history, especially in the 1990s when managers and organizations realized that they needed to “empower” their people. But in far too many instances this got translated into giving people more to do, rather than expanding their capacity to do things, their choices about what to do, and/or their control over their job. That’s what true “empowerment” does. It enables people to recognize, feel, and exercise more “power” in their roles. It expands a person’s capacities. Understanding Clarification There’s nothing like a coaching conversation to enable people to get KINDS OF clear on what they want and what COACHING CONVERSATIONS things mean to them. Coaches Coaching Conversations for Groups: facilitate the communication 7) The Mediation Conversation exchange to be precise, specific, and 8) The Meta-Conversation detailed about these things. Why? 9) The Rounds Conversation To enable the client to develop a 10) The Problem-Solving Conversation 11) The Collective Learning Convers. precision in his thinking and 12) The Productive Conflict Convers. languaging, which is actually a great gift. You, as coach, do it also to coSee Group & Team Coaching. create with your client a specific target as an outcome, which gives direction to a client’s life. That, in turn, leads to generating top-notch clarity about roles, performance, and challenges. This involves probing and exploring understanding about motivations, intentions, goals, skills, and strategy. If the coach is anything, the coach is a questioner par excellent. As coach you listen for the client’s language and relational patterns so you can then use them to connect. This enables you to create rapport as well as to mirror back to the client to her patterns. For this, you have to have the skill and expertise of hearing, recognizing, and using the linguistic patterns which you hear. In Meta-Coaching, we use the NLP Communication Model—the MetaModel of language. This model of two dozen linguistic distinctions enables a person to identify the form of a client’s mental mapping. Then, where there is an ill-formed map in a client’s mind, it shows itself in the person’s talk as linguistic cues.2 -65-

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Then when you question these linguistic cues, you invite the client to create a more well-formed map. As you hear the constructions of experience, you can recognize and quickly understand the person’s model of the world. This gives you an excellent tool for gathering high quality information and for enabling people to be more precise in the way they talk and think. As a coaching tool, this works by asking good questions which invites the client to supply more complete answers. Then, in doing so, the client remaps and so expands his or her sense of the world. This inevitably has a healing and transformative KINDS OF COACHING CONVERSATIONS influence. Working with the Meta-Model in this way has another benefit—it builds critical thinking and questioning skills. A practical use of the Meta-Model is the conversational reframing patterns that we call Mind-Lines. These are ways of framing and reframing what one is thinking in order to offer new insights and to elicit a more resourceful responsiveness.3

.Executive Coaching Conversations *6) A Confrontational Conversation *8) The Meta or Reflective Convers. 13) The Sounding Board Conversation 14) The Systems Conversation 15) The Paradox Conversation 16) The Outcome Conversation 17) The Feedback Conversation 18) The Unleashing Potentials Convers. 19) The Integration Conversation

See Executive Coaching.

Facilitation of Experience What else does a coaching conversation do? What else would we observe occurring? We would observe the coaching conversation not only creating greater precision and clarity, but inducing a client into a state so she experiences the conversation. Whereas the first conversation steps back from experience to describe it and analyze it, this second conversation induces an embodied experience within the client. That’s because without experiencing, a client is only talking about things, and is likely to be intellectualizing rather than experiencing. Experiencing the conversation enables the client to embody the outcome, the resources, the change, etc. and activate the body’s ability to make real (actualize) what he wants to become. This use of language creates what we may call hypnotic states. That’s because what we are talking about— managing, delegating, planning an exercise program, embracing our children’s emotions, etc.—is not present in the coaching conversation. We -66-

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are referencing it. Yet if we talk about it by accessing and experiencing it as a state, we begin to commission the body to feel and experience it as we run the neurological pathways that evoke the new response pattern.

The Coaching Conversation

KINDS OF COACHING CONVERSATIONS Political Conversations 20) The Philosophical Conversation 21) The Power Conversation *12) The Productive Conflict Convers. 22) The Responsibility Conversation *5) The Change Conversation *19) The Integrity Conversation

Such language is normal and part of everyday language even though we call it “hypnotic” language. See Political Coaching. That’s because in this conversation we are not using precision language, instead we are using language hypnotically. This means we are inviting a client to go inside her mind and see, hear, and feel whatever she is referring to. Hypnotic language patterns are not only the weird or strange patterns that hypnotists use, these patterns also includes the everyday language we all use when we tell stories, gossip, sell, and persuade. The model of hypnotic language patterns in NLP is called “the Milton Model” after the famous medical hypnotist and psychiatrist, Milton H. Erickson. This uses the linguistic distinctions in the Meta-Model for evoking states and experiencing them rather than questioning them. This language model gives you, as the coach, a way to invite the client to go inside to establish new mappings and framings that will bring forth the best responses for growth and expertise.4 Performance Results Via the way language itself facilitates empowerment and embodiment, a coaching conversation can get results by enabling the client to change his performances. This occurs without needing to give advice or counsel. The coaching conversation starts with internal performance and that gets results on the outside which can be measured. This includes the two internal game powers: Mental performance: Clarity, precision, understanding, insight. Emotional performance: Emotional intelligence in working with people, teams, empathy, recognition of the states and emotions of others, self-awareness, self-management, etc. -67-

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Then it transfers to the outer game in terms of the two external powers: Verbal performance: Skills at linguistic framing and reframing of meaning, linguistic precision, hypnotic language patterns for state inductions, persuasion to influence onself or others. Behavioral performance: Competency skills at leading, managing, following-through, influencing, persuading, organizing, etc. A central way that the coaching conversation gets performance results is by focusing on the personal and psychological resources within the client. These resources could be knowledge, practical know-how strategies, or a state such as courage, willingness, trust, joy, playfulness, commitment, decision, etc. To that end a coach will ask questions about resources: What resources do you need to enhance your performance? What do you need to know or learn? What do you need to implement? When have you experienced even a little bit of this resource? Once an internal personal resource is identified, the coaching conversation calls it forth in the client and solidifies it in the client’s experience. This makes it readily available for the client. Forward Movement Everything within the coaching conversation is dedicated to enabling the client to move forward in her life. This begins with a clear goal, then a clear sense of the first steps forward and how to deal with any interference that might arise. This explains why the first coaching conversations focuses on clarity, decision, planning, experiencing, changing, etc. In these coaching conversations you cocreate with your client a set of practices. The S.C.O.R.E. Model These sets of practices include a wide range S — symptoms of things—patterns, processes, and C — causes interventions which enable you to facilitate O — outcome the client’s learning, discovery, and R — resources experiencing of new skills. All you need at E — effects this point is an over-arching framework that facilitates the client to move forward. Yet skills without a framework for knowing when to use them, which ones to use, and how to figure out when to use -68-

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what, leaves both you and your client with a grab-bag of techniques. It will not have an over-arching explanatory frame. In Meta-Coaching we use the basic algorithm of Present State (PS) and Desired State (DS): PS —>DS. The NLP SCORE model provides a basic framework using this template. Under PS we have two facets: current symptoms [S] and causes [C]. Under DS we have two facets: outcomes [O] and the effects [E] of that preferred state. The bridge from present state to desired state is made up of the resources [R] which allow us to make the Now—Then journey. Into this over-arching framework we can put a lot of smaller details and techniques. In the Present State there are Symptoms. These often drive a person into coaching. The client wants to address the symptoms, usually by eliminating them. The Cause for the state and the symptoms is the person’s meanings which includes beliefs, understandings, references, values, etc. The Cause is not the past. The person may have constructed his or her understanding at the time of a passed event which now frames the state and symptom. But the cause is the cognitive framework, not the past event itself. That was just the context where the person drew whatever conclusions that he drew from that event. Where does the client want to go? It could be to the Desired State or to the Effects (results, symptoms, consequences) that result from getting into that desired state. What are Your Take Aways? • Take away an appreciation of the incredible power of a conversation. The conversation you have with your clients is the experience your client have with you. • There are many kinds of coaching conversations. The value of knowing what conversation you’re having, the kind of conversation your client wants and/or needs, is that it enables you to know, strategically, where you are with a client and where to go. •

Take away that we change one conversation at a time and that you never know which conversation will be the one that will be utterly life transforming.

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End of Chapter Notes 1. In Science and Sanity (1933/ 1994), Korzybski presented the idea that we ought to require a license in order to use language publically. “When we become more civilized and enlightened, no public speaker or writer will be allowed to operate publically without demonstrating first that he knows the structure and semantic functioning of the linguistic capacities. Even at present no professor, teacher, teacher, lawyer, physician, or chemist, etc., is allowed to operate publically without passing examination to show that he knows his subject. The above statement does not mean control or censorship. Far from it. Our language involves a much more intricate, beneficial, or dangerous semantic mechanism than any automobile ever had or will have. We do not control the drivers in their destinations. They come and go as they please, but for public safety we demand that they should have acquired the necessary reflex-skill for driving, and so we eliminate unnecessary tragedies. Similarly with language, of which the ignorant or pathological use becomes a public danger of a very serious semantic character. At present public writers or speakers can hide behind ignorance (1933) of the verbal, semantic, and neurological mechanism. They may ‘mean well’; yet, by playing upon the pathological reactions of their own and those of the mob, they may ‘put over’ some very vicious propaganda and bring about very serious sufferings to all concerned. But once they would have to pass an examination to get their license as public speakers or writers, they could not hide any longer behind ignorance. If found to have misused the linguistic mechanism, such an abuse on their part would be clearly a wilful act, and ‘well meaning’ would cease to be an alibi.” (pp. 485-486) 2. See the book Communication Magic (2001) for a description of the Extended MetaModel. The Meta-Model of language is a list of 22 linguistic distinctions that let us know that a mental map or model is not structured very well and a list of 22 questions that we can use to explore with a client. These explorative questions evoke within the client a fuller expression that expands and extend his or her mapping or framing. See Communication Magic (2000) and Mind-Lines (2000). 3. See the book, Mind-Lines: Lines for Changing Minds (2007). 4. See Techniques of the Hypnotic Patterns of Milton H. Erickson (1976, 1977), also Trance-formations (1979).

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Chapter 6

THE FOUNDATION AND FRAMEWORKS OF COACHING “The only content of knowledge is structure.” Alfred Korzybski “We hold these truths to be self-evident...” The US Declaration of Independence

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atch what a builder does when he begins a new construction. Whether it is a simple single story building like a house or a highrise building in an urban area, the builder first digs down and establishes a strong foundation. This is not only important, it is absolutely critical if the building is to stand, to be stable, and to be fully functional for its design. The building’s strength and integrity depends on the strength of its foundations. After the foundation comes the frameworks—the wood or metal structures that thereafter govern the strength, structure, and format of -71-

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the building. Physically foundation and frameworks establish the overall structure into which everything else fits. That’s why so much time and thought is put into the blueprints regarding the structural frames. Metaphorically, Coaching requires the same. In every discipline, the theoretical foundations and frameworks comprise the structure or structuring of human experiences. These, in turn, then govern how those who practice in that field operate. These structures govern the subsequent experiences, skills, and technologies. If the governing ideas of a field are the most critical ideas, then we will want to become mindful of them, understand them, and incorporate them into our practices. We will want to design them into the way we coach. Doing this enables us to construct a coaching methodology true to the premises of Self-Actualization Psychology. Then our vision of coaching, as the unleashing of potentials, will operate as our guiding philosophy and will be realized in our Coaching Conversations. Coaching’s Foundation and Frameworks Why do we need a solid foundations and framework for the science, art, and skills of Coaching? Primarily because without these, coaching is reduced to a mere tool chest of techniques, skills, assorted ideas and processes— odd and end pieces thrown together without anything to hold them together. Conversely, with an unifying frame the variety of things that you do as a coach cohere. An unifying foundation and frameworks enable Coaching to be a meaningful and coherent discipline. While we may have a very good set of gimmicks for facilitating better performance, we would still be mostly guessing at what works and what doesn’t. We would not actually have a clue as to the guiding principles and mechanisms which actually create the generative and unleashing-of-potentials change. To Make Change Easier We also need is a unifying framework to ground Coaching so it has a sustainable methodology that can stand up both to academic rigor and commercial realities. If Coaching is used in an organization as a change management process, designed to facilitate and manage generative change in people who are high potentials, then the value of a solid foundation and well-designed frameworks is that it makes the change process easier. It’s when we don’t know how to do something, or don’t have the right tools, that change becomes hard and difficult. -72-

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What do you think— Is change hard or easy? 1 How do you answer that question? Is not change both easy and difficult depending on several things—the kind of change that you’re attempting to make, the models, patterns, and technologies you use to make the change, and your belief frames about the ease or difficulty of change. To change a tire is really, really, really difficult, if not impossible, if you try to change the tire with your bare hands. How long would you have to try to twist off one of the lug nuts with your fingers? Never! Okay, so suppose you have a pair of plyers. Could you do it then? Well, maybe. But maybe not. It would be extremely difficult. What if you have a lug wrench? Now we’re talking! Although depending on how tight the lug nuts, or how rusted, even with a lug wrench, you might exert all of your power and still not do it. But what if you had one of those electric lug nut wrenches? Zaaaaghh! It undoes the lug nut in a second. Piece of cake!1 How hard is change? It depends upon the tools you have, does it not? If you have the right tools, change is easy. Change then becomes a walk in the park. Now when you have a flat tire, changing the tire may still get your hands dirty, but with the right tools you can do it quickly and with relative little effort. When you have the right tools, then when you have a flat, your first thought could be, “No problem! I’ll be back on the road in five minutes.” Of course, not everyone thinks that way. They think about the work, the difficulty, the hassle, the problems, getting their hands dirty, etc. This raises an important question with regard to change: The Psychological Foundations—Meta-Coaching System Premises As, already noted, in designing the Meta-Coaching System, I drew upon several psychologies to construct an interdisciplinary approach comprised of Self-Actualization Psychology, Developmental Psychology, CognitiveBehavioral Psychology, and Systems Thinking. Because these form the skeleton structures of Meta-Coaching, the premises in these set the foundation and the framework for coaching.2 What are these premises? From these psychologies, what are we assuming about people, about human development, human growth over the lifespan, the relationship between thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, change, learning, skill development, mastery, motivation, intentions, relationships, -73-

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teamwork, collaboration, etc.? What are our starting premises as we enter into a coaching relationship? The following are the fundamental premises explicit in Self-Actualization Psychology and comprise the theoretical frameworks which govern the Meta-Coaching System. These premises relate to human nature as understood in Self-Actualization and to the experience of identifying, developing, and unleashing human potentials. Figure 6:1

Self-Actualization Foundations and Frameworks

Foundation Psychology SA is Instinctive It is innate & internal SA “Instinct” is Learning

Frameworks Frames

Practices Actions

People are wired for S-A. Awaken/ Challenge The SA drive is within. Call it forth. People have the needed resources Don’t sell it short. People are great learners

Challenge to learn Quality control learning Own responsibility to learn.

The human instinct. People are natural & ferocious learners. “Evil” is learning wrong and erroneous

All learning is not ecological The quality of learning– the quality of your life.

SA is Semantic. A function of meaning. and meaning-making.

You are a meaning-maker. Construct great meaning. It’s all about meaning. Learn meaning-making The meaning you give is the skills. Instinct you live. Dialogue for meaning.

SA is being responsible. Responsibility is the true source of power. Every step of Respons. is an act of S-A.

If you don’t own it, you can’t control it. Humans have four basic or essential powers.

Recognize and own your personal powers. Step up to Choice Point to choose your thoughts, emotions, speech, and actions.

SA is Social – It is with and through people. D-needs are socially dependent.

How you get along with others is how you get along in life. You SA with and through people.

Develop Social skills Learn win/win attitude. Develop healthy interdependence with people.

SA is Conversational You can’t talk any better than you Develop critical thinking. We think, learn, & create you think. Externalize your thinking. -74-

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We change one conversation at a time.

SA is Neurological. Coaching is experiential. It is embodied and If you don’t experience the shows up as performance. conversation, it is just a chat.

Foundation & Frameworks of Coaching

The Coaching Conversat. is a change mechanism. Induce relevant state Actualize via practice. Deliberately practice. Test and experiment.

Premise #1: The Self-Actualization Drive is Instinctive. If the self-actualization drive is instinctual it is innate and therefore natural to human psychology. This means we have within us a higher drive beyond all of the survival, or lower, needs. To learn, grow, develop, and continually move forward is inherent in human nature; it is part of our function. We develop over the span of our lives from immature to mature, from deficiency motivation to growth motivation, we move through many stages of development: social, sexual, cognitive, etc. “Innate” speaks to the fact that it is in our nature to develop. With the sufficient conditions for growth, we will develop. Like a gardener supporting and facilitating the growth of the garden, the gardener doesn’t “make” the plants grow. In fact, he cannot do that. He can only focus on providing the right conditions and eliminating the interferences. Growth in humans occurs naturally and organically; ongoing development and continual improvement work as a natural process. It’s instinctual for us to both need and want to grow and change. Ongoing development brings out the best in people and creates a lasting and joyful satisfaction. Coaching challenges both coach and client to trust this organic drive. By starting from the premise that people are inherently wired to seek things that are good and valuable for themselves, we can expect that they will seek to transcend today’s reality as they strive for meaning. Part of the power of coaching involves the coach believing in a client’s potentials and activating that belief in the client. This facilitates awakening new possibilities which the client may never have even dreamed of. This makes Coaching a strengths-based approach in human development. We look for, access, and heighten strengths. What’s working well? How can we make it work even better? This is what you do in coaching— find, access, develop, and apply resources. It’s not the case that something is wrong or bad with someone because he is still learning. It’s the case that -75-

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you coach your clients to play to their strengths, find their passions, and unleash ever-new synergies. This NLP approach enables us to look at everything we do, or whatever anyone else does, as a skill. Viewing even pathologies as skills changes your perspective so that you do not see people as broken and deficient and needing to be fixed. You can now view them as doing something very well and consistently. And if what he is doing isn’t beneficial or ecological, you can invite him to step back to see if it’s worth the effort and energy. Premise #2: Self-Actualizing is Dependent and Activated by Learning. There’s a reason for this: Learning is the human instinct! While we Self-Actualization Premises have an innate sense of direction toward self-actualization, it is not 1) The Self-Actualization drive is inevitable. Instead it is dependent instinctive. on a wide range of variables. The 2) Self-Actualizing is dependent and process can go wrong as it can go activated by learning. 3) People self-actualize by accepting right. It can be blocked and responsibility and ownership. interfered with so that a person 4) Self-Actualization is socially can become stuck and limited supported and experienced. from moving forward. When this 5) Self-Actualization is driven and happens, it creates existential pain governed by meaning, meaningand distress. making and meaningfulness. 6) Self-Actualization occurs one conversation at a time. 7) Self-Actualization results in

There’s another reason for the primary of learning—we are not born fully human. We have to learn how to become human. It is the process of becoming. Unlike animals, we are not born with the innate programs containing the how-to information regarding how to be human, how to survive, how to thrive, etc. We have to learn. And learn we do! But what? What do we learn? Does what we learn help? Does it hinder? We learn to become human over a lifetime as we learn who we are, what we’re capable of, what’s important, how to manage ourselves and our relationships, and a thousand other things. Maslow described this un-programmed drive for growth and selfactualization as instinctoid. It’s “like an instinct,” but it is not an instinct. Not in the way animals have instincts. It is an urge and disposition that -76-

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drives us toward learning and growing, but it has no content information for how to do that. It predisposes us to want to be more, yet it offers no specifics on the how-to. This drive can also be over-ridden and fairly easily. As humans, we do not have to obey these inner instinct-like drives. We can ignore them. Further, when a person lacks human culture, as feral children raised in the wild by wolves or other animals, and when they miss the developmental stages which are dependent on language and symbols, they fail to enter into the symbolic world and become “human” in the way that we think of being human. To facilitate healthy growth that actualizes the best human possibilities we need certain conditions, and it takes the right conditions. Without the conditions that satisfy our human needs (survival, safety and security, love and affection, and affiliation), we become blocked and frustrated in this growth. When we have problems, it is not the case that we are “evil” or “broken.” By nature, we are ferocious and creative learners. Coaching taps into this and/or helps us reclaim our full intelligence gathering powers. What all this means is that our full development and actualization is conditional. So while we have all kinds of incredible resources and powers within, we also need support. Because we change by learning, we cannot not change. We will change. All of your clients will change. You will change. As a process, change is built into the human mind-body-emotion system. And because we are only and always changing, change is the constant. That’s because learning is change. That’s why coaches ask questions about change. What changes are you making? You are changing from what to what? How are you making the change? What is the value and quality of the change? Is the change ecological? Will you change for the better or worse? Will your change and learning enrich or limit you? Will you change in a way that supports your personal development or sabotage it? Learning, growing, and changing are all inter-related. In the human context these words refer to the same thing. Without innate programs which tell us how to be human we grow/change by learning. Herein is the freedom to determine the “programs” (beliefs, ideas, understandings, etc.) which will -77-

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govern our lives. Every learning that we make (formal or informal) guides and directs our development for better or worse. Precisely because our development is activated by learning, when learning stops or slows, so does our development. It’s via the learning instinct that we construct mental maps, or models, to navigate our way through life. This is how we make sense of things. It is how we frame what things are and how they work. Yet how a person makes sense of things differs from him or herself. What one maps differs from one’s person. It is just a map. And every person is more and different than his or her map. When there are problems or difficulties in one’s life, the frame is always the problem, not the person.3 All of this frames the human adventure as one of continuous learning. Learning is the never-ending story because we never arrive. We never become “perfect.” Perfectionism is a sad and pathetic illusion that sabotages self-actualization.4 The adventure is to be open and “unfinished,” always the learner. Premise #3: People Self-Actualize by Accepting and Owning Responsibility. While both the predisposition for actualization is innate as are the personal powers which enable us to take charge of our learning and development, there is a condition. Every person has to take ownership of these responsepowers. We have to proactively take the initiative by activating our human freedom of choice to accept and own these powers. When we say that a person has all the resources he or she needs, we mean that human beings have the personal powers for responding and learning. WE can then combine these to create a whole range of resources. These are the powers of thinking, emoting, speaking, and behaving. Clients are empowered when they accept and take ownership of these response. Owning these responses activates and develops one’s ability or power for learning. Failure leads to regression to childish, passive, reactive, and immature responses. With the self-actualization drive is the power to take charge of one’s own life, choices, decisions, career, etc. Coaching posits this by framing the client as his or her own best expert on oneself—on one’s values, visions, goals. The client may be the expert—potentially—of himself, but will not make this actual until he takes -78-

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ownership of his thoughts-feelings, problems, and situations. This is the first step forward. Coaches therefore focus on releasing responsibility to the client as soon as possible, typically in the first minutes of the first session. Coaches succeed to the extent that clients assume ownership for themselves. Control belongs to the client, not the coach. With the power-to-respond, clients exercise their ability to choose the mental maps and beliefs which will enhance their responses. It is their response-power which enables them to frame things as they choose. Because this power belongs to the client, a coach can change no one directly. At best the coach facilitates the processes for discovering and changing. In coaching, the client owns the work of change, not the coach. The coach invites clients to step up to being “at cause” for their lives and results. Because human beings are naturally predisposed to learn, explore, discover, and construct ever-better maps, and if clients learn best in states of curiosity, openness, desire, and discovering, coaches focus on facilitating these states . This will enable clients to learn best because they will discover things for themselves. Effective coaching focuses on activating the client’s powers of self-discovery. He will then make learnings in his own way. If people make the best choices possible based on what’s available in their maps, the key is to get clients to activate their curiosity. To do that focus on stimulating, teasing, probing, and awakening, then get out of the way so your clients will discover for themselves their best values and learnings. Do this by creating an engaging conversation which your client can’t resist. Ask questions to engage the dialogue. Invite them to discover challenges. Pose experiments and suggest practice drills. Tease. Probe. Do all of this with an attitude of total respect and fascination about what will be discovered. And always aim to do it in service of empowering the client and keeping the client “at cause.” Because clients learn best when they are in charge of their own learning, always frame the client as her own expert. Ultimately, the coach does do not know what’s best for the client. The coach’s expertise lies at the metalevel of facilitating the process of actualizing human potential, not at the level of the client’s story (content). -79-

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4) Self-Actualization is Social— Socially Supported and Experienced. The term “self-actualization” is misleading on several accounts. While it accurately identifies that this is about the self—about becoming the best you that you can be, the paradox is that self-actualization is not about you. Nor does it come exclusively through you. Because human nature itself is social, and because we are social beings, we do not unleash our highest potentials apart from relationships with other. As social creatures, we need others in learning and developing. Without others we would never fully enter the human experience. It is through others that we first learn how to be human. Others set our early agendas and teach us how to relate, communicate, love, hate, forgive, resent, and the whole range of social emotions. The best self-actualization occurs through collaborations, healthy relationships, partnerships, and team efforts. That is because it is with and through people that we discover and create ourselves. It is with others that we work to make our visions and values real. And because we stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us (the time-binding process), 5 we can now rise to new levels of development. This social nature of self-actualization highlights the importance of human connection. As social creatures we need to connect, relate, live within community, and contribute. The basic needs of love, affection, and affiliation which make us human, are social needs—needs met by others. We learn and develop best when there is an open, collaborative, and democratic community where everybody can have a voice and can contribute what is unique to them. Know that we are naturally driven for cooperation, collaboration, win/win arrangements, and contribution to the larger community, facilitate clients to actualize their potentials through participating with others, working together in a team, and entering into collaborative partnerships. The first one, of course, is the coaching relationship of a collaboration with the client’s hopes and dreams. 5) Self-Actualization is Semantic. Self-actualization is driven and governed by meaning and meaningfulness and the meaning-making processes. Learning to make ever better and more -80-

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useful maps is not enough. We need to create maps that make all of life richly meaningful. Are there significant meanings which inspire? Selfactualization requires the ability to create inspirational meanings. This entails the ability to define things in a meaningful way. To make our best real requires high level meaningfulness. The crucial a role that meaning plays in self-actualization arises precisely because we do not have instincts. We use the human “instinct” of learning to first learn about the three aspects of meaning: what it is, how it works, and what it is good for. Doing this requires and activates our meaningmaking skills of thinking, representing, classifying, framing, etc. Yet all meanings are not meaningful nor even true, accurate, or healthy. We can, and do, learn stupid things— hurtful things, things which work to our detriment. Meaning can be dysfunctional, even toxic. So a critical meaning-making skill is the ability to unmake meaning, that is, to suspend meaning and decommission it. In the end, when we create significant meaning, we activate our motivation and passions so that we grow in ways that actualize our highest values and visions. A self-actualization need is to see how that things make sense, are meaningful, hold significance, and are valuable. Without meaning, life and effort feel futile so we become passive and reactive, even destructive. This is the “spiritual” dimension of vision, hope, meaning, passion, and inspiration. In Self-Actualization Psychology we always operate from the empowering premise that the person is never the problem, if there is a problem, it is always the frames. If people work perfectly well, but sometimes run some unuseful strategies due to some inadequate mapping, poorly designed, the problem isn’t the person—it’s the frames. The point of focus in coaching is never on a person’s inadequacy, stupidity, or deficiency, it is on a person’s frames, values, strengths, and resources. If the human adventure is about becoming human, then it is an adventure of meaning. If we don’t deal with reality directly, but only through our representational mapping, then it’s an adventure of creating and using the best mental-and-emotional maps that support the best meanings that are possible. -81-

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Breakthroughs in coaching often occur when a client discovers is that she has simply been using the wrong (erroneous) or unhelpful map for a given task (e.g., a CEO trying to run the family as the corporation). I have known several highly successful CEOs who actually attempted to do this. Yet trying to run home life relationships using a map which makes one effective in the marketplace, or in the corporate world, is simply not the right map for that area. In that case, she needs a different map for handling a different kind of relationships. His frames about giving orders and commanding compliance will be ineffective. Premise #6: Self-Actualization occurs one Conversation at a Time. As symbol-using beings, we talk our way to the best meaning-making, deciding for relating, and understanding, etc. The coaching dialogue enables us to let our meanings pass through us [“through” (“dia”), meanings (“logos”)]. As our meanings pass through (dia) coach and client, we engage in a very special, intimate, and personal conversation. New emergent meanings thereby arise. Via the conversational dialogue we co-create with a client a new game plan. Via this conversational dialogue we are able to get to the source or heart of things—the client’s meanings. Conversation is what invites us into the human experience in the first place and it introduces us to the world of symbols. We hear words and begin to integrate a language system. Conversation develops our consciousness as we accept and set frames of meaning about things. No wonder conversation can also do us damage! Words communicating ideas and setting frames can build limiting and self-sabotaging worlds as well as empowering. Conversation also lies at the heart of “thinking.” We think mostly through talking to ourselves. Yet our self-talk conversations can drop out of conscious awareness so that we lose awareness of what we’re saying to ourselves. These often are the trances that operate “in the back of our mind.” No wonder conversation, and especially the meaningful dialogue of exploration into meanings, intentions, values, and visions can work powerfully to transform these conversations. Via the coaching conversation, clients discover their own frames, evaluate them, and transform them. This is the magic of coaching. This explains how a coaching conversation can facilitate incredible breakthroughs for transformation. -82-

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Premise #7: Self-Actualization for Improved Performance. Thinking and talking is not enough, action is required. For us to facilitate the self-actualization of potentials and to make them real they have to be translated and experienced in behaviors. This learning is not mere intellectualizing. All of the dichotomies that we set up between “mind,” “body,” and “emotion” by which we treat these as different things are only ways of talking, they are not real. It is always a system, a mind-bodyemotion system. Real learning is always ultimately behavioral and shows up as a behavioral change. How do we know that we or another have learned something? There is a change in behavior. There is a new and different response. We truly know something when that “knowledge” is not just at the level of an intellectual concept, it is also at the level of know-how. This is the neurosemantic factor. The meanings (semantics), which we create in our minds via our internal movies with all of the words that we use become the signals and commands that inform the body and neurology. In this way meanings become felt experiences, muscles encode the memory of those learnings. The ultimate step in coaching is action. It is the performance toward an achievement. For this reason, coaching uses tasking for action plans, monitoring, feedback, continual improving and refining, environmental and social support, and many other tools. These are used to translate the learnings into actual difference in one’s experiential life. When a person experiences an enhancement in performance then he actualizes his potentials and “grows” or develops to the next level. What are Your Take Aways? Take away the importance of a theoretical framework. If you want to work in a methodical and systematic way, you will need a framework for coaching. A framework will give you an overarching structure for knowing what you are doing, when, where, with whom, and why. Without an over-arching framework, coaching is reduced to being techniques—processes that may be powerful and useful, yet without an organizing frame. And without an organizing process, you can’t explain the process or manage where you are in the process.

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Take away the wonder, the mystery, and the thrill of the human adventure of meaning-making. Meaning matters supremely because it frames the very structure of our lives.

End Notes 1. I first wrote this reference in Coaching Change, Chapter 4. 2. For more about the Matrix Model, see chapter 10. 3. This idea that “The problem is not the person, the frame is the problem.” is in the book Winning the Inner Game (2007) [previously titled, Frame Games (2000)], also see the book, Neuro-Semantics (2011). 4. Psychological “perfectionism” refers to a particular frame of mind that involves discounting. When we put it in words, it is expresses, “It could have been better,” “Not good enough.” This is driven by the fear of mistakes, errors, and flaws as if these were somehow dangerous and to be refused rather than learned from. 5. Time-Binding refers to how we humans are able to bind into our very minds-and-bodies the learnings, discoveries, values, etc. of those who lived before us. As plants bind chemicals into themselves, and as animals bind both chemicals and space (mobility) as a factor in their experience, so we humans bind both as well as what happened in previous times into ourselves to that the temporal dimension is part of our experience. Korbybski (1941/ 1995) called this time-binding.

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PART III:

SYSTEMATIC COACHING AND THE META-COACHING SYSTEM Effective coaching in the Meta-Coaching System involves seven essential facets: A compassionately challenging conversation, a self-reflexive awareness that goes to the frames of meaning in the back of the mind, generative change, systems thinking using the client’s Matrix, the execution of change that embodies and implements measurable change, selfactualization, and process facilitation. To address this core of coaching, we utilize a series of models in the MetaCoaching System. In doing this, these models becomes the frames which govern the coaching—determining what we do, how, and why.

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Chapter 7

FACILITATING THE CONVERSATION “A great coach is able to make the process of coaching look almost effortless.” Julie Starr, The Coaching Manual “Mirroring, validating, empathizing are the foundational skills for building rapport.” Graham Richardson, Master Coach

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f coaching is anything, coaching is a conversation (chapter 4). It is a conversation like no other conversation. That’s because the coaching conversation is not a “normal” conversation. It is an unique not-sonormal conversation in several ways: It is an intense, personal, highly focused, one-way, and sometimes a fierce conversation because it seeks to get to the heart of things which requires challenge, even confrontation. In the previous chapters I have emphasized the Coaching Conversation as quintessential to what a coach does. While it may seem easy—after all, it is just talking, isn’t it?—it is not easy. Nor is it just talking. Most who first attempt it find that it is a hundred-times more challenging than they ever -86-

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imagined. What accounts for this? What is the challenge in facilitating a powerful coaching conversation? Coaching is a Not Normal Conversation 1 At the heart of coaching is conversing. That’s why dialogue lies at the very nature of coaching. What happens in the coaching room is a dialogue between coach and client. But (and this is a critically important “but”), it is not a normal conversation. It is a very unique and special conversation; it is a conversation like none other. Among the several factors which make the coaching conversation different and not “normal” are the following: First, the conversation is one-sided. “Normal” conversations are two-sided. You talk about your views and opinions and then I share my views and opinions. You tell your story and that reminds me of something similar and prompts me to share my own experience. But in coaching, the conversation is one-sided—it is all about the client. The sharing does not go back and forth. The focus stays exclusively on the client— what the client wants, thinks, believes, feels, etc. For some, this intense focus on the client feels uncomfortable, especially at first. It spotlights the client in a way that makes the conversation a very different kind of conversation. Second, the conversation is intensely intimate. “Normal” conversations stay pretty much on the surface. They are typically shallow. People talk about the weather, their favorite sport teams, their aches and pains, etc. Only occasionally do they drop down into some personal and intimate areas. Yet in coaching conversations, this is precisely where the conversation lives—at some of the deepest aspects of the client’s experience. That’s makes the conversation direct, “fierce,” confrontational, and intimate. Third, the conversation goes for self-reflexive thoughts-and-feelings. These deeper (or higher) thoughts are mostly outside-of-consciousness. In MetaCoaching we call them the person’s inner matrix of frames of meanings. “Normal” conversations typically deal with first level and maybe secondlevel thoughts. Coaching conversations go much deeper (or higher) to the thoughts-behind-the-thoughts, to the feelings-behind-the-feelings— to the meanings (e.g., assumptions and hidden beliefs) from which the person is operating as the person’s map or model of the world. We also go to the kind of thinking by which the person creates his experience. We ask what the person is assuming for her to reach the conclusions that she has. -87-

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Fourth, the conversation is challenging and even confrontational. Because the purpose of the coach is to stretch the person beyond his or her current experience, by its very nature, coaching is challenging. It invites the person into a more intimate and intense self-awareness. It does this by mirroring to the person the responses that one might want to refine and/or develop. The coach will bring up things that could potentially be upsetting and holding the person’s feet to the fire of inquiry. None of that is comfortable. In fact, coaching by its very nature is designed to be uncomfortable— to invite the client to step out of his comfort zone and venture forth. For many coaches, it takes awhile to get comfortable with being uncomfortable and intentionally inducing discomforting. Yet this is essential for challenging a client to stretch out of his comfort zone. All of this explains why the coaching conversation is like none other. It is definitely not a “normal” conversation and therefore unlike the conversations we have at the dinner table, in the pub, in the boardroom, or even at the water cooler. Coaching — An Extremely Challenging Conversation The shocking thing, at least for a great many people who attempt to coach, is that the coaching process itself can be an extremely challenging experience to themselves. They had heard, or knew, that it would be challenging to the clients. They understood that. What they had not anticipated was how it can challenge the coach who conducts the coaching conversation. What explains this? What is the challenge in the conversation to the coach? First, the challenge of really listening. To actively listen in a way that enters into the client’s phenomenal world, deep enough to understand the client on the client’s terms, and to express such to the client’s satisfaction and delight, is very challenging. Most people have to go through lots and lots and lots of training and practice and supervision to be able to do that. But why? Why is listening so challenging? Primarily the coach has to break her old habits of passive listening, or defensive listening, or listening through a preferred filter (therapy, problemsolving, consulting, debating, etc.). Then she has to get out of the mode of instrumental listening where she listens for some specific purpose— to do -88-

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something, to be successful as a coach, to solve the client’s problem, etc. 2 In Meta-Coaching we speak about non-instrumental listening as sacred listening—listening for no purpose, listening to simply be with the person. Listening to the client on the client’s own terms requires this “sacred listening”—listening without judgment, listening with acceptance and appreciation, and listening simply to be present to the client. In the MetaCoaching System we use several patterns to facilitate this— the Releasing Judgment Pattern, the De-Contamination Pattern, etc. 3 Second, the challenge of supporting the client. Support begins with listening and goes beyond that to offering one’s presence apart from trying to do anything. It is the trying to do something— even if it is helpful, and which comes from a good spirit, that often feels, surprisingly, unsupportive to the client. Sometimes clients will even speak up and say so. “I just want you to listen to me.” “I don’t want to consider doing anything right now, I just want to say what I’ve got to say.” Even more challenging about support is being able to say or express the client’s point or perspective. Coaches in training are sometimes especially resistant to this. When I test them, “What is your client’s point?” they cannot say. Some do not want to say. They think that if they repeat something which they deem “negative,” it will reinforce something that negativity. Yet, another surprise, it almost always has the opposite effect. That’s because when the coach feeds it back, the client gets to hear it— sometimes for the first time. Sometimes it helps the client feel heard— understood, validated. Now they can finally move on. Third, the challenge of receiving and giving feedback to the client. For many this is very uncomfortable. Being like a clean mirror and just receiving whatever the client puts out and mirroring it back unfiltered — uncontaminated— sometimes this feels very personal and intimate. At times it can feel embarrassing, as if you are crossing a line. And it can feel confrontational. Yet just as often it can be the turning point in a person’s life. This is especially true if it brings up a blind-spot for the person— something that all of his close friends and colleagues have never addressed because they didn’t want to hurt his feelings or didn’t know how to bring up. -89-

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Fourth, the challenge of asking questions, especially really personal questions. One coach in France once told me that where he grew up in northern France it was “just not polite” to ask questions, and it was especially not okay to ask questions that might put someone on the spot or embarrass him. This was his challenge. He tended to dance all around the very subjects which needed to be addressed. His questions were careful, cautious, gentle, overly tentative, and worse of all, safe. Once I interrupted him during a supervised session and commented that the client has surfaced a semantically-loaded subject about his father. I suggested that it was possibly a coachable moment for the client. “Do you know what to ask about that?” “Yes” he said, “but I can’t.” “Okay, so what would you ask if you could?” I asked. He then whispered the question to me. “Bingo!” I said, “Go ahead—that is exactly where to go.” “But I can’t ask that!” he said. I pushed ahead, “Yes, do. Let’s see what happens.” That’s when the client butted in, “I heard what you said. I don’t want to go there, but I have to. So yes, please, do ask it!” He did ... hesitantly ... and the session suddenly became magical. It was a coachable moment and generated the very transformation which the client wanted. The Coaching Conversation is a challenging one to the coach, as well as to the client, until the coach integrates the attitude and skill of challenging. This is, to a great extent, much of the training and development that occurs in most coach training programs. In Meta-Coaching we describe this as the art of compassionate challenging. I derived that phrase originally from Graham Richardson, a Master Coach, in Sydney Australia. When I asked about his style as a coach in an interview in 2002, he said that he didn’t know. Then he added, “but people say that I am ruthlessly compassionate.” I then asked about that. He said that people regularly commented to him about how firm and resolute he was, how he wouldn’t let them get away with excuses or sell themselves short, or change the subject, he would always be there to hold their feet to the fire. And if you have seen any of the videos or DVDs of Graham, you have seen this style of ruthless compassion.4

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While being firm challenges some coaches, it is the other side, the compassion part, that challenges other coaches. Why? Because regarding the coaching process— you have to care. You have to really have a big heart for people and care about their well-being. This is something that you can’t fake. Further, you have to communicate it so that they get it. You have to be real and personable and intimate enough with them so that they know that you have their best interests at heart. Your care also has to continue even when they do things that will test it, when they engage in offputting behaviors such as making excuses, keep changing the subject, when they avoid answering your questions, play dumb, act arrogant, pout, talk like a victim, etc. What’s a coach to do to handle all of these challenges in the Coaching Conversations? First and foremost, get grounded and centered in herself. As a coach, you have to know who you are, and keep your person separated from your behaviors so that you can operate from a place of love, compassion, care, discipline, firmness, and challenge. All of this is what any legitimate Coach Training program ought to include. The Nature of Coaching Conversations When it comes to conversations, there are many different kinds of coaching conversations and each with different effects. Via a conversation, you can express your opinion and hear the opinions of others, you can connect mindto-mind and even heart-to-heart. Via a conversation you can learn from others as well as from yourself. Via a conversation, you can forge bonds, discover new insights, negotiate win/win arrangements, and many, many more things. I like how Susan Scott in Fierce Conversations (2002) describes conversations and what she says about the power and the surprise of a conversation: “Our lives succeed or fail gradually, then suddenly, one conversation at a time. While no single conversation is guaranteed to change the trajectory of a business, a career, a marriage, or a life, any single conversation can. We effect change by engaging in robust conversations with ourselves and others” (2002, p. 7)

Through real conversations we change, through them also we can facilitate change in others. This is the heart of coaching, is it not? It is also the power that the executive leader utilizes to lead or stabilize change in an -91-

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organization. The kind and quality of these conversations make a difference and herein lies the true secret of coaching. The coach’s ability to hold a robust and a fierce conversation is one’s ability to get to the heart of things, invite transformation, awaken vision, evoke solutions to problems, and much, much more. Kinds of Coaching Conversations I noted earlier in chapter five that there are many different kinds of Coaching Conversations. In observing, supervising, and benchmarking hundreds of coaching conversations over the years, I began noticing that there were a few very common ones—kinds of sessions that I heard over and over. Eventually this led to creating a catalog of coaching conversations and after some time I was able to clearly distinguish the various kinds of conversations that occur in coaching. What I also learned from this is that different skills are required for the different conversations. I even noticed among some of the expert coaches that I observed and interviewed— some of them only had a small repertoire of two or three kinds of coaching conversations. It was as if every conversation they engaged in came back to those two or three. Others had a much larger range— six to ten kinds of coaching conversations. Among the basic Coaching Conversations that I identified in MetaCoaching are the following six. The first six describe the most common coaching conversations— the core conversations. I have also put them in the order in which they typically occur. Among these, the Clarity Conversation is the big one. It is the conversation that almost every client needs to have and I would guess that this makes up anywhere from 50 to 60 percent of all Coaching Conversations. 1) The Clarity Conversation 2) The Decision Conversation 3) The Planning Conversation 4) The Experience (or Resource) Conversation 5) The Change Conversation 6) The Confrontation Conversation

The next set of six coaching conversations are those that occur with groups. These conversations are describe much more fully in the book, Group and Team Coaching (2013). 7) The Mediation Conversation -92-

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8) The Meta-Conversation 9) The Rounds Conversation 10) Problem-Solving Conversation 11) Collective Learning Conversation 12) Conflict Resolution Conversation

Executive Coaching includes all of these plus some additional ones. You can find thee detailed and described in Executive Coaching. 13) The Sounding Board Conversation (or Clarity Conversation) 14) The Outcome Conversation (or Clarity Conversation) 15) The Feedback Conversation (Shadow Coaching) 16) The Systems Conversation 17) The Paradox Conversation 18) The Potential Conversation 19) The Integrity (Ethical) Conversation 20) The Political Conversation

The NLP Communication Model for the Coaching Conversations If Neuro-Linguistic Programming is anything— it is most essentially a communication model. There’s many reasons for this. First, NLP was created by modeling the communication expertise in three world-class communicators—Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, and Milton Erickson. Second, the first model of NLP was “the Meta-Model of Language in Therapy” which detailed eleven linguistic distinctions with suggested questions for challenging each distinction. Third, this model was created by using the distinctions of Transformational Grammar. Fourth, most of the premises or presuppositions of NLP are communication principles. Among the central communication principles in NLP are these: The meaning of your communication is the response you get, regardless of your intention. The map is not the territory. It is just a mental map that you have about something “out there.” People operate in the world, and in relation to each other, from their mental maps. Rapport with people begins when you match their verbal and nonverbal expressions. People engage in both self-communication and communication with others using the representational systems (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc.) and language, the meta-representational system. Resistance is usually caused by the lack of rapport. -93-

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What Are Your Take Aways? Take away the centrality of facilitating a deep, personal, and intense conversation as the heart and soul of coaching. Take away that coaching is a not-so-normal conversation. It is an unique conversation that, by its very nature, is uncomfortable because it invites clients out of their comfort zone. Another take-away is that there are a great many different kinds of coaching conversations. All coaching conversations are not the same. The kind of coaching conversation desired by the client depends on the client’s objective.

End Notes: 1. This material about coaching as a not-normal conversation comes from Executive Coaching (2014), see pages 132-133. 2. For more about attentive listening, see Games Great Lovers Play (2001), Chapter 2 (pp. 19-31). 3. These patterns are in the ACMC training manual. We introduce them on Day 1 of Coaching Mastery for Meta-Coach training. 4. We now have DVDs of Master Coach, Graham Richardson coaching. See www.neurosemantics.com / Products. For more about the Step Back skill, see The Matrix Model. -94-

Chapter 8

THE ART OF FACILITATION The Process Facilitation Model

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oaching is facilitation—one of the seven central things that defines coaching, yet it is not just any facilitation. As noted earlier, coaching involves a very special kind of facilitation—process facilitation. Hence one of our short definitions in Meta-Coaching is this: Coaching, as process facilitation, mobilizes the internal and external resources of a client to an agreed upon outcome. To be an excellent, highly trained, and competent coach, you have to be able to effectively facilitate a client to discover his or her inner frames, develop a meta-perspective to them, choose and make great decisions, create and/or suspend meanings, awaken to his possibilities, and unleash her highest and best values and visions. It is not your job, as a coach, to get your client his outcome; that’s the client’s job. She had to do that. The coach’s job is more focused—to facilitate the client to do the “work” of discovering, learning, and unleashing. -95-

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Given this, what do we mean by the term “facilitation?” The dictionary gives this description and definition: “Facilitation: (facile) “to do, to do with ease, easily accomplished.”

The coach’s role is to make the processes of change, learning, and unleashing as efficient and effective as possible. This includes eliminating the interferences, blocks, and limitations of change and identifying the processes that govern a person’s sense of self, sense of reality, and ability to choose one’s highest goals. It is to work with many processes— communication, relating to others, meaning-making, measuring progress, embodying meaning, setting high intentions, unleashing potentials, changing and transforming, learning and unlearning, and so on. It is these processes of the client which coaching facilitates. This is why, rather than having expertise in the content knowledge of the client or his area, the coach works at a higher (or meta) level. The coach’s expertise lies in the facilitation process itself. The Facilitation Model To conceptualize facilitation as a model and to identify the skill-set of competencies within facilitation, I used the Meaning—Performance Axes (Figure 8:1). These axes were developed in designing the SelfActualization Quadrants (2005). Further expansion of each axis were then developed. For the axis of performance, 13 activities were identified I Achieving Peak Performance (2006**). For the axis of meaning I specified three kinds of continua or axes for meaning— kinds of meaning, quality of meaning, and number of meaning Neuro-Semantics (2011).1 With the Meaning—Performance structure I then posed the following questions: What do clients want from their coach and from the coaching experience? What makes the coaching valuable? Why do people invest in it? Then, using the numerous years of training and supervising in coaching, I identified the answers that I have heard hundreds of times from clients: “I want to be understood, heard, and cared for.” “I want to be stretched, motivated, inspired, and challenged.” For the first— the coach satisfies the meaning of the coaching for the client by being compassionately caring— understanding, hearing, and supporting the client. For the second— the coach

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satisfies the performance the client wants by being challengingly provocative— pushing, stretching, firm, and active. To complete the model, I put compassion on the Meaning axis and challenging on the Performance axis. With that, we had an operational definition of facilitation. Facilitation, a function of support and challenge, is the synergy that converges when we have relational responsiveness to people as persons (a compassionate I–Thou relationship) and an inspirational stretching to take responsible action (challenge to action). With support (care, compassion) and challenge (inspiration, confrontation) on the Meaning—Performance Axes, we see that a

Meaning:

Facilitating co mpas sion, c are, nu rtu re L istening / Suppo rtin g R eceiving Feed back

I nducing State s C ar e, Pre sen ce, Cu ri o sity, Le ar ning , O pe n ne ss, Au th e ntici ty, Int en ti on , D ecisio n, Re spo nsib il it y

Performan ce: Fac ilitating ac tion

Q uestionin g / M eta-Q uestionin g Giving Feed back

coach’s skill of facilitating involves creating a special relationship wherein one holds the space (of safety and care) in order to challenge the client to be all that he or she can be.

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On the Meaning Axis we measure the quality of meaning and the meaningfulness of the coaching to the client. How does the client experience the coaching? Is the coach and the coaching caring and compassionate? The discovery here is that the more meaningful, the more human, warm, caring, responsive, safe, enabling, knowledgeable, etc., the coach and the coaching is to the client, the more meaningful will be the coaching, and the more effective the facilitation. The client will then allow th coach to challenge and will respond positively to the challenge. On the Performance Axis we measure the kind and quality of the performances which the coach and the coaching enables and facilitates in the client. The coach does this by inspiring, challenging, stretching, and evoking the highest and best in the client. The objective is for the client to identify, set, and effectively reach his goals. The result of these two axes are four quadrants—four ways that a client can experience you as a coach and your coaching. How do you want your clients to experience you? Only one of these quadrants will enable you to engage in effective coaching. Quadrant I: The coach and the coaching here is non-responsive and inactive. Here there is insufficient support for sense of safety and care and insufficient challenge for action. The client senses, “The person doesn’t care about me and isn’t doing anything to help me change or unleash my potentials. You call this coaching?” Quadrant II: The coach and the coaching is here highly challenging and directive. Here there is either too much pushing, or the challenge comes too quickly, so that a person feels stress, pressure, under scrutiny, and/or under orders to produce. The client senses, “My coach is a top drill sergeant, coaching is all work and no fun. Why would anyone in his right mind sign up for this?” Quadrant III: The coach and the coaching here is caring, supportive, motherly (fatherly), and gentle. Here there is plenteous support so the person feels cared for and validated, but it is too much. The coach does not urge the client to take any action or responsibility, or to believe in himself. The client senses, “My coach is wonderful, but nothing ever happens. It’s a wonderful talk feast, but without any results. I’d like my money back. But my coach is so nice, I hate to ask for my money back, I don’t want to hurt her feelings.”

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Quadrant IV: The coach and the coaching here is synergist so that high meaning and best performance come together in a convergence. Here there is Supportive Challenge in just the right combination and mixture. Here there is an optimal balance of support and challenge: compassionate challenge, ruthlessly compassionate. The client now senses, “Sometimes I really get out of my comfort zone and feel really challenged, but I always feel totally supported and cared for, and then I get some fantastic results. Everybody ought to have a coach!”

The Facilitation Model The theory in Coaching is that we best bring out a person’s inner resources by facilitating the innate processes in the person for clarity, understanding, decision, growth, personal development, change, skill competence, etc. We do not tell, lecture, give advice, or give interpretations. The client has an inner self-actualization drive and only needs the right conditions to unleash her potentials. The processes to make this happen include: dialogue, questioning, enabling, empowering, equipping, challenging, inviting awareness, framing, etc. The purpose of this is to make the person’s desired personal development occur with greater ease and speed. To be able to do this, the coach will identify the content of the client’s objectives and then step back to observe it from various perspectives in order to see the structures and processes involved. In facilitation there are lots of variables. These include the client’s words, whether they are sensory based language or evaluative language. The nonverbal variables include: Tone, volume, tempo (auditory), gestures (visual), movement, breathing (kinesthetic). Then there are the variables of the knowledge of the central processes for learning, developing, changing, understanding, etc. This may include knowledge of various meta-models such as the Meta-Model of Language, Meta-Programs, Meta-States, SubModalities (Meta-Modalities), Strategies. It may also include knowledge and understanding of specific processes as understanding (clarity), decision, planning, creativity, integration, etc. It will include knowledge about selfreflexivity, the levels of processing informaion (frames, the psycho-logical levels, etc.). Guidelines in the skill of facilitation include the following basic heuristics: Set a well-formed outcome with a client to specify his or her agenda.

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Create precision in descriptions to open up understanding and clarity regarding the client’s frames and understandings. Ask about what has already been attempted and do a post-event review of what worked well and what didn’t. Notice, explore, and eliminate interferences, blocks, and sabotages. Find and expand limitations by accessing needed resources. Invite person to experience (states, frames, ideas) to transfer into neurology and physiology. Invite a step-back awareness (meta-cognition) for choice and decision.2 Patterns that a coach can use in the facilitation process include: Precision questioning using the Meta-Model, meta-questioning using Matrix questions or the Meaning-Performance questions, or climbing the ladder of meaning, modeling the structure of current and desired frames, calling for a meta-moment to invite a step-back (for quality control, structure awareness, etc.), the Axes of Change questioning, the Crucible induction, etc. What are the essential processes that we facilitate in the coaching process? 1) Communication: precision and clarity, induction and embodiment. 2) Meaning-making: construction, suspension, enrichment, and ecology of meaning. 3) Benchmarking intangibles, scaling, measuring. 4) Relating: trust, connection, rapport building, openness, transparency. 5) Changing: multiple levels (behavior, person, direction), dimensions of change, kinds of change. 6) Self-Actualization: identifying, developing, and unleashing of potentials. 7) Learning and Unlearning. 8) Modeling the structure of expertise: pattern detection, unpacking of structure, noting and enhancing the strategy process. 9) Creativity: inventing plans and strategies, innovating. 10) Problem-defining and problem-solving.

The skill of facilitating involves examining the processes and content of a person’s (or group’s) experience by exploring and identifying what’s happening, identifying the steps in the process, and providing a step-by-step set of instructions so a person can actualize (make real) his or her goals and values. In this activity, to coach also identifies and eliminates interferences

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which blocks or slows down the client’s objectives, or makes them more convoluted.3 Sub-Skills: 1) Identify a process and articulate its primary design and objective. 2) Specify the steps required to fulfill the process. 3) Sequence the steps into the most time and energy efficient strategy. 4) Identify potential blocks and interferences to actualizing the strategy. 5) Recognize when and where ideas and experiences which can block or interfere may occur. Specify the interference. 6) Identify one or more resource responses to get a person through the blocking or interfering experience. 7) Use transition words, phrases and stages to move the person smoothly through the steps (e.g., and, then, as, therefore, etc.). 8) Verbally match the person’s beliefs and values frames. 9) Elicit higher frames as resources for giving new inspiration and vitality. 10) Support the person by matching, validating, empathizing, etc. 3.5

3 2 1 0

Elicit the sources of thinking and feeling essential for reaching one’s outcome, give support to the client. Use transition words, phrases, and stages that allow a client to move smoothly from one step or stage to the next (e.g., “and, then, so, next, etc.). Fully pace the client’s frames (e.g., beliefs, values, etc.). Ask about and work to eliminate the things interfering. Ask questions that relate to a client’s outcome which moves him or her from one stage of developing in achieving the stated outcome. Give or elicit step-by-step attending to how the processes will occur. Ask some questions for clarity and exploring, but mix it with some advice. Miss the client’s theme or point (several key “things not heard”), both listening and supporting skills at level-2 or lower. Ask few to no questions to enable discovery (clarity questions, exploration questions). Ask leading and rhetorical questions, ask questions irrelevant to the client’s outcome, so unuseful. Tell, give advice, lecture, intellectualize, judge, evaluate, give interpretations.

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The Core Coaching Skills Skills Required for Great Coaching Not everyone can coach. Coaching, like any other field or discipline, not only involves a theoretical framework, but also a skill set—a set of skills for the basic competencies within the coaching process. Those who attempt to coach without these basic skills will not succeed when working with a client, and may actually do harm. After all, if the processes for awareness, change, and development are powerful enough to transform a person’s life to create wonderful changes, they are also powerful enough for harm when misused or mis-directed. The same mechanisms, in the hands of the incompetent or the unethical, could create hellish results. Using this realization in Meta-Coaching about coaching skills has led to raise the following questions: What are the critical skills for coaching effectively? What are the essential skills for facilitating change? What are additional and/or advanced skills for coaching? Core Competencies for Coaching In Meta-Coaching we have identified over 30 coaching skills and have categorized them in three areas—essential coaching skills, change skills in the coaching dance, and coaching skills for mastery. The first set of skills are those that are essential for coaching are the core competencies of listening, supporting, questioning, mirroring, and inducing The Seven Core Coaching Skills Relationships 1) Listening — Active and Attentive 2) Support — Rapport and Presence Exploration 3) Questioning — Precision 4) Meta-Questioning — In-Depth Probing Mirroring 5) Receiving Feedback — Calibrating 6) Giving Feedback — Sensory Specifics Experiential 7) Inducing States — Embodying

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experience. Without them, a person can not be fully present to a client which would undermine discovering the client’s goals, values, and vision. We have sorted these seven essential skills into four areas. The reason for this is because two of the skills involve dual sides of the same process (i.e., listening and supporting, giving and receiving feedback. Another involves the Core Coaching Skills first level and then a meta-level of the skill 1) Active Attentive Listening of inquiry (questioning and meta2) Support: Rapport, Presence questioning). Finally, the skill of eliciting 3) Quality Questioning 4) Meta-Questioning states for experiencing and embodying. 5) Giving Feedback These communication skills are basic for 6) Receiving Feedback an effective coaching conversation that 7) Eliciting States engages the client, enters into the client’s world, and gets to the heart of things. 1) Active and Attentive Listening Active and focused listening involves a full mind-body listening so that we listen with a third-ear to both content and structure, to what is said as well as to what’s not being said. It’s listening for heart (values), emotion (visions, loves), and meta-levels of awareness (conceptual structures). It is listening by pausing and using silence that gives the other a chance to be with his/her thoughts, emotions, and awareness which thereby promotes reflection. Such high quality listening enables the other to “feel heard” and so facilitates discovery, and is actually a very special and rare experience.

Change Skills 1) Facilitating 2) Awakening 3) Challenging 4) Probing: 5) Provoking 6) Co-Creating: Framing 7) Actualizing: Tasking 8) Reinforcing: Cheerleading 9) Testing: Holding Accountable/ Advanced Coaching 1) Framing and Reframing 2) Pattern Detection 3) Benchmarking 4) Stepping Back: Meta-

Such attentive and focused listening is not easy. To do so requires getting one’s ego and ego-investments out of the way. It involves coming into the moment to such an extent that one can be fully present in that moment to the client. In Meta-Coaching we use the accessing personal “genius” pattern to create a highly focused and engaged coaching genius state. 4 2) Support Support refers to being present, showing up for the client, and stepping into the moment with the client. This establishes an I-Thou relationship. It is -103-

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being present to the client’s emotions without trying to do anything with regard to them. How do you support another? What are the sensory-specific aspects that conveys “support?” What are the cues that the client no longer feels supported by you? Coaching absolutely requires creating a safe and courageous space, a place where transformation can occur, and where one can access the courage to speak his or her truths. Support involves empathy which arises by acknowledging emotions and perceptions, “That must feel X” (X being some feeling or experiential word). This differs from sympathy, which is feeling what the client feels. Empathy differs from that in that you care and are able to understand the other’s state without feeling the same. Support is holding a client’s intentions, outcomes, and agenda throughout the conversation. It is being able to hold the client’s outcomes as the frame and purpose of the coaching. This supports the client to explore the meaning structures of his or her matrix with a sense of safety and respect. In the coaching dance, the client usually leads and the coach follows. Yet as with most dances, sometimes this shifts around so that the coach leads— lead to where the client wants to go. Sometimes they are in rapport so deeply that it is difficult to tell who is leading and who is following. With regard to the purpose and agenda of the coaching, it is mostly non-directive. Yet it is directive about the processes whereby the coach works to get the client to his outcome. 3) Quality Questioning The ability to ask fabulous and powerful questions describes the central coaching process. You coach best by asking questions. You explore to get to the heart of things, to open up new possibilities, to open doors in the Matrix, to influence the direction of thinking in a powerful and profound way, and to focus in a solution-oriented way on facilitating the client’s processes. This is the heart of coaching. This exploration asks and responds without judgment or imposing what the coach wants. These first questions are mostly questions regarding the Outer Game. So they are down and out questions. They ground the subject into see-hear referents in the real world. These precision questions enable clients to index the specific content of what the person will do, the game plan for taking performance to the next level.

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4) Meta Questioning Moving from questions about the Outer Game and one’s immediate thoughts and feelings, as a coach you then move inside to explore the frames, states, and experiences about the client’s inner experiences. These are up and in questions and deal with the structure. Meta-questions, by exploring the frame structure of the Inner Game, enable clients to wake up and to explore their Matrix. These meta-questions direct the client to “step back” into a higher awareness about beliefs, values, identity, intentions, etc. Powerful questioning uses open-ended questions and relentlessly explores meaning, possibilities, and solutions within the client’s Matrix. By matrix and meta-questioning, you focus on the meanings, intentions, and states of a client’s inner world and invite the client to return to the remembered references that he or she used to create the original maps. 5) Receiving feedback There are two mirroring skills— the receiving and giving of feedback. Like a clean and undistorted mirror, first you receive from the client what is being presented to you. The word “calibration” describes this process. You calibrate to the client— to all of his outputs in speech, behavior, movement, gesture, etc. Why? Because in every movement of the coaching, the client gives you feedback about what is going on with her. Receiving feedback requires careful listening and acknowledging what is offered. Then, to deepen what you receive—inquire about what it means to the speaker as you continue to notice his sensory-based responses. Consider how a mirror receives information— immediately, nonintrusively, and openly. It receives everything and holds it for reflection. So treat everything the client says and does as a gift. There’s no need to fight it— that’s not the role of the coach. Simply receive and reflect back to the person. In this you become a living human mirror to your client— ideally a clean and undistorted mirror. This competency is so unique that most people experience it as an incredibly powerful encounter. 6) Giving Feedback Continuing the metaphor of a mirror— giving feedback is a matter of simply reflecting back what you have received. Giving feedback is not giving a judgment or your opinion. It is being a human mirror— reflecting empirical (see-hear-feel) information so the client can see himself and how -105-

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he comes across in your perspective. To give such high quality feedback use as precise language as possible (sensory-based language) about what you see, hear, and feel. Because immediacy makes the feedback extremely useful, give sensory-based feedback as soon as possible. Do this directly, with consideration of context, with rapport, and with support. Also give the feedback tentatively as you invite the client to try it on. Using the “mirror” of yourself, feed back what you experienced pointing to the specific behavioral cues that trigger that impression for you. Given in a non-judgmental way, this kind of quality feedback offers a corrective reflection and reinforcement. Another way to give feedback and to get to the point succinctly is by summarizing. This linguistic mirroring puts into a bullet point which may have taken the client many minutes or even halfan-hour to articulates. 7) Eliciting States Eliciting a state refers to inviting or evoking a mind-body-emotional experience. Call it forth, or even provoke it, by suggesting it, asking questions about it, reflecting on it, etc. Then you can anchor it. Doing this consciously with your client gives her a state management skill that she can use for herself. Then you can amplify, interrupt, design and redesign, and take charge of the state. Eliciting states also involves skills of trance induction so the client goes inside and accesses the best imagined states. This facilitation skill requires a high level quality of expressiveness so that you, as the coach, sound like and look like what you are speaking about. The temptation for many coaches, especially at first, is to speak in a monotone voice. That hardly ever induces state and, in fact, makes state induction more difficult. As a coach, think of your communication skills as if you are directing an orchestra. Imagine that you are the person responsible for ensuring that there’s sufficient energy in the client’s experience. Use this skill to enable your client to experience and embody the conversation. Additional Coaching Skills These first seven skills are the essential ones—essential to create the basic format of a coaching conversation. Yet there are more. While this next list of skills are more advanced skills, yet they are equally important in creating an engaging coaching conversation which gets to the heart of things. These skills obviously depend upon the core skills and extend them to give you the -106-

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ability to detect the hidden structures within the dialogue and manage the process that will more expertly facilitate the client’s resources and insights. These skills define and describe how to effectively facilitate the coaching conversation. We teach these in the first level of Meta-Coach training (the ACMC level), yet it is only at the next level (the PCMC level) that we benchmark these skills. 1) Framing and Reframing The word frame is short for a frame of reference which always begins as an external reference—a point of reference. You ask for a reference when you ask, “What are you referring to?” In this question, you are saying that you don’t understand a person’s frame of reference. So someone asserts, “She’s not very good.” Knowing the context, you can say, “Are you talking about Sue?” Now you have the subject of the conversation. If you didn’t know the context, you would have to find out who this person is. “In what regard is Sue not very good? What are you talking about?” “Well, you know, geography—finding her way around the city. She gets lost all the time.” Now you have the frame of reference about the person’s words “not good.” She’s geographically challenged! In this way the speaker brings the reference inside himself and makes it his represented frame. He is seeing, hearing, and feeling the reference as a movie in his mind (with pictures, sounds, etc.). The person inwardly sees and hears it and is speaking from that event as his reference point. Yet all of that is hidden and invisible to those on the outside—until some cue word or phrase is mentioned or until someone asks, “What are you talking about?” Using an event as a reference point over and over eventually creates a person’s frame of mind—how she thinks about something and eventually her attitude. For example, when Jane thinks about school, she thinks about her fifth grade experience and the cruel experience she had with Mr. Smith. No wonder she despises “school” and various aspects of school—study, reading assignments, reports, etc. Her frame about school today (“Studying is boring”) arises from the meanings and beliefs she developed back then. In coaching, clients bring frames with them and use them to interpret what happens in the coaching. This can be a boon or a bane, a blessing or a curse. As a coach, you’ll want to set frames for anything and everything that could be mis-interpreted and mis-understood. How will your client -107-

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interpret things if you interrupt him, challenge her, treat his emotions as a matter-of-fact symptom, ask her to index her references, etc.? Could your client misunderstand things? If so, set a frame. “I will be interrupting you because coaching works best as a dialogue rather than a monologue as well as the fact that I am not primarily listening for the content as for the processes and structures that might highlight any frame which could be causing you any interference in reaching your goals.” “I will be challenging you from time to time because coaching is about challenging you to step up to becoming more and more your best self. Are you still good with that? So if you feel uncomfortable at times, you are probably being challenged beyond your comfort zone.” Beyond framing you will also be reframing from time to time. This skill will be needed when a client presents a frame, or you infer a frame, that causes difficulties. If a frame of meaning is creating a block or interfering so your client isn’t able to access resources or unleash a potential, then you’ll want to facilitate a new meaning as a reframe. In reframing you are challenging the meaning of something. The reframing format is: “It doesn’t mean X, it actually means Y.” “Being uncomfortable doesn’t mean that something is wrong or that the coaching is not going in the right direction, it means you are getting out of your comfort zone with what’s familiar as you take on a this new challenge.” 2) Pattern Detection In pattern detection you step back from the content of an experience and you look for the structural frames and processes. If you then step back from your pattern detecting, you can even detect patterns about that very skill. The ability to detect patterns is built into your neurology and is a central factor in human consciousness. This ability and tendency is so strong, in fact, that it is more often misused rather than appropriately used. The problem is that we humans are so quick to detect patterns that we are constantly “finding” and inventing patterns where there are none. We are seeing patterns in accidence, coincidences, and randomness. So we invent conspiracy plots, see UFOs in clouds, project our fears on other people, and so on.5 -108-

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Now a real or actual pattern involves a behavior, or set of actions, which repeats. If there is repetition and regularly, then there’s a strong probability that there is a pattern. A pattern is any recurring behavior within a class of responses. Next you have to find or identify the rule, principle, structure, etc. which is being exemplified. The skill of actually detecting a pattern involves finding a trend which keeps reappearing. The purpose in pattern detection is to explore the dynamic structures which make an experience what it is. In coaching we look for the thinking patterns, emoting patterns, conceptual patterns, communication patterns, relational patterns and so on which is occurring in the life of the client and which is influencing the client’s experience of going after and actualizing some goal. It could be a pattern we want to encourage and reinforce. It could be a pattern to expose in order to avoid it or make it redundant. Modeling is a more extensive application of pattern detection and involves the ability to work with structure and systems. In modeling you identify the structure of an experience to detail the processes that specify how the experience works. “How is this person thinking, representing, embodying, etc. to create the state and behavior of X?” In modeling you create a model that specifies the steps for replicating the experience, skill, or expertise. How do you know you have all the necessary steps to reproduce experience X? Begin by applying the model to yourself. Does it work for you? Does it now induce you to experience the same thing? How well can you do what the exemplar person does? Once you are able to do what the original person does, then you design a training to transfer the model to others. This will further test the viability of the model.6 Benchmarking, yet another aspect of pattern detection, involves the ability to set a scale to empirically measure a skill or value in see-hear-feel behavioral terms. Doing this provides tangible and measurable measures for the existence of someting that is normally difficult to describe such as leadership, respect, listening, etc. Then, with the benchmarks you can mark and measure where a person is on the scale and give specific feedback to shape that person’s skills for improved performance. When we benchmark superior practices, we model the critical success factors, the key variables that contribute, the sequencing, timing, and attitudes. 7 -109-

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Profiling, another aspect of pattern detection, uses pattern variables to classify them as comprising a certain pattern. You can now create a profile of the key factors in the pattern which summarize dependable functions in a client which make up his or her personality. You can also profile against a model or template by looking for specific distinctions that you believe are important. Profiling involves recognizing where a person is coming from, style of meaning making, and content Matrices that support or limit getting results.8 3) Challenging If there’s anything really unique about coaching it is the role and skill of challenging in the coaching process. That’s because coaches challenge. Believing in people as we do, in the self-actualization drive within every client, in awakening, and in the tendency for people to sell themselves and human nature short—an effective coach inevitably challenges. A coach puts the various coaching issues directly to the client: Vision: What do you want? What else? And what else? Is that all you want? What about all of the areas of life? What is the vision you have but fear mentioning it because it seems too much? Decision: Will you do it? Will you step up? When? How will you do that? How will you hold yourself accountable for doing this? Creativity: What will you create? What other resource would you like to invent and use in doing that? If you don’t know, how will you find out? When? Implementation: What will you do about this? How will that show up in your actions? At home, at work, with your children? What will be different? What else? How will you do it? What will you do first, then second? Feedback: What information will you look for that will let you know how you are doing? Who will give you feedback regarding what you are doing which is working or not working? When will you want to get that information? What state will you want to access in receiving that information so you can put it to good use? Integration: How will you more fully integrate this change into your everyday actions? How will you reinforce it? Who will celebrate your progress with you? Accountable: As you monitor your progress, who will you appoint to hold you accountable for living up to your intentions and action plans? How do you want me, as your coach, to hold you -110-

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accountable so that you don’t let it slip and don’t sell yourself short on your goals? Confrontation is another important coaching skill and one of the highest forms of challenge. Think of confrontation as “challenge on steroids.” Confrontation is the skill of bringing up something that could be upsetting or unpleasant, and yet doing it in such a way that the client faces it, considers it, and begins to address it. Coaching confronts incongruencies, blindspots, inauthenticity, defensiveness, anonymity (not taking responsibility), irresponsibility, poor performances, etc. 9 What Are Your Take Aways? Take away that facilitation, making something easy or easier, is not as easy as it sounds. It is an advanced skill that works predominantly with the processes by which a person steps up to achieve something that’s meaningful and significant. At the heart of facilitation are coaching or communication skills which enable you to create the context of invitation. In this way, you facilitate a high quality conversation that can quickly get to the heart of things. Facilitating this entails skills of calibration and sensory awareness, being present and in the moment with the client, and being able to enter into the client’s world. From there, it’s anyone’s guess what will happen, which is the adventure of the coaching relationship. Take away that while the coaching skills are, for the most part, common everyday communication skills—in the hands of a competent coach—they become incredibly powerful to create a crucible space wherein transformation can occur. End of the Chapter Notes 1. See Neuro-Semantics (2011) where Neuro-Semantics is defined with the two axes: Semantics (meaning) for the quality and kind of meaning that enhance one’s lives— the more and the richer the meaning, the higher the quality of one’s life. Neurology (nervous systems, physiology, body) relates to what we physically do to make the meaning real in the actual practice and performance in our everyday life. 2. The step back skill is the ability to gain some internal space and perspective from one’s state of mind and emotion, even from one’s state of body and, taking that state into consideration as just a state, then rising above it to think-and-feel about it in such a way -111-

as to maintain perspective, resourcefulness, wisdom, and choice. In eliciting the step back skill as a coach, we invite the awareness of a meta-perspective in the client and then layer it with numerous perceptual positions. 3. The words in quotes like “frames” indicate a vague term, usually a nominalization, and which is defined by the words in the benchmark description. 4. “Genius” pattern, see APG, Secrets of Personal Mastery (1997). 5. We see this skill of pattern detection misused in some of the cognitive distortions such as over-generalizing, awfulizing, negative filtering, etc. 5. NLP is a modeling discipline. See NLP: Volume I (1980), Modeling with NLP (19??) by Robert Dilts. I have written five books on modeling: NLP Going Meta (1997), The Matrix Model (2003), Meta-States (1995/ 2000), Advanced Neuro-Semantic Modeling (1996), Cultural Modeling (1997). 7. See Chapters 13 and 14 on the Benchmarking Model. 8. In Meta-Coaching we use both the Meta-Programs and the Matrix Model for profiling, see Figuring Out People (1997/ 2005). 9. See Executive Coaching (2014) chapter 18, “The Confrontation Conversation.”

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IN-DEPTH PROBING COMMUNICATION The Meta-States Model

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hat is coaching? It is first of all a high quality conversation and yet it is more. It is also an in-depth probing communication. That’s because the Coaching Conversation differs significantly with the shallow surface conversations that we normally have with each other. Coaching goes deeper. Much deeper. It probes to get to the heart of things in the mind and experience of the client. Many who enter the field of Coaching fail to deepen the conversation. Some have simply not learned, or been trained in, how to do this. The bottom line is that they do not know how to deepen a Coaching Conversation. As a reuslt, the Coaching Conversation stays shallow and superficial. It’s a nice chat. Yet that’s all it is. Because of this, it lacks the power to take the client deep inside to his Matrix and get to the heart of things. It is therefore incapable of exposing the frames within her Matrix that generates her limitations.

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What’s a coach to do? How does a coach learn to have a deep conversation that gets to the heart of things? In the Meta-Coaching System we enable a deep conversation by using two models—the Meta-States Model and the Matrix Model. Then with these models, coaches learn to ask metaquestions, Matrix questions, to enter into the Matrix, to hold frames and open up belief system, and to expose blind-spots. Into the Human Depths When we say that most conversations stay on the surface, we are speaking about the level of disclosure and the intimacy of the conversation. In this regard it is possible to recognize the client’s level of disclosure and then to match that level. Matching the level of a client’s disclosure validates the client, makes the disclosure feel safe, and this encourages him to move to an even deeper level of disclosure. To effectively listen and support, discern the level that the client is disclosing and match it by acknowledging that disclosure. This will enable you to co-create a fierce conversation that gets to the heart of things. Because there are levels of disclosure, we can generally only go as deep with a client as we support the person in the process of going there. Figure 9:1 Level 1) Cliches 2) Impersonal facts

The Levels of Disclosure With Whom

Description

3) Personal facts 4) Meanings

Strangers, acquaintances Task-oriented relations Associates Friends, closer associates Close friends

5) Emotions

Intimate friends, lovers

6) Needs

Best friend, lovers

7) Dark side

Confidant, therapist

Surface comments Facts about self or one’s world Facts of self and one’s world One’s thoughts, values, beliefs, inner ways of organizing reality. Visions, dreams, plans, outcomes. Feelings about things, angers, fears, family, loves, joys, hopes Inner motives, motivations, drives, deficiencies, inadequacies, etc. Taboos and prohibited emotions one is not comfortable about.

Deepening the Level of Disclosure Deepening the conversation begins with a relationship of trust and rapport. Where there is the lack of deep disclosure, generally there is the lack of -114-

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safety. There will not be a crucible space. Sometimes a coach may even make a disclosure of herself in order to create the space and to invite disclosure. When leading out by going first, go to the next level to invite the client to that next deeper level. Disclose only one level at a time. If you jump in too fast, it will feel inappropriate and/or violate the client’s sense of trust. Some people need permission for delving into the deepest levels so check the client’s meanings about disclosing and support them by reframing the meanings which prevent them from going deeper. Going deeper involves getting more and more real with ourselves and others. It means confronting our humanity, mortality, and fallibility. This is the call for authenticity. Going Deep by Coaching to the Client’s Meta-States The Meta-States Model adds depth to coaching because it facilitates working with the unique human kind of consciousness—self-reflexive consciousness. The meta-stating process does this by enabling us to work effectively with our self-reflexivity. But how? How does this work? To answer these questions we first have to define several things: Self-Reflexive Consciousness Meta-States and the Layering of States Meta-Stating as a Process of Meaning-Making Human Psycho-Logics Self-Reflexive Consciousness When a mind or consciousness is reflexive this means that it can reflect on itself. It can, as it were, step back from itself and think-and-feel about its previous state. So self-reflexive consciousness refers to how consciousness has this ability, this skill, and this function. Its nature therefore is selfreflexive. What is the significance of this? The primary significance is that it makes “thinking” complex. We do not just think. As soon as we think, we think about our thinking. And then we do it again, and again. Now in using the word “think” and “thinking” I am including everything that is a part of what we call thinking—this includes sensing with the body (neurological embodiment), emoting, choosing, etc. “Thinking” is a systemic process and includes the entire mind-body-emotion (MBE) system. So it does not refer to intellectualizing apart from all of the other aspects of human experience. -115-

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In philosophy, philosophers call this ability to reflect back onto our experiences “the infinite regress.” That’s because it never ends. Whatever you think-feel about anything, you can then think more things about it, experience more feelings about it, make additional decisions, relate other references, etc. And to complicate things, this process is infinite. It is without end. Korzybski noted this in Science and Sanity and developed his Structural Differential to deal with it as well as his Theory of MultiOrdinality.1 And why? Because when a person does not discern the levels of consciousness, or worse, when a person confuses the levels—this generally creates tremendous confusions, paradoxes, unsolvable problems, and even pathologies. So we do have to be careful with this power. Self-reflexive consciousness means that you and your clients do not think linearly. It would be so nice if you and they did. It would make coaching so much easier! But we don’t. We humans think in circles, loops, and spirals. We go round and round thoughts, ideas, events, experiences, fears, dreams, hopes, traumas, etc. We circle these states and reflect upon them again and again. This iteration and reiteration solidifies our inner Matrix world—the mental maps we make of things. By repeatedly running the neuro-pathways, they become habits and so stay in our mind. Sometimes we spiral downward into more and more problematic negative states. Sometimes we spiral upward into increasingly positive empowering states. Meta-States and the Layering of States A meta-state is one state about another state. To create a meta-state simply access and apply one state to another so that the second state qualifies the first. Here are two examples: Bring playfulness to your explorations to create playful exploration. Bring calmness to your anger and create calm anger. The meta-states that we create and experience as human beings are these layered complex states. The process of meta-stating describes how we layer one state upon another. More examples: Respectful listening, skeptical questioning, compassionate challenging, curious framing, shameful angering, guilting fear, fearful sadness, preoccupied listening, fear of rejection, anticipation of being challenged to face one’s fears about being embarrassed, playfully curious about how compassionate and patient you can be when disagreeing intensely with a competitor, etc. -116-

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What makes the meta-stating process critical for understanding, and then working with human consciousness and how it works, is that when you set one state above another, that second state becomes the frame for the first state. Now in “joyful learning,” joy is the frame for learning. This means that “learning” is a member of the class of joyful things. Now, isn’t that amazing? And doesn’t this open up all kinds of new possibilities? A meta-state then is simply this—a state about a state. Begin with a mind, body, and emotion state. Take the state of being “serious” and the state of being “playful.” Now you can generate either being seriously playful or playfully serious. Hmmmm. What would work best for you? Those who opt for seriously playful take their sports really seriously. Sometimes they take them so seriously that it eliminates all of the fun in the sport. When exaggerated, everything becomes deadly serious. It shows up in how competitive they become and what a bad sport they are when they lose. Compare that to playfully serious. These are people who can take serious things and still be earnest and committed about them, but they texture it with a touch of playfulness. The serious thing is now a member of the class of playful things. The Meta-Stating Process for Meaning-Making If meta-stating involves bringing one state to another state, then the process of meta-stating is a pretty simple and straight-forward process. Yet simultaneously it is a process that leads to great complexity. There is a reason for this. When you bring one state, and put it in a meta-relationship to another, you are layering more and more components onto the original state. You are building up an ever-increasing set of internal contexts so it becomes a richer and richer system of interactive parts. No wonder then that the meta-stating process itself is powerful and transformative. No wonder that when you, as a coach, move with your client to a higher level— you are going deeper and deeper into the structure of your client’s Matrix of frames, into that person’s self-reflexive system, whereby she has created, and continues to create, her reality. Let’s summarize: What is meta-stating as a process and how do you engage to activate in this process? Meta-stating is applying one state of mind-body-emotion to another; i.e., calm anger, courageous fear, lustful learning, playfully serious, etc. -117-

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Meta-stating is bringing one state to bear upon another, i.e., apply wild enthusiasm to planning, bring fun to love-making. Meta-stating is transcending one state and including it within the higher state or frame; respectful anger, compassionate frustration. Meta-stating is embedding or nesting one state within another; e.g., ruthless compassion. Meta-stating is taking a higher perspective and thinking about something else in terms of that higher frame; e.g., generously forgiving. Meta-stating is relating one resourceful idea, understanding, knowledge, belief, feeling, physiology, inspiration, etc. to another: e.g., gloriously fallible, fallibly confident. Meta-stating is texturing one state with another so the second or higher qualifies the first giving it a new feel; sullen silence, suspenseful silence, painful silence, ecstatic silence, mischievous silence. Meta-stating is reclassifying or re-categorizing one experience with a new frame that allows one’s sense of self and the world to change; lethal neutrality, tender anger, passionate engagement. Meta-stating is rising up to one’s highest concepts, meanings, beliefs, understandings, intentions, etc. and taking that higher view: person-as-more-than-emotions, a gentle understanding of anger, fascination-about-feedback. Meta-stating is stepping back from yourself and your mentalemotional and physiological processing and doing so repeatedly until you have a sense of transcendence, power, and perspective in life that gives a great sense of choice: control over your choice of loving or hating; humorous about human fallibility, empathetic understanding. Meta-stating is getting above your limiting and impoverishing thoughts-and-feelings and actions to unleash new possibilities and powers; it’s-just-what-I’ve-been through, not a prediction of the future. Meta-stating is getting to the top of your beliefs and intentions and moving through the world intentionally; focused engagement, fierce attention to implementing great ideas. Human Psycho-Logics Something else happens in the meta-stating process. By means of this process, each of us create our own particular specialize version of your -118-

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“logics” which, in turn, govern how we reason. That is, we invent our own psychology. Korzybski, noting that the term psychology is comprised of two words, hyphenated them to create an important distinction using the new terms psycho-logics and psycho-logistics. What this now means in the context of coaching is that you can enable every client to become aware of his or her psychology. How? Call attention to the person’s psycho-logics which are governing his or her life. Then, if he or she doesn’t like their current psycho-logics, you can invite the person to create an internal psychology which will bring out that person’s best. So what does this term, psycho-logics, refer to? This refers to how each and every one of us lives and operates according to the way we reason to make sense of things—our “logics.” So however a person reasons from one thing to another, that process sets up that person’s internal world of meaning and understanding. It generates one’s unique cognitive style. And because we are all humanly fallible, everyone’s thinking style is full of cognitive distortions and biases. How do we reason or make sense of things? We represent something, then we classify it, we put it into some category, we associate it with some emotions, we relate it to various experiences, memories, imaginations, etc. In other words, as we meta-state these things and in doing so, we simultaneously invent and use our style of reasoning—our psycho-logics. Imagine someone has a bad experience with being criticized and then metastates “criticism” by associating it with states of fear and dread. Now “criticism” is in the category of “fearful things” and the person’s reasoning, which makes sense to him, is “dreadful criticism.” So asking this person to “accept” criticism does not make sense to him at all. It is not reasonable. It is “crazy.” Whereas the person who has meta-stated criticism with acceptance or learning or curiosity will have an entirely different psychologics and may even enjoy criticism because she “knows” (her reasoning) that within it are things that can help her become better. And while neither is right or wrong, one is definitely more useful and the other much more distressful and painful. In NLP this led to the premise expressed by Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, and Milton H. Erickson. Everybody’s internal mental maps make sense—to them. If a person’s thinking, believing, understanding, reasoning, logics do -119-

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not make sense to us, it is because we are using a different logic— our own psycho-logics. We are not understanding that person on that person’s terms. The Boy and his Psycho-Logics of a Cookie Imagine a small boy.2 He comes home from school one day with a report card of high marks. It is unexpected and his mother gets so excited that she jumps up and down, kisses him, and hands him a cookie saying: “Mother is so proud of you, you are such a good boy, even though it is not supper time, and this may ruin your supper, here are some milk and cookies because you did so good and I’m so proud of you.” Now in that moment, this is a windfall of goodness for the boy. But later, when he reflects upon it, whether he does so consciously or unconsciously, he begins to draw some conclusions from that experience. Suppose he reasons this way: “Getting a cookie means I’m a success, I am doing good, it makes people proud of me, I get a reward, I am loved, life is good.” Now fast-forward forty-years. The boy is a man and he is over-weight, in fact, obsese and his doctor is after him to lose weight. And he tries. He really, really tries. But for all his efforts he finds that he just can’t lose the weight or resist cookies or other sweets. So what’s happening? Yes he now has “secondary gains” in eating. Yet what does that mean? And what else is at work? His psycho-logics have put him into a place where resisting cookies means that he is resisting — The good life! Success. Rewards. Love. The Pleasure of others being proud of him. Relaxation. Enjoyment of hard work. These are his internal frames about food and maybe sweets—frames that are probably unconscious and invisible, frames that he really doesn’t understand how they have anything to do with his health. And regarding the problem of obesity, he is not the problem. The frames are the problem. What’s happened is that he has jumped several “logical levels” in his thinking-and-feeling about cookies. By following his line of thought (and feeling) we can discern how he has classified cookies, as well as the -120-

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categories he has created in his mind, to understand his psycho-logics about food. Understanding his psycho-logics on his terms enables us to enter into his Matrix to understand the relationship he has created to food. Entering into the Depths of One’s Psycho-Logics The way any of us thinks and emotes typically occurs so quickly, in a split second, we hardly ever notice. Usually to notice, it has to be called to one’s attention. And even then, people typically assume that they are just “thinking.” “So what’s the big deal?” What we don’t notice is the structure of the “thinking,” and the cognitive style of our thinking, which is involved in the meta-jump. We don’t notice that we have made a metajump, and created or refreshed the psycho-logics of our neuro-semantic states and reality. When we meta-state, and set a frame that classifies the first thought-andfeeling, the frame categorizes how we view and feel about it. This creates our psychology, i.e., the psycho-logics in the mind-body-emotion system. What’s “logical” to us in terms of how we think and feel about things? What’s “logical” is certainly not what others say is “logical.” It is not what we read in books on Aristotelian logic or mathematical logic. What’s logical to us is how we set frame of references about things —the classes we invent, the meanings we construct, the thinking patterns we use, all aspects that derive from how we have metastated ourselves. As a result, things “make sense” to us within those frames and outside of those frames they do not make sense. For example, What do you think about people who are bossy, rude, or bitchy? What do you feel about people who are competitive or cooperative, tough or an easy touch, or dominating or playful? Your answer reveals your frames—the interpretative filters and classifications by which you understand things. These reveal and comprise your “thinking patterns.” These are your meaning structures. These are your perceptual filters. We could ask the question this way: How do you classify or categorize bossy-ness? What classification do you put on the act of being bossy? What classification do you make it a member of? What does it mean to you? How do you see it? (Your perceptual filter) -121-

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What’s your frame of reference? What cognitive distortions or biases is contained within it? You could answer in many ways: it means being nasty, unthoughtful of others, lack of social skills, focused, performance driven, a leader, etc. In and of itself, none of these things mean anything. Meaning doesn’t occur in words or dictionaries—meaning occurs in people. We are the meaning makers. Meaning requires a real live human being. That’s why you won’t find “meaning” in your refrigerator or on your front sidewalk. That’s why you have never hit a hunk of meaning with your car and had go to court to pay a fine. Meaning doesn’t exist as a real thing “out there” in what is called “the real world.” Meaning is a creature of the mind—it exists inside the world of the mind-body-emotion system. That’s why, as a construct of your thinking, it results from your meta-stating. That’s how you invent it. In Meta-Coaching, we enter into the Matrix of a client’s meaning frames with curiosity, respect, and fascination and then we facilitate the client to step back and become aware (the meta-state of self-awareness) of the meanings created and attributed. Only then can the Meta-Coach invite the client to do a system’s check to see if the meanings are empowering or impoverishing, limiting or enriching, etc. Only then can the person truly choose higher and better quality meanings. Why is the ability to deal with self-reflexive awareness so important in coaching? For many reasons. It is the human ability to “step back” from ourselves and to witness, observe, and notice our own processes that enable us to transform consciousness. It also moves us beyond the linear way of dealing with the mind-and-body system. Now we can work more systemically with people as we follow the flow of their awareness and responses to their own responses around the inner communication loops of their mind. Putting it Altogether to Go Deeper in Meta-Coaching When we put together self-reflexive consciousness, meta-states as the layering of our states, meta-stating as the human process for creating meaning, and human psycho-logics, we have the mechanisms and processes by which we can deepen the Coaching Conversation. -122-

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It all starts with a mind-body state and a person representing something. After you have this, the first meta-state is always awareness of the state. Yet it never stops there. Then you access other states and create your next level meta-state. But what? Ah, that’s the question. To find out, ask. “What do you think-and-or-feel about X?” “What is the quality of X?” The second state of your thinking-and-feeling about your first state governs and textures your primary state and sets the frames of meaning about it. By this you begin to create your psycho-logics which enables you to both create and enter into the meta-cognition realm. After you represent the see-hearfeel world as a cinema in your mind, you can step back from the movie and manipulate it. You can edit it, change it, and create new and fanciful movies of what you would like to be in the future. This describes the basics for “running your own brain” and taking charge of what plays on the movie screen of your mind. It is the foundation of learning, imagination, creativity, innovation, and so on. In the process of stepping back from your own mind-body experience, you activate the realm of meta-cognition. Now with your ability to create representations and “hold them constant,” you can play with the component elements of your thinking to your heart’s content. You can change things in your mind in order to invent and test things before taking any action in the outside world. By stepping back from yourself, your thinking, emoting, processing, and experiencing you can, as it were, transcend your states and manage them from that higher level. With each step back, you are thereby going deeper and deeper inside to what the person is thinking-and-feeling in the back of the mind which sets the frames for his meanings and her psycho-logics. Now you can, with your client, find, identify, discover, and change the very structure of his or her Matrix. The person’s way of classifying things. His categorizing with labels, terms, and names. The person’s frames and ways of framing. The way the person includes a state inside of a higher state which, in turn, qualifies and textures his states to give it a particular feel. The person’s way of validating and confirming a state to create the gestalt state of a “belief.” After all, it is beliefs all the way up both which constructs and comprises a Matrix. -123-

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The person’s way of setting or establishing higher frames which set up self-organizing feedback loops or self-fulfilling prophecies. The person’s governing beliefs which send “commands” to the nervous system to actualize the message in neurology. If you’re now saying, “Wow! Meta-stating does all of that?”, then you have caught a sense of how it functions. Even a simple meta-stating of applying joy to learning can do all of that. This creates “joyful learning.” And, to make it even more incredible—all of that occurs simultaneous to the process of stepping back, and it occurs again and again with every step back. Talk about a fluid and dynamic system! We react to our own reactions, and we do so layer upon layer to create positive and negative spiraling of thought and emotion. As a result, this meta-stating process explains so much about human functioning and operating. Simultaneous Benefits of Going Deep Into Meta-Land Here, as a summary, are eleven benefits and values of the meta-stating process.3 It explains the meaning-making process. What is “meaning” and how do we construct this thing called “meaning?” Answer: Meaning is simply what you “hold in mind.” So what do you hold or keep in your mind? How do you hold anything in mind? You first represent it. Then you classify it, label it, categorize it, associate it, and frame it. That allows you to build a dynamic, fluid, and stable inner world of frames, and carry them with you for years, decades, even a lifetime. This is how you make meaning. It explains the matrix constructing process. You not only meta-state a state with one layer, but multiple layers. This creates belief systems—systems of beliefs which hold ideas in place. This explains why arguing against a single “belief,” and trying to change it, can be so difficult. Why? Because most beliefs do not occur alone as just a single belief. Most beliefs are embedded or nested inside of a whole Matrix of beliefs—a belief system that supports it. It explains the attitude constructing and integrating process. What’s an “attitude?” It’s a predisposition of mind-body-emotion about something. It is a full neuro-semantic state that governs one’s stance, -124-

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posture, and positioning of mind and body toward something. That’s why the quality and texture of your mind-body state shows up in your attitude. It explains the infinite progress layering of frames. Philosophers call this “the infinite regress.” Now some individuals have confused themselves by treating each layer as a “real” thing (reifying them), and then ask pseudo-questions, “Who’s watching the movie?” “Who’s watching the watcher of the movie?” etc. This only initiates mind-numbing explorations for “the ghost in the machine.” Yet we do not need to posit a ghost in the machine. If we don’t reify or nominalize (turn processes into “things”), we can recognize that we can and do operate at multiple levels simultaneously. It is in this way that Korzybski’s (1933) Theory of MultiOrdinality solves this problem.4 It explains the power of reflexivity in human functioning. We do not think in linear ways. We think in circles, loops, and spirals. We go round and round thoughts, ideas, events, experiences, fears, dreams, hopes, traumas, etc. We circle these states and reflect upon them again and again. It is this iteration and reiteration that solidifies a Matrix of frames. By repeatedly running the neuro-pathways we habituate ideas to stay in our mind. It explains the power of both the negative downward vicious spirals and the positive upward virtuous spirals. Depending on the kind and quality of states (thinking-feeling states) that you bring to your states, you can loop round and round making things more and more negative, ugly, fearful, hostile, dreadful and create a vicious cycle. Or if you bring acceptance, appreciation, love, honor, awe, wonder, etc., you can loop around and create virtuous spiraling states that empower. These interactive facets of consciousness and experience work as a system. It explains the systemic complexity of human functioning. You not only think-and-feel, but you think about your thinking, feel about your feeling, think about your feelings, feel about your thinking, etc. The dynamic “complexity” here is simple when you recognize the processes involved. Thinking systemically about the infinite progress, the layering of frames, the multiple stepping back, enable you to begin to discover how to follow the energy of your psycho-logics through the system. In this, the imagined so-called “things” or “entities” inside you like “beliefs,” “values,” -125-

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“knowledge,” etc. are not things at all. They are processes. They arise within as you think-and-feel and only are as “real” as your thinking. It explains the systemic feedback and feed forward loops that govern human experience and states. The processes at the heart of meta-states and meta-stating involves the feedback loop of information coming into the mind-body-emotion system. You first input some information. Then you generate information about that first information by inwardly “thinking” about that information. To the data you input, and continue to process by representing, classifying, labeling, naming, associating emotions (the meta-stating process of meaning-making) and then send more information or data “upstairs” as you use it to set more frames. It explains the feed forward loop of activating the entire mind-body-emotion system. Once you have set the meaning frames in place by meta-stating, the information begins to literally in-form your mind-body-emotion system (create a form of expression). It sends messages and “command” about how to internalize, activate, and incorporate that information. This creates somatic energy in the form of feelings, emotions, speech, and behavior. So you feed forward these energies as you act, behave, gesture, and emote. It explains the gestalt experience that emerges from the system dynamics. As a system of thinking-feeling-physiology, new emergent properties arise —we call them gestalts.5 They become something “more than the sum of the parts” and different from the sum of the parts. As such, the gestalt experience cannot be explained or understood by merely breaking down the component parts. An analysis of all of the elements does not explain them. Something new emerges from the interactive parts of the system. It explains the paradoxical and counter-intuitive nature of solutions. Many responses that bring solutions, power, healing, and the unleashing of latent powers and talents seem paradoxical, even counter-intuitive. They go against “common sense.” The common “wisdom” from the cultural background do not suggest them. That’s because the problem or interference or difficulty involves a confusion of levels, a logical level error. To find a solution, you have to sort out the confusion of levels and introduce a new way of operating that on the surface may seem contradictory or counter-intuitive—what we call paradoxical. 6 -126-

What are Your Take Aways? At the heart of Meta-Coaching is meta-stating, a powerful and transformative process that describes how a person creates his inner world of frames. While Meta-States, as a model, has many rich and complex descriptions, the process is simple and singular—applying one state to another. Meta-States deals with reflexivity—recursively reflecting upon ourselves, stepping back, higher levels of awareness and consciousness, the spiraling and looping of the mind-body-emotion system, and how we live and operate at meta-levels most of the time. For the Meta-Coach, understanding and working with the metastating process opens up a rich and holistic world that enables one to more fully understand the psycho-logics of a person’s meanings and inner world and how to pace, enter, and facilitate transformation.

End of the Chapter Notes: 1. For a chapter on Korzbyski’s work and its influence in Neuro-Semantics, see NLP Going Meta (2001) and also Meta-States (2000). 2. This comes from the book, Games Slim and Fit People Play (2001), where I have extensively described the semantic-loading of something so that it becomes addictive. 3. See Alfred Korzybski’s Science and Sanity (1933, 1994) for his Theory of MultiOrdinality. I include it in the book, Communication Magic (1997/2001) in extending the Meta-Model and especially in describing multi-ordinal language. 4. For a fuller description of the Meta-States Model, see Meta-States (2000), Secrets of Personal Mastery (1999), Meta-State Magic (2002). 5. A gestalt state occurs when we bring a few or many variables to a state so that systemically “something more than the sum of the parts” emerges from the coalescing of the many facets. 6. See The Paradoxical Conversation in the book Executive Coaching (2014).

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COACHING SYSTEMICALLY The Matrix Model “We are systems. We are made up of systems, and we live in systems.” Joseph O’Connor Systems thinking is thinking in circles of mutual influence rather than in going out in a straight-line of one-way relations. L. Michael Hall “Most of the problems in organizations are systems problems.” Edwards Deming “Unfortunately, no one can tell you what the Matrix is; you have to see it for yourself.” Morpheus, movie, The Matrix

T

o coach effectively requires that you think, work, and communicate systemically. The reason for this is simple—you are coaching a system—the human system. You are coaching a system comprised of mind-body-and-emotion (MBE). So your client lives in and expresses his or her mental-physical-emotional system.

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To fail to recognize the human system as a system and how it actually works is to fail to understand human beings and how they truly function. While nearly everyone seems to recognize this basic fact, most also seem to resist it and do the opposite. Linear thinking is easier and less messy. Yet to try to impose linear thinking on the human system is to put a richly complex system on a Procrustean bed and cut off everything that doesn’t fit the linear assumptions. Sadly, there’s a lot of “coaching” that does precisely that—to the detriment of the clients. All of this leads us to a series of questions about systems and systemic coaching: What is the human system? How does it work? What are the central component parts or variables in the system and how do each relate to each other? And knowing this, how do you, as a coach, use systems thinking to enhance your coaching skills? Thinking Systemically about Mind-Body States First a word about language. It helps to think systemically by using systemic language. That’s one reason we use the word state in MetaCoaching. As a systemic term, state includes mind, body, and emotion. A state is at the same time a mental state, an emotional state, and a physiological state. The flaw, linguistically, of speaking about these separately, as mind, body, or emotion, is that it suggests these are three different and separate things. They are not. What we call mind and body and emotion are all part of the same thing. Together they comprise a single system. After all, you can’t have “mind” apart from body and emotion, or “emotion” apart from body and mind. They all work interactively together as a system. It is a system—a system of interactive variables influencing each other. We therefore reconnect these terms to remember the systemic nature of human beings and to think and work systemically. To do that, I use the General Semantics technique of hyphenating terms, so mind-body-emotion will be abbreviated to MBE. These are three elements of the same thing—the same system. What we call “mind” and “emotion” are functions of our “body” as is easily recognized when we explore the brain-and-nervous system. What we “know” via our higher cognitive processes (the cerebellum, cerebral cortex, etc.) and what we “feel moved to do about it” (motor cortex, associative cortex, thalamus, etc.) are expressions of a singular system. -129-

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Accordingly, within every “thought” are feelings and emotions and within every emotion are “thoughts.” All of our mental-emotional processing occur within our body, physiology, neuro-chemistry, neuro-pathways, and neurology. This defines your neuro-semantics—it is your mind-bodyemotion system creating and registering your meanings. As a coach you have three ways into your client’s experience—mind, body, and emotion. What is the Human System? To begin with, a system is a set of inter-related parts or variables. These variables interact in such a way that the subsequent system develops emergent properties from these interactions. Then with these emergent features, the system itself becomes more richly complex. In the human system the first set of variables that you encounter are obviously what we have already addressed these factors in the previous chapters: Body: physiology, neurology, health or sickness, etc. Body factors: fitness, eating, exercising, sleeping, drugs, etc. Mind or consciousness: awareness, understanding, knowledge, ideas, information, etc. Social context: where, when, and with whom. Triggers: stimuli that evoke or provoke a reaction. State: the combination of mind and body in contexts. Yet within these variables and behind them are more factors that are a part of the human system and influence it: Meaning: interpretations, references, frames, beliefs, values, identities, understandings, knowledge, etc. Intentions: purposes, motives, motivations, agendas. Time: history, previous experiences, future imaginations, anticipations, fears, worries, hopes, legacy, etc. Self: one’s sense of value, being a person, identity, roles, self-image, etc. Others: relationships, connections, love, partners, children, colleagues, groups, group memberships, etc. Domains: areas of competence, expertise, unknown areas, communities, etc. Emergence: new properties that arise from combinations, gestalts. Loops: communication loops in the system, how they work, time element, feedback and feedforward loops (input, processing, outputting). -130-

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Let’s start with these variables in the human system and begin to identify the key principles which we can use as guidelines for working with the system. What do you need to know in order to work with the human system to coach a client effectively? What principles embrace the basic guidelines for thinking and working systemically? Principle #1: To enter into your client’s Matrix, match and validate the person. If you want to enter into a person’s Matrix, start with acceptance and validation. If you fight it or disagree with it, the person will not let you in. So seek first to understand it, match or pace it, and offer the person a sense of safety. By matching the outputs of your client (posture, breathing, stance, tone, volume, etc.) and matching his words (acknowledgment) the rapport you create begins to earn the right to enter into that Matrix. Principle #2: Follow the person’s meaning. Explore the person’s meaning about whatever subject comes up so that you can enter into your client’s meaning Matrix. Know that her Matrix is created and activated by her meanings— this is first and foremost. The Matrix is not created by events or circumstances. It is brought into being by the interpretations the person gives to things. “The meaning you give is the instinct you live.” 1 Principle #3: Follow the person’s reflexivity. Since your client creates his meanings by reflexively meta-stating ideas, emotions, memories, imaginations, etc. to layer his thought-feeling states, follow how he uses his reflexivity. When he thinks about one thing, what does he next think? When he accesses one awareness, where does he then go? How does he then classify things (name, label, categorize)? How does he then evaluate things? What are his belief frames? When belief frames are self-organizing attractors in his Matrix? Principle #4: Follow the information loops around the system. Knowing that there are two loops, the primary horizontal loop and the meta or vertical loop, explore what and how your client is inputting information and then processing that information (meta-stating at all levels) and then outputting it in her responses. Each of these loops involve feedback and feedforeword. The difference is that one is horizontal and external— the stimulus—response interaction. The other one is vertical and internal— the meaning-making and meaning embodiment process.

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The first loop is from outside as stimuli and back to the outside as responses, hence the stimulus—response horizontal loop (S–>R). This loop is empirical because you can see, hear, and feel the responses. The second loop is from the inside to the inside. Here the person feeds-back to herself in thinking, drawing conclusions, reasoning, etc. (meta-stating). This then leads her to feeling or embodying the information. The information is now turned into energy for responding (embodying). First inside, then outside. What is the person paying attention to on the outside? What does he select and focus on? What does the person bring in and represent? How does the person process those representations? How does the person reason from it and draw conclusions? What is the person’s style of feeding-back more information to self? How does the person now embody that information? How does she incorporate it in neurology? What feelings does he generate somatically? How then does she output it in behavior? In talk? In reactions? Principle #5: Examine how, and to what extent, the person embodies the information. This will give you a sense of the depth of the Matrix, that is, how deep the Matrix is in neurology (the body, feelings, etc.). When working with a client, after you identify the belief and value frames, find out what he has embodied, where, and how much. Use the last four questions (above bullet points) and these: How much do the frames now drive his experiences? How much have the frames become the person’s automatic and unconscious default system? Principle #6: Keep clarifying the problem that needs to be solved in your client’s Matrix. What we call “problems” are constructs and only exist within the meaning system of a meaning-maker. They do not exist out in the world. A person has a “problem” only when she has a goal and there’s something blocking or interfering him reaching it.2 How is X a problem? A problem to what objective? How does he know to call it a problem? What “solution” has he attempted? What worked? What did not work? In what way did it not work?

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By clarifying the problem, the objective, and the solution, you activate the client’s Matrix system for accessing new resources and mobilizing new solutions. Sometimes the so-called problem is just a symptom. Sometimes symptoms can become solutions. Sometimes problems can be totally reframed as the solution to another problem or as a step on the way to a solution. Symptoms are sometimes over-used strengths which are not properly contextualized. Symptomology can offer valuable insights about the system. Symptoms signal that something is wrong and are often frozen sequences of behaviors that have repetitively habituated an attempted solution which did not work. If that’s the case, these symptoms may point to blocked resources or to leverage points for change. Principle #7: Search for the system’s leverage points for change. All of the variables in a system are not equal. Some are more central to others; others are more peripheral and have less effect. As you engage in an awareness and analysis of the Matrix, observe those leverage point where a small change can have big consequences. The Matrix Model as a Systems Model What is a matrix? The word “matrix” literally means “womb” and so it speaks about the place where something is given birth. We often create a -133-

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matrix of two or three axes to compare two or three concepts in order to relate them and so give birth to a more complex concept. If we use “time” and “distance” as the X and Y axes, we can generate a new concept— miles-per-hour or kilometers-per-hour. In the movie The Matrix, it referred to the womb-like eggs where the machines were growing humans for their energy needs. What is given birth in the Matrix Model of Neuro-Semantics is meaning. Meaning is given birth in your MBE system —in your consciousness as a combination of your neurology, linguistics, semantics, culture, etc. The Matrix then is your inner world of frames—your frames of meaning, belief frames, understanding frames, frames of reference, etc. And just as with the movie, you were born in a Matrix—the world of meanings that were present in your family, language, school, culture, religion, etc. It is the World that you have received as the “real” world. Today, it is this Matrix of frames that governs how each of us perceives the world, reacts to it, and ultimately chooses the behaviors which are available to us. The Matrix is “the reality” in which you live. It is the sense of reality which emerges from all of the ideas, words, beliefs, etc. that you have learned. It emerges from the ones you inherit and from the ones that you invent. If all of these frames comprise your Matrix, it is also the world from which you operate as you engage the world of people and things. This is the world as you know it from the inside. It’s made up of all of the maps and models, the memories and imaginations, the fears and hopes that give structure and form to your life. How did the Matrix Come to Be? How did you come to find yourself in a Matrix? By being born. You were born into a matrix of frames. You were born into frames incorporated into the language you learn, the family into which you were born, the culture you assimilated, and the education that guided what and how you learned. These social realities arose long before you arrived and served as the cultural matrix or womb into which you were born. Inside of all of the cultural frames of beliefs, values, and expectations your MBE was, and continues to be, “cultured” and “cultivated” (e.g., “culture”) to fit you for life in that social reality. Those frames socialized you. In this way you enter into a culture and cultural reality. All of this occurred long before you knew anything about any of this. -134-

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In addition to group and cultural frames, you also invented your own individual matrix of frames that now governs your sense of reality. You built your frames from the experiences that you encounter in life and you built them with a five year old mind (!). Waking up to the Matrix In the sci-fi movie, The Matrix the lead character, Neo (“New”) found himself in the Matrix. The Matrix had him and he didn’t know it. But he was in the process of waking up to it. When he finally met Morpheus (“Transformation”), his mentor offered him two pills, a blue one and a red one. If he took the red pill, Morpheus would show him the truth about the Matrix: “[The Matrix is] . . . the world that’s been pulled down over your eyes to hide you from the truth. . . . It is a prison for your mind . . . a neuralinteractive simulation, a dreamworld that you live in, the inside of the map, not the territory.”3

The Matrix also is all around you or so it seems. It is actually a world of your own making and construction. In fact, you keep inventing it as you go ... everyday you add belief frames, value frames, understanding frames, decision frames, intention frames . . . all of the “logical levels” of your mind which are the embedded frames within frames that make up the Matrix of your mind-body system, your neuro-semantic reality. It is frames all the way up. The Quality of the Matrix World While this is the dynamic structure and fabric of reality as you know it, the question for coaching concerns the quality and robustness of your Matrix world. In coaching to the matrix of all of the meaning frames that gives form and shape to a client’s reality, begin by asking a series of questions—quality control questions: Is your Matrix World of frames robust and powerful and a wonderful place to live? How empowering is it so that you are waking up every day with an excitement about this day’s adventure in life, in career, in contribution, in personal growth, in love? Are you ready (you may not be) to become a master of your Matrix —so that you have your belief frames, value frames, understanding frames, intention frames, etc. or do your frames have you?

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Are you ready to wake up to your Matrix and to take charge of the way you create meaning and intention ... that will create a rich and lovely place to come from?" What is the quality of your Matrix? Empowering or limiting? Selfserving or caring about others? Joyful or miserable? The Matrix Model, grounded in state, is comprised of seven sub-matrices. All of these frames, embedded within frames, make up the essence of your personality, your attitudes, and your perceptions. They govern who you are and what you are about. They are built around your mind-body-emotion, or neuro-linguistic, states and create your higher neuro-semantic states. In designing this model, one of the matrices was left un-numbered (the State matrix) because this matrix grounds every thought-feeling awareness. Yet “state” is also one of the three process matrices—the matrices by which you create your overall Matrix. The Matrix is comprised of three process matrices and five content matrices. These make up of the essential frames and meanings that each of us hold in mind about ourselves. We then carry these with us everywhere we go. The Process Matrices: Meaning: The meanings you create about things— what they are (identification), how they work (causation), their value, etc. Intention: Your intentions or purpose that directs your focus. State: The embodiment of all the matrices that grounds all of your frames of meaning and intention. The Content Matrices built around five concepts about Self: Self: Your worth, identity, roles, self-image, etc. Power: Your capability to act, skills, competencies, resources. Others: Your social self, relationships, sense of connection. Time: Your temporal self, experiences of the past, present, and future. World: Universes of meanings, domains, industries, etc. The Process Matrices Three of the sub-matrices are process matrices by which we construct our Matrix. These are the processes the thinking-feeling-choosing experiencing -136-

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of information by which we invent the content of our meanings. As process matrices these are the ones that describe how we will experience our MBE States (State), the construction of meaning (Meaning), and intentions, purposes, and agendas (Intention). These matrices also give a coach a large range of coaching questions by which to explore a client’s Matrix.

State Matrix: What state are you in? What do you call this state? How are you feeling? How intense is the state? What triggers this state? How do you create this state? What is the quality and style of this state? Meaning Matrix: What is this event (or situation, person)? [Identify what it is] How does it work or function? [The Cause-Effect operation] What significance do you give it? How much significance? [Complex Equivalence, Value] What does it mean to you? What else? What is the quality of this meaning? -137-

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Intention Matrix: What do you really, really want? What’s important to you? And why is that important? What’s your outcome? When you get that outcome, what does that do for you, or what do you get from that? What’s the purpose? What’s it all about? What is the quality of this intention? Content Matrices From the meanings, intentions, and states that you create and experience, you construct meanings about specific subjects and all of this affects you— your sense of who you are. These meanings and intentions influence your development as a person. This is the self axis which determines the very feel and fabric of yourself as a person: your worth as a person (self), your skills and abilities (power), your relationships (others), your temporal nature (time), and your universes of meaning which you regularly navigate (world). These distinctions about self come from Developmental Psychology and specifically from the work of Erick Erickson in the psycho-social stages of human development.4 Self Matrix: Who are you? How valuable are you as a person? [Identity] Do you conditionally or unconditionally value yourself? [SelfEsteem] How do you define yourself? [Self-Definition] What roles do you play in life? Who are you in these roles? [Roles] What is your image of yourself? [Self-Image] Does your self-valuing support and enhance you? Power Matrix: [Self-Confidence in Abilities] What are you skilled at? What are some of your best natural talents? What mental, emotional, and behavioral skills do you feel confident about and self-assured? What are your best coping and mastering skills? What skills do you need to further develop and refine? How much self-confidence do you have regarding your skills? How much self-efficacy do you feel about your basic powers?

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Others Matrix: Who are you in relation to others? What audience/s do you carry in your mind and play your life to? Who are other people and what are they like? Are they open, friendly, and rewarding, or are they fearful, dangerous, and punishing? Do you easily enter into trusting relationships or hold back? How well do you create loving companions, friends, and colleagues? How much of a team player are you? What are your best social and interpersonal skills and states? Time Matrix: As a temporal being, how do you experience time? Do you feel that time your friend or enemy? Do you have enough time? Do you manage yourself well in the dimension of time? What time zone do you mostly live in? Past, present, or future? Do you have the ability to sequence time effectively to get things done in a timely manner? How skilled are you to be able to step out of time and enjoy the eternal moment when you so choose? How skillful are you at accessing fast or slow time at choice? World Matrix: What worlds, as universes of meaning, do you know and navigate? What specific worlds or arenas captivate your interest and fascination? What do you think about life and the human adventure? Is the universe friendly or frightening? In what worlds do you never explore? What new worlds do you want to visit and become skilled in?

The Matrix and Developmental Psychology The content matrices come from Developmental Psychology.3 They reflect the psycho-social stages of Erik Erickson, the psycho-cognitive stages of Piaget, as well as the work of other Developmental Psychologists. The -139-

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Matrix reflects the natural development of human personality over the lifespan. In the process of developing and becoming human, the first content matrix is the Self matrix. As you differentiate yourself from mother, early home,

family, etc., you become more and more yourself as a separate self. This is you as a person. The Self matrix includes your sense of worth, your identity, your social roles, your self-image. The next facet of you that develops is your sense of activity, of what you can do. In this Power matrix, you experience yourself as more than a human being, you are also a doer— you act, take action, and develop your capabilities, talents, and predispositions. These are your basic powers of action and response. The next development of self involves a concept, one that emerges very early, and that arises from one of your mental powers, that of “holding your presentations constant” of time. By holding constant representations of what you have already experienced, are experiencing, and projecting -140-

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forward as what you might again experience, you invent the concept of time and of yourself as a temporal being. “Time” emerges as a concept, and a feeling, as your ability to represent events that have happened, are happening, and that could happen. In sorting out the events of your life and the activities you engage in, your ability to hold the events in mind enables you to differentiate the temporal classifications of past, present, and future (Time). With your growing mind and resources for thinking, feeling, imagining, remembering, etc., your “constancy of representation” enables you to carry mother, father, and others from family, friends, school, etc. in your mind. The Others matrix describes your emotional and social intelligence in relating to other people. This is you as a social being—your social self. Nor do things stop there. As your exploration of your world continues, and you develop mobility, you hold in mind the understandings, beliefs, experiences, etc. that you develop about many different worlds— universes of meaning that you become acquainted with. Such worlds are the worlds of business, school, finance, medicine, dentistry, coaching, NLP, selfdevelopment, therapy, athletics, and a thousand other worlds. In your Intention matrix, your intentions at first are simple and instinct-like: to feel comfortable, to be nursed and fed, to play, to discover, to explore, to express yourself, etc. Your intention begins with what you need in order to live, be stable, connect, and feel good about yourself. Yet it doesn’t stop there. Beyond those deficiency needs (the lower needs) are your being or abundance needs (the higher needs). These describe what you are wired for and what clamors within which expresses you as your best—when you are most alive. So beyond your simple intentions of your basic needs are the higher needs that enable you to actualize your best version of you. Taken together, your complete Matrix of all of these matrices make up all of your mappings and models of the world that you both inherit and create. The Matrix as a Model As a model, the Matrix offers a map so that you can more effectively navigate your journey to, in, and around various experiences. If you are going to coach to the Matrix, how do you begin? Where do you begin? -141-

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What do you do? What process distinctions will enable you to know how to work effectively with a client in a coaching situation? As an overview, the following distinctions offers a general format. 6 The Matrix model provides a powerful coaching tool for thinking and working systemically with the MBE system. It allows you to watch how information moves into the system as it activates a person and energy emerges from it in the form of speech and behavior. For a coaching perspective this enables you and your client to recognize what’s occurring and the mechanisms that make it so.

How to Coach to the Matrix 1) Begin with State. Since everything is grounded in a person’s state, and since every person is always in some state, start here and begin with your client’s state. Isn’t it amazing how most people do not even notice their states? States can be so present and undeniable, and yet so invisible. Ask: -142-

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What state are you in right now? What is your state of mind, your state of body, your state of emotion? How did you get into this state? What triggers evoked it? What conditions or circumstances contributed to it? Where is the energy of the state? Where does it go? How intense or dominating is the state? How resourceful or limiting? These questions invite a state analysis for state awareness, which is the foundation for state management which, in turn, is the foundation for all personal and business mastery. After all, if you can’t manage yourself— then you are essentially out-of-control! 2) Enter the meaning-making (meta-stating) funnel. Your mind-body state always, and inevitably, arises from your thinking, meaning-making, and interpreting of your experiences. This means you can now follow the spiraling meta-jumps that your client makes as he creates meanings, and then meanings about those meanings. What are you thinking? What’s coming to mind? What are you remembering, imagining, fearing, hoping, anticipating, second-guessing, dreaming, etc.? What frames are you setting in your mind about what’s going on? What references, associations, linguistics, metaphors, and meta-state structures are you using or creating? Does the meaning-making spiral upward into more positive responses? Are you creating meanings that send you downward in a negative or vicious spiral? Are your meanings enhancing or limiting you, are they empowering or sabotaging your success and happiness? Do you like these meanings? Within the Matrix, your meaning-making funnel governs how a person is constructing her meanings. Here thinking patterns play a determining and governing role in the quality of life and the quality of one’s mental maps. When things go awry, it is always the frame and framing that’s the problem, never the person. Meaning-making is influenced by one’s physical state and environmental conditions.

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3) Explore the intentions in the back of the mind. An especially important construction of meaning is how clients create their intentional meanings. This is the construction of reasons, agendas, motives, and purposes. This identifies why a person does what he does. What are the thoughts in the back of your mind as you say that? Or feel that? Or think about that person? What are you attempting to do, feel, or achieve in this? Why do you want to reach that outcome? When you get that, what does that do for you? What’s even higher than that? In inquiring about intentions, don’t stop at the first or second level. Explore the entire intentional ladder. Go all the way up to the person’s highest intentions behind her purposes and inspirations to what we call the “spiritual” realm. Then use those intentions to reorient him back to his daily life. When you do this, you enable the client to take an intentional stance in life. 4) Identify the robustness and vitality of each content matrix. As your client constructs cognitive and intentional meanings, and then experiences a MBE state to register those meanings. The person constructs specific content about self, others, the world, time, and resources for coping and mastering things. The meaning-making process in its various forms result in specific content for ones life. Shift from process to content to check the validity and quality of that content. The specific ideas, thoughts, and beliefs matter. After all, it’s possible to install thought viruses and sick, morbid beliefs that are wrong-headed and muddled. They send one in directions that will never enable the person to reach his or her objectives. Erroneous ideas and maps can completely misinform and misdirect a person. For this reason, ask about content from time to time, and clear out old “erroneous zones.” Are there any mis-mappings in the matrices that create a lifestyle that is unecological and unbalanced? How healthy or toxic is the content in the person’s Self matrix? Are there any thought viruses in the Others matrix? What do you think and believe and feel about Time that may be undermining your well-being? What do you believe about the World of X which does not enhance your life? -144-

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In Meta-Coaching we run quality control checks to enable people check the quality of the overall Matrix or any specific matrix. Doing this means checking ecology, congruence, reality, health, vitality, and other factors that contribute to the human quality of a person’s experiences. 5) Step in and out to see the System as a System. As you shift to systemic thinking, use the Matrix Model to diagnose, profile, and then coach. Shift to consider the dynamic processes occurring in the person’s Matrix. Then follow the feedback loops as information enters the system and energy is created and outputted from the system. Thinking systemically requires that you keep all of the parts in mind and see them operating simultaneously. A central way to support and enable systemically thinking is to use and draw system diagrams to follow the energies through the system. In the Matrix Model we have used a set of diagrams that enable us to detect the input, processing, and output of information and energy. 6 To think systemically, use these questions to prompt yourself: What information is being inputted and processed? What energy is being generated and expressed? In what areas? How healthy, appropriate, and empowering is this information– energy exchange? What iterations are occurring in the matrix? What patterns are being created and/or replicated? What is the quality of the feedback loops? The feed forward loops? Is the Matrix spiraling up or down? What frames are working like attractors in the system and creating self-reinforcing or self-fulfilling prophecies? 6) Identify the Attractors in the system. An attractor is any idea, emotion, experience, value, or other belief frame that attracts us as a value. The attraction that we feel depends on how much meaning and value we give it so it plays a meaningful role. Use the system attractors to gain insight into the dynamic organization of the system—where it is going, if it is spiraling upward or downward, and where the leverage points are for change in the system. To explore and identify an attractor, step back from the system and use the following questions: What is the system attracting to itself? How is the system becoming increasingly organized? What is becoming foregrounded in the system? -145-

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What is becoming backgrounded? How is the information of the system creating a bias? What is the system’s bias? Wha is it biased for and biased against? 7) Ask a thousand curious respectful questions. Because ultimately coaching is questioning, invite exploration and inquiry. Listen for your client’s questions and then question their questions to run a quality control check on them. Ask questions to flush out the presuppositions of the system itself so that you can examine the health of the self-organizing energies of a system. Use non-judgment questioning and you’ll find that the system will change in response to your very presence. Matrix Coaching Using the Matrix Model as a framework for coaching gives you a coherent model for describing, thinking about, and working with the frames that make up “personality,” and all of the nested frames that govern a person’s experiences. This enables you to profile people, detect patterns and leverage points in a system, and facilitate an empowering transformation via your coaching. The design of Matrix Coaching is to empower a client to take complete charge of him or herself in becoming the master of one’s own Matrix. It is in, and with, the Matrix that we make meaning and create the intentions that energize and motivate our actions. It is from here that your client creates states of self, power, others, time, and world. These constructs he then takes with him everywhere he goes. Yet sometimes these frames do not empower. Sometimes they do not bring out one’s best. And that’s when the coaching can become so incredibly empowering. What are Your Take Aways? The Matrix that you were born in, and that you co-created with your social environment as you grew up, is an invisible world of mentalemotional associations, ideas, beliefs, and understandings that form your inner world. You, as do we all, then project that internal world onto the outer world.

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Take away that as a model, the Matrix Model gives you a simple yet dynamic structure as a template for working with the rich details of your client’s internal world. Take away that it is possible to learn to see the Matrix in code. Learning to see the a person’s Matrix enables you to see the fluid nature of the mind-body-emotion system and to follow a person’s energy as it moves through the system. Take away that coaching inherently involves mindfulness. When you invite your clients to step back, they are thereby creating a greater mindfulness of their Matrix. Sometimes this will then lead to de-commissioning frames which interfere with their well-being and sometimes this will involve setting new frames for greater health and vitality.

End of the Chapter Notes: 1. See Self-Actualization Psychology (2008). This statement is my formulation that adds to Maslow’s work in formulating the hierarchy of needs. 2. Problem comes from “pro-blem,” something “thrown” “before” a person. 3. In the screenplay of the movie, The Matrix, these are the words of Morpheus to Neo as he explains the Matrix. 4. For more about the Matrix, see The Matrix Model (2003). In Neuro-Semantics we have numerous books and training manuals that apply the matrix to various experiences. 5. John Burton, Ph.D. has written a fascinating book combining Meta-States with developmental psychology, States of Equilibrium (2002). 6. See the book Coaching Systemically (2012). Pascal Gambardella, an expert in systems, has diagramed the coaching sessions in that book using standard systems language and diagrams.

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COACHING THE INNER GAME Coaching Meta-Level Frames “Coaching is a dance in which the learner, not the coach, is the leader.” Tim Gallway, (Inner Game of Work, p. 207) “Performance equals potential minus interference– the equation that’s at the essence of the Inner Game approach. ... Observe your serve freshly as it is now. Begin to be interested in it and experience it as fully as you can. Simply observe without interfering. Awareness of what is, without judgment, is relaxing, and is the best precondition for change.” (Inner Game of Tennis, p. 68)

G

iven the inner game models of the past two chapters (the MetaStates Model and the Matrix Model), it should be obvious that coaching is predominantly an inside job. At times it may seem like an outside job, one focused on results, performance, and outcomes. Yet it is not. Results, performance, and outcomes speak about the Outer Game of life—what we want to achieve externally to improve the quality of our lives. Yet to achieve that, authentic coaching goes first and foremost to the Inner Game. This is the “game” of how we think, represent, believe, frame,

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understand, etc.—all of the things that we do to encode the game that we play on the outside. Now the term “game” refers to a set of actions. Those actions could be outside and show up in what you actually do, or they could be on the inside, and how you are internally coding and responding to those actions. Where did this language come from? There are several sources. The use of the word “game” for a set of actions originated in the 1960s with Eric Berne’s popular book, Games People Play. That book launched the Transactional Analysis (TA) model which popularized Psychoanalysis using three ego states (Parent, Adult, Child) and four life scripts: I’m Not Okay—You’re Not Okay; I’m Okay—You’re Not Okay; I’m Not Okay—You’re Okay; and I’m Okay—You’re Okay. These states and scripts then led to ways of relating to each other— transactions or games. Berne used the term “game” exclusively for unhealthy activities. There were no good or healthy games for him, all were toxic and to be eliminated. Prior to that Gregory Bateson, along with the folks at the Mental Research Institute, popularized the term “frame.” This led the developers of NLP to talk about things in terms of frames— framing our understandings, deframing, and reframing. Then in 1972 Timothy Gallwey published his book, The Inner Game of Tennis. Later he followed that up with a series books: The Inner Game of Music, The Inner Game of Golf, The Inner Game of Skiing, The Inner Game of Work. Via this work he became known as the grandfather of the field of Coaching. Now with the terms, frame and games, and using the basic premises of the Neuro-Semantic model of meaning and performance, I published Frame Games in 1999 prior to the movie, The Matrix. This introduced the inner game into Meta-Coaching from the beginning. In a later edition, I retitled the book: Winning the Inner Game (2007). Inner Game Coaching The inner game is the “game” —the set of actions and relations—which are in our mind, and by which we represent things, and then self-reflexively layer additional thoughts upon our understanding. All of this creates our inner state of mind. The set of actions required to play this game, and to coach this game, entails knowing how to access a client’s frame of mind and work with the many different kinds and levels of thoughts and thinking -149-

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patterns (chapters 9 and 10). This is where coaching is most authentic and effective. This also brings us back to a fact about coaching the meta-levels. In this place, as the coach, you are not the expert in the content or the subject matter. The coach’s expertise is in the meta-level processes—what they are, how they work, how to influence them, etc. Practically this means the ability to work with the client’s processes of meta-stating, meaning-making, framing, matrix-building, etc. Does the idea of not knowing the client’s content surprise you? In interviewing and modeling the expert coaches in our Meta-Coach trainings, I have discovered the opposite. It is when the experts do not know the content specifics that they are often most effective. That’s because their expertise is about how to handle structural processes, rather than being an expert consultant with ready advice. This gives room so that the client can be the expert of his or her own content. Coaches who know a lot about a given area (i.e., business, marketing, health, relationships, investing, real estate, etc.) are actually often less effective. That’s because they can be easily seduced to teach and/or to give advice or to “know” what the client means or needs without checking. Yet coaching is design to facilitate the client discovering what he already knows or what she can discover and do for herself. Doing that leads to selfmanagement. The problem with advice giving and teaching is that in imparting knowledge you step out of being a process expert and begin playing the role being a content expert. Yet this typically evokes resistance because most people don’t like being told what to do and because of this it can take longer. When you do that, you are not meeting the client at his model of the world, but your own. Yet listening and interacting in terms of your model of the world is actually the structure of mis-communication and misunderstanding. Coaching, at its best, empowers the client to be her own best expert over her own life. This is especially true regarding the client’s way of doing things—a coach enters the client’s model of the world to fit with his or her values, personal visions and dreams, and style. Rather than focusing on adding things to the client’s knowledge base, skill level, etc., coaching -150-

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empowers the client to focus on what’s truly important, highlighting them and then subtracting what gets in the way. What coaching supremely deals with are the interferences to the client’s best performances and peak experiences. Because coaching facilitates discovering and releasing these interferences, coaching is often as much about unlearning as about learning. Coaching from the Know-Nothing Frame A great example of this is described by Timothy Gallwey (2000) in his book, The Inner Game of Work. Gallway began as a sports coach and when he happened upon the principles of the “inner game” of tennis, he wrote a book by that title. The book became a best seller, not only because it was excellent for those who wanted to learn tennis, but also for anyone who wanted to handle one’s inner game about a thousand other subjects. Here’s how Gallwey describes coaching an area of expertise that he knew nothing about. What he did know was how to work with a person learning and developing a new skill. In the following, I have added the italics to emphasize the role of sensory observing and awareness. “I gave a presentation on the Inner Game to the Houston Philharmonic Orchestra. After a brief presentation, they wanted a demonstration, and the tuba player volunteered. I play no musical instrument and had never heard a solo tuba. When the tuba player arrived on-stage, I asked him what he would most like to learn. “What I find most difficult is articulation in the upper range,” he said. I had no idea what he was talking about, but asked him to play a passage. It sounded good to me, but he shook his head, obviously not pleased with his performance. “What did you notice?” I asked, knowing I didn’t really have to know anything myself, because I was going to rely on his knowledge. “It wasn’t so clean.” “How did you know?” I asked. “That’s an interesting question. I can’t actually hear it when it happens because the bell of the tuba is too far from my ear. But I can feel it in my tongue,” he reported, getting me close to the critical variables I needed to use as a focus of attention. “What happens in your tongue?” -151-

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“Well, in difficult passages like this one, with upper-range notes, it often starts feeling dry and a little thick.” I had everything I needed. “Play the same passage again, but this time don’t try hard to keep the articulation clean. I merely want you to notice any changes in the degree of moisture in your tongue as you play the passage.” He played the same passage and I could detect no changes. They both sounded good to my untrained ear. But the rest of the orchestra got up out of their seats and gave him a standing ovation! And the tuba player had a satisfied and somewhat surprised smile on his face. Without showing any particular interest in his results, I asked him what he noticed about his tongue as he played the passage. “It stayed moist the entire time,” he said, “and it never felt thick.” “Why do you think that way?” I asked, though I was already formulating an answer in my head. “I felt more relaxed. The pressure was off when you said don’t try hard for clean articulation and I was very curious to notice what was happening with my tongue.” “Maybe when you feel the pressure,” I added, “the anxiety dries out your tongue a little and makes it feel thicker. There isn’t much pressure when you are focused on what’s happening. You just let go of a little fear, and Self 2 knew what to do.” (pp. 210-212). The Secret of Coaching the Inner Game What did Gallwey do in that example? What is the secret about the inner game and coaching to the inner game? The secret is awareness and awareness questions. The thing to notice is how he did not give advice. Instead he asked questions which drove the client to start noticing in the here-and-now moment what is occurring presently. He asked awareness questions. What did you notice? What happens in your tongue? And the client accessed a state of just-noticing awareness: “I was very curious to notice...” The dynamic within such questions is that it forces the client to become uniquely aware and with certain awareness questions, to -152-

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become aware of things typically outside-of-conscious-awareness. This becomes especially powerful when you, as the coach, direct a client’s awareness to focus on factors and variables of his experience that govern the structure of that experience. When you direct her focus on how she represents something, in what representational system, with what metaprogram, at what level, etc., this invites the client to step up into a level of awareness of processes which will then enable him to access what’s been unconscious. This wonderfully fits the NLP Communication Model which began with Fritz Perls’ mandate, “Lose your mind and come to your senses.” For Perls and Satir and many others, the ability to move from evaluative language and awareness to sensory awareness enables us to get out of our heads and metalevels of evaluations and recover the actual facts at the sensory level of experience. To that end, we use the Meta-Model of Language to take our language back to the representational level. This invites a new level of awareness. In NLP all of this has led to sensory awareness questions. “What are you aware of when you experience X? What are you seeing? Is it in color or black-and-white? Is it close or far? Large or small? What are you hearing? What is the volume, the tone, and the tempo of those sounds? What are you sensing kinesthetically? Is it cold or hot? Smooth or rough?” In Meta-Coaching we take this to the next step by focusing on asking awareness questions. “Given what you have just said, what are you aware of as you said that? What else? What do you realize now about your experience with X?” The Art of Coaching the Inner Game If coaching focuses on unleashing a person’s potentials and does so by enabling the client and empowering him to find, access, and apply his inner resources, then coaching the inner game involves several aspects: Enabling the client’s ability to learn, develop better learning skills, accelerate her learning, and unlearn what is now unuseful, etc. Identifying the person’s talents and skills and developing them in order to unleash them in a specific context. Discovering the person’s structure of meaning and meaning-making and enabling the person to develop greater awareness and choice (ownership) in his or her process of meaning construction and -153-

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suspension. Then the person will feel in charge of her own meaning constructions. Identifying the client’s structure of interference and sabotage. It may then involve giving feedback that will expose incongruencies and/or blind spots. It involves feeding back themes and experiences to facilitate a client to step back and adopt new ways of responding. Discovering the system loops of communication— how a client inputs information into the system, processes information, and outputs responses which empowers the person and enhances one’s life. Enabling the client to embody what he knows so that he can act on that knowledge. This facilitates closing the knowing-doing gap and making actual what the person knows. Mobilizing the client’s resources and focusing them on the person’s desired outcome. There’s another premise and secret in this which we often speak about and reiterate in Meta-Coaching: When you win the inner game, the outer game becomes a cinch. Often change, new learnings, unleashing, transformations, etc. will not, and cannot, occur at the behavioral level. That’s because the outer game is a function of the inner game. It is the outer game that most people try to win first. Yet more often than not, one can only create a transformative difference in the Outer Game after winning the Inner Game. What are Your Take Aways? Take away that the only form of authentic and truly effective coaching occurs when the person is coached for his or her Inner Game. When this happens, then coaching becomes a powerful modality for enhancing performance and producing higher quality and peak performances. Meta-Coaching especially focuses on this step upward to the higher levels of the client’s inner game. That’s because, using the MetaStates Model and the Matrix Model, it specifically takes the client inside to examine, test, evaluate, build, suspend, set, and activate the frames which make up his or her Matrix. Meta-Coaching works systemically mostly with the higher levels to unleash developmental and transformational power so that a client -154-

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can step easily and graciously into a focus state of flow (a genius state) and take his or her competencies to yet a higher level. Meta-Coaching is also about meaning, about the semantic structures that we incorporate in our bodies so that they become our “way of being” in the world. Then the changes and learnings become so habitual they become intuitive as an automatic response.

End Notes: 1. MovieMind is a very readable book that describes how our mind-body system creates an inner world of information and how we can take charge of our minds and states by “running our own brains.” 2. Timothy Gallwey’s 1972 book, The Inner Game of Tennis probably single-handedly did more to initiate the field of Coaching today as any other single work. From a sports coach he eventually became a business coach, an executive coach, and introduced many of the key concepts for this field.

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COACHING CHANGE The Axes of Change Model What is needed today is “... to create a new kind of human being who is comfortable with change, who enjoys change, who is able to improvise, who is able to face with confidence, strength, and courage a situation of which he has absolutely no forewarning.” Abraham Maslow (1971, p. 56) “Change is one of the most frustrating and most widely discussed, problems of management today.” (p. 215) Frederic Lalous, Reinventing Organizations

I

f coaching is about anything, it is about change. For that reason we recognize that coaches are change agents par excellent. Given that, to be an effective coach requires knowing a lot about change— what it is, how it works, the numerous kinds of change, levels of change, the mechanisms that facilitate the change process, the contributing factors, the restraining factors, the differences between remedial and generative change, the differences between individual and group changes, and much more. When I first started thinking about this factor in coaching, I did not distinguish between therapeutic change and coaching change. Yet it did not take long before that distinction became obvious and then critically -157-

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important. The literature at the time (1990s) strongly hinted that because coaching is not therapy, there should be a difference between changing something that needs fixing or a remedy (remedial change) and changing something that needs development and challenge to a next level of development in creating or generating something new and better (generative change). That led me to search for the models for coaching generative change which was clearly distinguished from therapy models. To that end I took to doing a literature review. I read every book on Coaching that I could get my hands on looking for a change model for coaching. Yet that is precisely what I could not find. All of the books on coaching at the time took their models for facilitating change in the coaching context from therapy models. What gave it away was that all of the models included two aspects about change that fit for people needing therapy and did not fit for people wanting coaching. The presence of these two aspects also revealed that the models were based on therapy assumptions, not the premises of Self-Actualization Psychology. What were these two aspects? Resistance and relapse. Resistance speaks about therapy because most people who need therapy, who really need to change, simultaneously don’t want to change. They fear the change, and so resist the change. They are not strong enough to handle the change—which is why, in order to change they have to create a strong bond with the therapist and build up their ego-strength—their sense of self so that they can eventually get to the place where they can entertain the idea of change. In part, this explains why such change takes a long time. It can only go as fast as the client’s resistance decreases. So completely different from that situation is the one with coaching clients. These people come to coaching not because they have to change, but primarily because they want to change. They are change-embracers, not change-resisters. They think about change, plan for change, get excited about their next level of change. They also have the ego-strength to know that embracing the next level of development will enable them to be more of who they potentially can be. Relapse also speaks about therapy because one of the big challenges or problems in therapy concerns sustainability. That’s why we ask the question, “Will the change last? Will the person fall back onto old -158-

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patterns?” How will the person avoid the old triggers, resist the old seductions, and stand up against the culture of family or environment? In some domains, such as drug and alcohol counseling, the limiting idea is installed, “If you take one drink, you are in danger of falling back into alcoholism again and all of your progress will be lost.” This presupposes lots of things: Change is an either-or experience, you either keep it or lose it. It presupposes that the addiction is the most powerful element and highly deterministic. How completely different the situation is in coaching! Here the premise is one of continual growth and development—in other words, change. Ongoing change is what we assume and expect. That’s why coaching clients integrate the change and use it to move forward. Why would a person go back especially if it is just a matter of time and practice to create a full integration? Developing an Exclusive and New Model for Coaching Change These were some of the considerations that led me to begin to search for and eventually to create a new model for the field of Coaching. So again, viewing the actual coaching experiences of some of the Expert Coaches that I began with, I began interviewing them and modeling from them what they actually did in coaching change. Eventually I deduced that they were essentially relying upon and using four change mechanisms— They were coaching the client’s motivational state addressing what they wanted, and what they had enough of, and no longer wanted. They were coaching the client’s decision or commitment to change to make sure that it was a solid decision, an ecological decision, and a decision that they would live up to. They were coaching the client’s ability to create a new strategy or inner game for the change, a blueprint, or plan of what they would do, how, when, where, with whom, the steps they would take, etc. They were coaching to the client’s integration of the change so that the change would last, would become part and parcel of the person’s way of being in the world, and thereby become sustainable. Upon discovering these four mechanisms of change, I started wondering how to organize them, how to put them together into some format that we could use as a model. Having worked with the first one, the motivation mechanism, I immediately recognized that it contained a two-fold variable.1 It involved toward-motivation and away-from motivation— a meta-159-

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program!2 That triggered for me several questions: “Could the other mechanisms involve meta-programs? And if so, which ones?” I also quickly identified the meta-program for decision as the response style meta-program: reflective / active. But then I got stuck. I couldn’t figure out the next ones. Fortunately, at the time I was working with Michelle Duval, one of the original expert coaches. And because she was beginning to cotrain Meta-Coaching with me, I engaged her in this exploration. Together we identified creativity on the meta-program of internal / external referencing and then integration on the matching for sameness / mismatching for difference meta-program (which at first we called solidification). That gave us four continua or axes for the four mechanisms that govern how “normal” people (those who do not need therapy) change. At the same time eight coaching distinctions because, as a meta-program, we could put each mechanism on a continuum thereby giving us two polar opposites for each meta-program. We quickly recognized that the eight polar distinctions created, as it were, eight Coaching Change Roles for a coach so we named them: Motivation axis: Awakener and Challenger. Decision axis: Prober and Provoker. Creation axis: Co-creator and Actualizer. Integration axis: Reinforcer and Tester. Still we were not done. We had all of the pieces, but we did not have a structure. And without a structure, we did not have a process for how to relate the four mechanisms of change for the process of change. Again I played around with numerous ways to organize the four axes without success until the collaboration with Michelle Duval triggered the idea of laying them over each other so that they form a circle like a wheel with the eight coaching roles on the outside. That gave us the diagram of the Axes of Change Model. A Coaching Change Model “Change” in the context of Coaching means altering something so that it becomes different— it may be more of the same, extending what’s already there, to improve it. It could be adding something new that was not there before. It could be changing what is external or going inside to change the -160-

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internal conditions. Or it could be changing the entire direction of a person or organization. This gives us different kinds and levels of change. At the first level of change we have continuous improvement— more of the same. This is continuous change— expanding, improving, refining, making things more effective, more elegant. At the behavioral level this typically covers the area known as Performance Coaching. At the second level of change we have dis-continuous change—instead of continuing to improve the same thing, we add something new to the situation. It does not continue what has been, but instead shifts to something “outside the box.” What is new to the person or the organization may come from outside by modeling a best practice elsewhere, by learning what top performers are doing or believing, or by inventing it afresh. Figure 12:1 LEVELS OF CHANGE Level IV:

Change4 — New Directions; New World; Revolutionary Change — Change of Direction and Matrix

Level III:

Change3 — New Person; Evolutionary Change Change of sense of Self or Identity

Level II:

Change2 — New Behaviors Change to new class of Behaviors, Skills, Strategies

Level I:

Change1 — Expanded Behaviors Change to new Flexibility

Level O:

Change0 — Programmed Responses or Habits No change in response at all.

At the third level of change we have evolutionary change—this speaks about a person or organism growing, developing, and evolving to becoming more of what it can become. This quality of change usually involves new beliefs, values, and understandings. It could be the maturing of one’s identity, knowledge, and meanings. Now the change is not so much in one’s actions and behaviors, but in oneself—the person is growing and

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changing. So we call this level and kind of change— Developmental Coaching. At the fourth and highest level of change we have revolutionary change. Now there is a complete transformation in one’s thinking, perceiving, valuing, believing, understanding, etc. so we call this a paradigm shift. It shifts what and how a person or organization is operating, it shifts one’s direction and focus. It shifts the world one is in or is moving to. We call this level and kind of change — Transformational Coaching. Where does self-actualization occur in these levels and kinds of coaching? In all of them. At first you coach to facilitate self-actualizing behavioral change, the person is learning to do things more effectively and elegantly. Next you coach to facilitate the change of self-actualizing personal development as the person becomes more. This is the being level of change. Then there is the coaching of a transformation of one’s self and one’s world, actualizing a new direction and a new paradigm. All of this coaching of change focuses on generative change, not on remedial change. Whether it is performance change, developmental change, or transformational change, the change is about choosing to alter things and to create a difference that will actualize potentials. It is not about fixing something broken, hurt, or traumatized. It is about generating new expressions and possibilities. The Coaching Change Skills What then are the skills, and the skill-set, that’s required of a coach to be able to facilitate all of these levels and kinds of change? The Axes of Change presents eight coaching roles by which you are able to coach to four primary mechanisms which facilitate change. Within each of these roles there are specific skills for operating as a change agent for the client’s experience of change. There is also an ordered sequence to these mechanisms. First a person has to be motivated, then make a decision, then create the change, then integrate it into lifestyle. The first two prepares for the change, the second two implements the change. Without the first mechanism of motivation, all of the rest of the process will feel like “work” and a burden. The change process will feel hard. With a -162-

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propulsion system both pushing and pulling the person forward into his future, there’s plenty of energy and inspiration so that the change will mostly feel exciting and challenging. Without a solid and definite decision, the entire change process will be characterized by indecision as the person will keep going back and forth. “Maybe I should; maybe I shouldn’t. I don’t know. I kind of want to, but then again, I just don’t know.” Again, this will make the coaching seem hard, even distressful, and unpleasant. Yet with both motivation and decision, the change will be felt as natural and even easy. It will seem inevitable and an exciting adventure. The person’s emotional energy will be there along with the person’s decisive commitment. With these two mechanisms in place there will be no resistance. After all, what is there to resist? The client herself has generated the emotional energy and the clear-minded decision about what she wants. The coach is imposing nothing— so there’s nothing to resist. “Resistance is futile.” Without creation, there actually is no idea, plan, strategy, or blueprint for change, only a desire or a need. There’s no steps to take, no stages to manage, no experimenting or testing of things. There is a desire and a decision to change, but change to what? What will the desired change look or sound like? What does the person have to do to create the change? Without integration, there’s no consistency or sustainability, whatever change the person creates comes and goes. It doesn’t last. But beginning with creativity, a difference is created in the person which is then integrated. Integration brings it home into one’s very being and lifestyle—then there will be no relapse. How could there be? The change process continues until it is so well-integrated that a person cannot go back. Now it is his way of being in the world. The order of the four mechanisms—motivation, decision, creation, and integration— can and does shift depending on where the coaching client is. So the first thing to do with the Axes of Change is a diagnosis of where the client is. Knowing where the client is enables the coach to know what to do next. It tells you where you are, strategically, with your client. Is he motivated? Toward what? Away from what? Is there sufficient motivation to carry through? How much is there? How -163-

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much more does there need to be? Is the motivation balanced between the two polar ends of the axis? Is she decisive? How decisive? What are the values of the decision? What are the disadvantages? How do the pros and cons weigh against each other? Has she made a decision? How strong is that decision? Has he created any of the change? Has he created it in his mind about what it will look and sound like? To what extend? How many steps and stages are there in the process? Does he need a plan? Does he have a plan? How much of a plan? Is it sufficient? What has he already done to step forward to make the plan real? What has he implemented so far? Has she integrated the change? How well integrated is it? How much more sustainable does she need to make it? How does she reinforce what’s working? How skilled is she in identifying what could work better? Has she tested the change at all? What has she learned from the tests? What will she put into the plan to create the next refinement which will make the generative change even better? By diagnosing where the client is in the process of change, then the coach will know where to go and where to work. With the Axes of Change you can test the previous development and know strategically what to do next. Now you can focus on developing your skills as a coach in dancing around and between the eight roles within The Axes of Change, noticing and tracking where your client is in the change process. Now also you can discern if your client needs to work, or is working with an incremental change, slowly adapting and expanding a particular skill. Or if your client is expanding, modifying, and adapting a response pattern. You can check out if or when your client has suddenly jumped a logical level and is now working with discontinuous change to generate brand new behaviors. Or if your client is working on himself—developing his beliefs, values, identity, decisions, permissions, etc. Or if your client is making a paradigm shift and inventing a whole new direction and focus for his life. The Axes of Change Skills Altogether there are nine skills within the coaching change skills. They are as follows:

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1) Facilitating Again, we start with the overall coaching skill of facilitation. Here what we are making more likely and easier is change itself. Of course, that’s precisely why we focus on the four primary mechanisms of change— motivation, decision, creation, and integration. In the facilitation skill— you will be holding two calibrations at once —you will be calibrating to the client’s state (his mind, emotion, physiology) and you will be calibrating to the context of the client’s long-term objectives. Where is the person now and where does he want to be? This sets the milestones both for present-state and desired-state. Along with those calibrations, you will want to be noticing, detecting, and identifying the person’s resources. It is the person’s resources which enable him to move from Now to Then. What are her best responses for moving forward toward her goal? One challenge in the skill of facilitation involves being flexible enough to keep adjusting to the client. After checking and calibrating with the client, then as the coach you will be facilitating the client’s ability to access the four change mechanisms. While feeling safe, supported, understood, respected, and challenged. By holding these states as the client is moving forward and creating the desired change, you facilitate the best responses. On Motivation Axis 2) The Awakening Skill Awakening is the skill of inviting the client to discover her best dreams. Your primary question for this is the question: What do you really want? And what else? And if you got what you really want, what would that give you? If the client is partially asleep (to her potentials), then you might offer a menu list of ideas, possibilities, visionary stories, or inspirational suggestions. The design here is to facilitate within a client an awaking to what’s lurking within her that is yet untapped and unleashed. The awakening process can take a great many forms and will depend on your style as a coach. In this process you will be eliciting a range of states from curiosity and wonderment, to discovery, possibility thinking, imagining, creativity, getting out of the box of limited thinking, inciting, inspirational, etc. Here, at times, you will be inspiring, evoking hope, and new dreams. At other times, you will be helping to articulate and make vivid what has only been vaguely felt visions. At times you might be -165-

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seducing your client to believe more in himself than he has ever before believed in himself and his possibilities, to dream greater and bigger dreams. When you succeed in the skill of awakening, you will have elicited a lot of energy and motivation in your client. She will be fully ready to jump into the creating of the change, and yet the time to do that is not yet. There’s something else that you need to do first. 3) The Challenging Skill This challenging skill is the opposite to awakening to a dream or vision, it is evoking a person to move away from what he does not want. So we call it “challenging.” Here you exercise the skill of challenging current reality and all of the unpleasant consequences which are present in the current reality. “What’s going on right now for you? And what else? And is this what you want?” “What will you lose out on if you don’t change?” In this challenging you are putting a spotlight on the unpleasantness of today’s reality. You are exposing what is not good, what your client does not want, what he wants to move away from, what he has had enough of. Here you are challenging in the sense of confronting your client also with the current direction of his life— where things will go unless there is a change. In this you are inviting your client to engage in consequential thinking. To do this requires some ruthless compassion which will hold your client accountable to being responsible for his life and his values. In the coaching skill of challenging you do not let the client get away with ignoring what is or what could happen, if there’s not a change. This will be especially powerful for people with the meta-program of away-from. This is how they think and how they make decisions—they move away from what they don’t want. And because you do not have a therapy client, you will provoke them to move away from any form of denial of a problem or symptom or the minimizing of the current situation. “Here is a dream—a vision of life’s possibilities for you, isn’t that great? What will you miss if you don’t go for it? How will you sell yourself short? What excuses do you typically use to avoid doing what needs to be done?”

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Challenging is the push aspect of motivation. The motivational energy in this state pushes a person forward away from what he does not want. Here you are activating the energies of aversions and dissatisfactions. You are going for a “no” answer: “Does this serve you well?” “Do you want more of this?” Challenging is not a particularly nice skill precisely because you are holding your client’s feet to the fire that she is in, will be in, or could be in. Yet in the long run, challenging is usually a most loving response—it is the tough love of accountability. In challenging you induce states of aversion, disgust, feeling fed up, bad, fearful, angry, frustrated, disappointment, and other negative states. This creates the push energy of motivation. 4) The Probing Skill The skill of probing involves going deeper and deeper with a person into her reasons why, and why not, for a decision. Here you begin with questioning about the decision. “What are the advantages for making this decision? What are the disadvantages?” Flushing out all of the pros and cons typically takes some time and one of the amazing things that typically happen is that just when you think the person has said everything, then, “Oh yes, one more thing just came to my mind.” This is the effect of the “downloading” a person’s information especially if you are writing all of the things down. The probing, however, does not end there. What if the person does not make the decision to change, what then? What are the advantages and disadvantages of not changing. Flush all of that out as well. Now you have all of the first level values and dis-values. So what’s behind them? What are the beliefs, the understandings, the criteria, and so on at the meta-level about all of the values and dis-values? This is where you begin probing even deeper (or higher) and where you may begin to conduct a truly fierce conversation which gets to the heart of things with your client. What are your client’s current set of frames (her Matrix) that defines and creates her current reality? Through this in-depth questioning you invite your client to reflect and gain awareness of her current beliefs, understandings, expectations, etc. In probing you patiently and persistently, enter into the dynamic structure of the experience to find where the leverage is for your client to make a decision to change. Doing this invites change. It initiates an in-depth -167-

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conversation that gets to the heart of things so your client will often say what he has never said before or aloud. In this way, the client excavates and expresses new truths that can then be cultivated and used to co-create a new game plan.

Advantages + If I go with the decision:

Disadvantages -

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5) The Provoking Skill While the skill of probing is quite involved, and can take a long time, even several sessions, the skill of provoking is typically short and quick. It can take a few seconds or a few minutes, but seldom longer. This is the skill which is needed with a client who tends to be indecisive— even when he knows good and well what he needs to do. In most cases, the person operates from the meta-program of being which more reflective rather than active. This is the person who is always reflecting and analyzing. This is the person who suffers from “paralysis by analysis.” When you use the skill of provoking, you are prodding, teasing, and evoking your client to finally face up to what needs to be faced and to make an empowering and decisive decision to take action. It can be a simple question, “Are you going to make this change?” -168-

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Sometimes you Provoke by asking the quality controlling questions which check on the quality and ecology of the experience that the person is moving to or from. “Is this change good for you?” “Will this change be good for your family, your career, your health, etc.? It is? So what are you waiting for?” You can Provoke also by asking testing and reality-testing questions which provokes the validity of the client’s understandings and potential solutions. “Do you want the benefits of the change? You do? Really? Come on, you’re teasing me, you don’t really want those benefits, do you?” Provoking also can utilize a wide range of responses from inciting, teasing, playing with, exciting, provoking anger, sadness, joy, hope, or any strong emotion. “Are you man enough to make this change? “Are you woman enough to step forward and do what’s you know is right?” The design of provoking is to test, and to build up, the client’s ego-strength for a greater acceptance of reality, acknowledgment of what is, and a willingness to face challenges. 6) The Co-Creating Skill In the skill of Co-Creating you work with your client to first play around with ideas and possibilities, to brainstorm, and to invent all sorts of possibilities. Then, once there’s a wide range of possibilities, to begin pulling together the ideas that make sense, create a plan that put them to use, and to create a checklist or a strategy for how to proceed. This is where you and your client work together to construct the new Inner Game. This collaborative skill does not involve giving advice, telling, problemsolving, or teaching. That’s not the coach’s role. Yet you will probably be strongly tempted at this point to fall into that trap. Co-Creating is a very different skill. Here you are mostly creating the space in which your client can begin to come up with new ideas, new strategies, approaches, frames, etc. for her own solutions. At first during the brainstorming part, Co-Creating can be a wild and chaotic experience. After all, it is an act of creativity. Here you and your client will often have no idea where your questions, and the following explorations, will take you, or what new synergies will come together. Yet, in the process of Co-Creation, things emerge. -169-

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To facilitate the creation process you will need to hold and embrace ambiguity and uncertainty for the client. You will need to be a crucible to your client’s conceiving and delivery of new ideas and emotions. Ultimately, in the Co-Creating you will create an action plan with your client that describes the new inner game. Here you will be inducing the sates of creativity, playfulness, being mischievous, planning, curiosity, etc. 7) The Actualizing Skill The opposite side on the creation continuum is the coaching skill of Actualizing. That’s because everything is created twice— first in the mind and then in reality or in the body. Actualizing takes what was created in the mind, in the Inner Game and translates it as the Outer Game. This is the skill by which you focus on seeing the action plan that was Co-Created in your client’s mind made real in her actions, behaviors, and relationships. This is where what was inside comes out and becomes the outside life. This is also where, as we say, “The rubber hits the road.” Here, as the coach you invite your client to take the required action that will make the plan real. You engage in Actualizing with your client by tasking, giving homework, setting up tests and experiments, planning a schedule for the next day or days, etc. Actualizing, as a coaching skill, invites your client to translate the new Inner Game into practical behaviors. You might get your client to experiment with some new action for the purpose of seeing what happens. In this way, your client begins to give birth to the beginnings of a new response. It in the skill of Actualizing that you enable your client to make the translation from mind to muscle, from her talk to her walk. In this way you are coaching your client’s body to feel the great ideas and/or the great plans that she Co-Created. The states you will be inducing here include: action, practicality, matter-of-fact, etc. 7) The Reinforcing Skill Following Actualizing, the next coaching skill is that of Reinforcing and so now you move to the role of Reinforcer. Here you are coaching to validate and nurture anything and everything that the client did, or does, which works and moves him toward his desired outcome. This skill first and foremost involves looking for any behavior which approximates the desired behaviors given in the Actualization process. You do that by questioning -170-

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your client to find out what he did that worked. Then you reinforce every success, no matter how small, by supporting, nurturing, and validating. The Reinforcing skill involves giving positive reinforcement to every small or large action that approximates what the person wants to achieve. The challenge for the coach is to match and look for the smallest aspects of what works. This is typically challenging for both coach and client because most clients are the kind of people who keep raising the bar for achievements and success. This usually means the person does not take the time to let small success count. Instead, they discount. “Oh, that was nothing.” “Anyone could do that.” Yet discounting robs the person of the good feelings of success. Reinforcing what does work, even if it was small, a baby-step, accesses and develops the feeling of success. This reinforces the activity. From Behaviorism we know that “whatever we reinforce grows.” So the skill of the Reinforcer validates and celebrates any and every action in the right direction. This is the skill of validating even the smallest increments, not because it indicates great success, but because it indicates movement in the right direction. In this way you allow the space and environment for the new behavior to become strong and robust. This facet of coaching is similar to what supportive parents do as they watch their child first learn to walk. As the coach, you Reinforce and make count anything the client does which is close to the desired behavior. When a child makes his or her first shaky stumbles and falls, loving parents meet them with cheers and encouragers. Why? To let the child know he or she has started the new behavior and that even the stumbles and falls count. Similarly, as a coach, spot and help the client to acknowledge the first glimpses of the desired behaviors and changes. The speed at which the client can spot those first signs will determine the speed at which the client can complete the process of change. In all learning and change we navigate through the stage of being consciously incompetent to becoming consciously competent. For some this can be the most lengthy and arduous process. To accelerate the learning and development, count the first signs and coach the client’s body to feel and experience the new behavior. It is part of the translation from concept (mind) to behavior (muscle). It gives the body something to recognize, -171-

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“Oh, that’s what that concept feels like!” It is this recognition that gives the body a benchmark for replicating the desired behavior. There’s something else in this. The earlier a behavior is spotted, the faster the client can replicate it, refine it, and build confidence from it. Without effective spotting and reinforcement the client can get stuck at this stage and even abort the change process itself. The states you will be inducing in this skill include: joy, delight, fun, playfulness, acknowledgment, appreciation, etc. 8) The Testing Skill The coaching skill of Testing is on the opposite pole to the Reinforcing skill and is at the heart of integration. The designed of this skill is to test the robustness of the change and the actions that are now actualizing the action plan. Here, your client has Co-Created a plan, strategy, or the new frames for the Inner Game, and has begun to bring that plan forth the Outer Game into action. You have reinforced what works, and if the new actions are developed enough, you are in position to begin testing those actions. You can test to see if they work, how well they work, and what new refinements the person can add to make them more robust. The Testing skill entails gathering lots of new information to find out how things went, to asking reality-testing questions, exploring and testing the client’s thinking in the contexts where the change was practiced, asking more ecology testing questions, and testing to see if the results created actually measure up to the client’s values and visions. “How did things go? What worked well? What did not work as well as you wanted them? What could have been better? Where did it not work? What resource did you discover that you need?” In reality testing, you work with the client to check the validity of what has been mapped and planned. In future pacing, you check with your client how a change will play out in the future. You can further test by challenging your client to blow out her excuses, to align his frames, and to keep refining her action plan. The purpose of all of this Testing is to determine, and to strengthen, the strength of the change in the contexts where it is needed. What you discover in the Testing stage, you can now feed-back those learnings, discoveries, refinements, and adjustments to the Co-Creation stage. Doing that then sets up a continuous learning loop. You send it back -172-

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to Co-Creation, then to Actualizing, then to Reinforcing, back to Testing. It’s a never-ending loop. With this open feedback — feed-forward loop for the client, this eliminates relapse because it turns all responses and results into the next learning event. What are Your Take Aways? Take away that all coaching is about change and that the coach is a Change Agent par excellence. When you are coaching, you are always facilitating something to be altered and different, to wit, changed. Take away that coaching generative change is not the same as therapeutic change which is remedial. Coaching change is generative change as it invents, creates, and generates new ways of acting, thinking, feeling, and being. Take away the four mechanisms of change—motivation, decision, creation, and integration and the eight roles of change for a coach— Awakener and Challenging for motivation, Prober and Provoking for decision, Co-Creator and Actualizer for creation, and Reinforcer and Tester for integration.

nd of the Chapters Notes: 1. I wrote Motivation: How to be a Positive Force in a Negative World in 1987 which followed my first book, Emotions: Sometimes I Have Them / Sometimes They Have Me! (1985). Then in learning NLP, I discovered the meta-program of toward and away-from and the idea of propulsion systems (The Spirit of NLP, 1997) which led to the spiral book, Propulsion Systems (2003).

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COACHING FOR MEASUREMENT The Benchmarking Model

“You get what you measure.” Anonymous “Now of course we ought to keep on seeking for objective correlations or indicators of subjective states. On the day when we discover such a public or external indicator of pleasure or of anxiety or of desire, psychology will have jumped forward by a century.” Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

I

f you can coach it, can you measure it? Suppose you coach someone for stepping up to leadership, integrity, authenticity, taking care of one’s quality of life, enjoyment, compassion, etc.— how will you and your client know that you have succeeded? What key performance indicator (KPI) will you co-establish so that you can mark and measure the achievement of that intangible objective? In other words, can you create benchmarks for what you do in coaching and for the goals that clients set in coaching? Is it possible to quantify the quality of an experience?

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If so, how do you measure experiences that seem to be intangible and ephemeral? What processes can you use to set benchmarks on the skills of coaching so that you can identify best practices in coaching and create training that replicates that expertise? What is Benchmarking? The origin of the term benchmarking came from the early days of carpentry and cabinet making. Carpenters back then would actually use the bench they were working on and make marks on that bench for the lengths and dimensions of their cabinets and chairs and beds. Then, against those marks they would measure a piece of timber for a particular product. Different marks on the bench represented different sizes of the pieces for the cabinets. This had several benefits. While it sped up their work, more importantly it enabled them to make more consistent cabinets. Thereafter, cabinet-makers would lay pieces of timber on the bench, measure them against the markings and, like a proto-type assembly-line, create more cabinets in less time. This enabled them to see and use a standard, giving them more accuracy and precision. In this way the term benchmark came to stand for a standard, a measurement, and means of replication of something to a set criteria. With that we can now ask some very important questions about the field of Coaching: As a coach what standards guide and govern the process of coaching? What are the criteria for the coaching skills? How does a coach set criteria with a client that allows them to mark and measure progress toward a desired outcome? What are the benchmarks for intangible skills and values like leadership, listening, exploring, being present, etc.? How do we go about creating effective benchmarks for our skills and the skills that clients desire to develop? The skill of benchmarking is actually a richly complex skill—a meta-skill. That’s because to create a set of benchmarks requires stepping back from a skill or value, getting very specific sensory-based, empirical descriptions of the behaviors and sub-behaviors, standardizing those behaviors to a criteria so that you can then determine the level and/or degree of competence a person demonstrates with a skill. To do that you have to do -175-

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two things. First, move to a level higher to perceive the skill and identify what it is, its design, and purpose. Second, move down to detail the specific actions that bring that skill into reality. To do both simultaneously is called meta-detailing in Neuro-Semantics.1 What is benchmarking? It is the process of breaking down a skill or value, an intangible experience, into its component parts. Because these intangible experiences are almost always described as a nominalization, then you first have to de-nominalize the terminology.2 This requires finding the actions (verbs) and specifying those actions into greater and greater detail for specificity. Once you do that then you have to specify the required behaviors that demonstrate competency in the skill or value. From there you can scale the behaviors from low level to medium and then to high level. What are the benefits of Benchmarking? Will all this effort be worth it? What are the benefits of benchmarking? If you learn this entire process of marking and measuring intangible things like skills and experiences, what will you achieve? There are numerous benefits and values to benchmarking. Expand perspective of a skill or value and see the larger context in which it operates. Accelerate learning and competency development. Identify the critical success factors in an experience and scale them so you can recognize how they develop more richness. Reduce the learning curve and time for new skill development. Stimulate and support change as you become more skilled. Get a baseline for where you are and set an outcome for where you want to go. Leapfrog over your current skill level and over your competitors. Satisfy customer expectations to a greater degree. Improve the quality in your products and services. Establish agreed metrics for measuring best practices and performance and then to raise awareness of best practices. From this you can see that benchmarking is highly valuable. In the end, the focus and practice of benchmarking, and rich rewards of benchmarking, can establish benchmarking as a systematic approach to improving performance in any area of life. When you know how to benchmark, you will be able to move through the world looking for the best practices of people and -176-

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experiences of expertise to model. It will become a way to accelerate your learning and development. Benchmarking Coaching Skills Today we can use benchmarking to establish a behavioral or physical value for concepts like listening, questioning, supporting, etc. Doing so gives a point of reference for assessment. As such, benchmarking enables us to measure what otherwise would be an intangible skill or experience. For change agents working in the “soft” sciences and with soft skills, benchmarking provides a way to gauge both present and desired states around a value that’s typically described as a nominalization (i.e., love, support, framing, reframing, honor, etc.). Benchmarking is an essential skill for measuring your own skill development against a set standard and for supporting your clients in measuring their skill development. Benchmarking, as a skill, enables you to operationalize your terms and de-nominalized verbs-turned-into-nouns. It can undo the damage that happens when ideas are turned into thing-like entities by reifying them. Benchmarking enables you to generate a set of see-hear-feel variables and use them to determine and measure a person’s skill level that you can give feedback against. Benchmarking in the World of Business Modern benchmarking begain in the Xerox Corporation in 1979 which enabled Xerox to improve its quality and become a cutting-edge company. Motorola introduced benchmarking into its processes in 1985 and used it as a way for bringing measurement into the learning, training, and development processes. Benchmarking in the context of business refers to identifying a “best practice” and identifying the critical elements or components of that best practice. In business, benchmarking is the continuous process of measuring products, services, and practices against the best competitors or industry leaders. In this way they close the performance gap, leapfrog over the competition, and become the best-in-a-class. Bhote (2002) describes benchmarking as an external stimulus process for learning about the best methods of other companies, measuring that gap, closing the gap, and becoming “the benchmark company” (2002: 195). By benchmarking cutting-edge models, practices, and skills the process enables -177-

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one to accelerate the learning curve. In the competitive market of business this ideal of learning the processes of the best practices has led to “trade secrets” and protecting them. This, in turn, has led to such a fear of benchmarking and modeling that some have accuse it of being “legal espionage.” Apart from that exaggeration, benchmarking is actually a perfectly ethical way to recognize a jump in quality, identify the factors that come together to create that qualitative difference, and then replicate it. Hronec (1993) describes benchmarking as a structured method of measuring processes and products against others. Doing this then generates as the metrics of best practices (1993: 14). Spendolini (1992) describes benchmarking as an investigative process, a process of inquiry (1992: 13). He says that with benchmarking, the focus in any given company or corporation extends beyond the scope of the finished product or service as it concentrates extensively on process issues. “How does this work?” Benchmarking moves one’s focus from the surface perspective of what a company produces to how it is designed, manufactured, marketed, and serviced. Like the technique of modeling in the cognitive sciences, benchmarking focuses on the dynamic structures or processes of a skill, as well as involving the complexity of a person’s states, attitudes, and beliefs. In businesses we can now measure best practices in terms of price, quality, delivery, service, technology, time, and product performance. When the United States Congress established the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award, it included benchmarking as a key ingredient and allocated over half of the points to the process of comparing performance among organizations. The Benchmarking Process for Organizations In business, the owners, CEOs, and managers at all levels have a vested interest in improving performance. Everybody in these contexts want higher quality, effectiveness, and profitability. When leading or managing an organization to reach these higher levels of performance, we need a culture that is committed to continuous innovation. To that end, we link our benchmarking efforts to a performance management strategy for everybody so the entire company moves to become a highly efficient and innovative business. -178-

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To achieve that, what knowledge and skills are required for managers to measure quality and performance so they can run their organizations efficiently and effectively? They need to know the basics of what benchmarking is and how to create and use benchmarks. They need to have a basic plan for benchmarking. The overall process is to determine the factors that are critical for long-term success, compare the performance in those areas to that of the competitor or best-in-class performers. A theme in medicine applies to benchmarking. Prescription without diagnosis is malpractice. Prior to beginning we need to adequately assess the state of an organization, the needs of customers, the cultures in which we work, and the skills of those who performance we count on. What are the critical success factors? What are the factors that will have the greatest impact on the performance? What factors cause the most trouble? What factors account for customer satisfaction? Questions that prepare a person or a company for the benchmarking process include these: Who are the best examples of expert level skills? How do you know that these individuals are the best? What is the criteria you use to make the evaluation? What are the practices and activities that facilitate to their skills? Are others better at the job or process? Why are they better? How much better? What do they do that can be adopted by us? Do we want to replicate this best practice? Will we do so and move in this new direction? What actions do we need to take to do so?

Motorola’s Benchmarking Process Motorola established a simple five-step benchmarking plan that offers a basic description of the process. Such a plan is a structured process that involves clusters of related activities 1) Determine what to benchmark: What do you want to benchmark? What skill? What expertise? Why is this important? -179-

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2) Define the process: How do we do go about the benchmarking? Who will do the marking and measuring? Where are we now? What is the baseline that we are beginning from? What pilot runs will we conduct? 3) What expert to benchmark: Who is best at the given skill? 4) Identification of the specific skill or competencies: How do they do it? What is the performance gap between where we are now and the benchmark in the industry? 5) Data analysis and implementation: Who will collect and analyze the data, how will we take action to implement any changes in training? What goals or action plans should we establish? How will we implement things? What Makes for a Good or Excellent Mark or Measure? For a benchmark to be a useful and practical it has to meet certain criteria. The following are the most obvious and important. 1) Clearly defined: Clarity of definition will increase our ability to measure the skill, quality, or experience. 2) Simple and easy to understand: The more complex and convoluted the description of the activities, the harder to mark and measure, the less effective. 3) Meaningful: The skill has to be significant to those who want to learn it or replicate it. 4) Consistent with values: We establish the scale so that it reflects a significant semantic value. Experiences lose their power when we experience them inconsistently. The subsequent incongruency makes us feel that it lacks fit or resonance with our values. 5) Drive the right actions: The skill is meaningful if it governs or influences the actions we desire and contribute to what we are seeking to produce. 6) Economical to collect: The ability to gather information on the benchmarking process and on one’s development has to be feasible and economical. 7) Relevant goals and objectives: The benchmarks must relate to and be relevant to the overall objective. 8) Repeatable: Unless we are able to replicate the skill or experience it will be of no use to us. 9) Measurable: It has to be measurable in behavioral or empirical terms, in terms that are sensory-based rather than evaluative or intuitive. -180-

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10) Verifiable: We can verify what we see or hear via recording instruments, or through the observation of witnesses. Benchmarking and Measurement Benchmarking seeks to more accurately measure what is done and how we do it. When we are dealing with things that are mostly intangible the process of benchmarking enables us to explore how we can more precisely introduce measurements. This requires that we create a scale for the behaviors and responses that we identify as entailed in a skill. The problem with most skill development from customer service to leadership is quantifying what those who are most skilled, those who are experts, actually do behaviorally, the beliefs that inform them their actions, their states, intentions, etc. which makes the difference. These are questions that we have to answer: How do we first mark and measure the degree and quality of caring and attending to the needs of a customer? How do we mark and measure the way a leader engages our imagination with a new vision? How do we measure a manager’s skill in enlisting or creating buy in from his team? These intangible activities are not easy processes to describe, let alone scale or manage. We cannot easily mark and measure them as we do with the tangible processes that we replicate on an assembly line. Yet this is precisely where we most need the power and precision of benchmarking. Then we can set up some kind of way of sorting out and marking the critical elements or components of an activity, and set up a measure for it, especially as it becomes more and more developed. We can then manage the process and people (ourselves and others) in replicating the quality of that best performance. This is the vision of benchmarking. Doing so increases our effectiveness and shows us where and how we can improve and develop our skills. In the process, benchmarking facilitates us to develop a language for more precisely describing the behaviors that count. This makes a tremendous difference in recruitment, training, appraisals, relationships, and alignment. Everyday Benchmarking Consider some realms of life outside of business that we regularly benchmark without thinking of it in that way. Recall the last time you -181-

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thought about decorating your home or garden. At some stage in the process did you look through magazines, television advertisements, the neighbor’s homes and gardens to get ideas. Or perhaps you had a different way of coming up with ideas? At some stage, whether you are conscious about it or not, you set a criteria and standard for the project, did you not? It may have been the budget, colors, layout, etc. These were your personal benchmarks for the project. You thereafter measured your success by how close you come to your ideal. Each time you go to the doctor, you are asked questions about your symptoms, the absence of symptoms, and the degree to which you are experiencing each symptom, the time element. To this your doctor will equate each one of those symptoms as criteria against a scale of medical benchmarks that equates in simplified terms as a medical diagnosis. The challenge for benchmarking regarding the intangibles is the complexity of our internal mind-body-emotion system. Out of that complexity emergent properties arise—properties that do not exist outside the system. With such gestalt experiences and states qualities, properties arise that are “more than and different from the sum of all the parts.” The challenge is to identify those parts, identify the relationships and interactions between them, and to identify the best sequencing of them. The Art of Measuring the Intangible Measurements are comparisons. When we measure something we contrast and compare one thing with another. In benchmarking we take a skill and identify the key behavioral components which we can actually see, hear, and feel. After we identify a development scale from simple to more complex to expert level, we can give numerical values to the critical components. Doing this enable us to distinguish the degree of skill development as a skill moves from low to high competence. This sequence of numbers from low to high then enable us to see where a person is on the developmental scale. 0

1

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

5 None

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In scaling, we establish a sequence of marks at regular intervals which we use as a reference for measurements. This allows us to rank the attributes or characteristics. Every scale will have thresholds or boundaries at each end. In conversational scaling most coaches use a zero-to-ten scale: “From 0 to 10, how much are you in that state right now? How much more would you want to experience? What do you have to do to increase that state?” To now make that more precise, we give each number on the numerical scale a specific meaning and attach it to specific behaviors. By themselves, the numbers have no specific value. To be meaningful and significant, we attach the numbers to a baseline of some sort. Now we can compare them against each other. Measuring enables us to know where we are, where we want to go, and identify the pathway for greater quality and improvement. A well-designed benchmark will be objective and actionable. Objective means that we make the measurements based on sensory-based or behavioral indicators that give evidence of the experience and as few subjective feelings and opinions as possible. When we have a set of behaviors, we have the behavioral equivalences. In doing this, our measurements become actionable, linked to the highest levels of a critical skill, and made as objective as possible. Actionable means that we can act on the measurement, we can do something about the scaled information. The measure informs us about two factors: first, where we are and second, what we can do to move to the next level. The Benchmarking Pattern If all of that describes the value, benefits, and description of the benchmarking process, what is the Benchmarking Model of MetaCoaching? How does a person go about creating a set of benchmarks for an intangible value or skill? What follows is the process for creating a scale and setting measures on a conceptual reality and/or a dynamic process like skill or attitude or value. This is the process as used to create the benchmarks for the coaching skills. Step 1: Name the concept or skill. What idea, concept, or experience do you want to benchmark? Now that you have identified it, how do you describe it as precisely and clearly as possible? What do you mean by this term or word? At what level of abstraction are you using the term? It is a first-level meta-state or higher? -183-

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As you begin, are you starting with an unspecified verb like “listening” or are you starting with a nominalization like “support?” If you start with a nominalization, denominalize it and identify the unspecified verb or verbs within it. For many intangible experiences, there will be multiple verbs. These will be the list of sub-skills within the term. Make a list of them. Step 2: Define the word in behavioral terms. What are the see, hear, feel components of the skills (the verbs and processes)? Identify the sensory-based elements by considering what you are speaking about if you video-taped or audio-record the action. What is the process that you’re speaking about? Are there any sub-processes within the process? If so, then how many subskills are involved in the skill? How many are absolutely required to create the experience you are after? How many sub-skills are minimally required? Once you have the list of sub-skills, how are these related to each other? When you have completed this, begin to create an operational definition. You will come back to this later. Do you have clear operational definition? How clear do you think it is now? Does the definition tell a person what to do to experience the skill or value? Have you used the word itself in the definition to define it? If so, eliminate it and find some synonyms. Step 3: List all of the behaviors which are required to indicate the presence of the concept or skill. As you brainstorm about all of the signs and cues of the concept, have you made as complete a list as you can? What other indicators can you imagine? Now move to the opposite side: What are the signs and cues that indicate the lack of the skill or concept? That is, if the skill is not present, what is present? What else? What behaviors would be present that would indicate the lack of the skill? Step 4: Arrange the set of behaviors along a continuum. Draw a line and scale the list of behaviors along a continuum. Where do you put the various sub-skills? Which ones occur at what level along the continuum? Now arrange these distinctions in a 0 to 3.5 arrangement. What behaviors indicate the opposite or lack? Give them a 0. -184-

What behaviors indicate an extremely low level? Give them a 1. What behaviors indicate beginning level of the skill? Give them a 2. What behaviors indicate a basic but full competency? Give them a 3.0. What behaviors indicate expertise of the competency? Give them a 3.5. Step 5: Integrate the results by creating an integrated set of benchmarks. Now that you have it altogether, do you have the degrees and the levels of the skill distinguished in a list? Do you have a set of sub-skills and behaviors which show the skill moving from 1 to 3.5? Can the behaviors be seen, heard, and felt? Are all of the words sensory-based and precise and effectively describe the skill and how to do it? Are all of the nominalizations and metaphors eliminated by making them sensoryspecify? The core coaching skills, along with dozens more advanced skills, have been benchmarked in the Meta-Coaching system giving you a way to assess where you are currently in these skills and your next step for enhancing your skills. What are Your Take Aways? Take away that if a skill or value is real, then it will show up in the real world. This means that you can find behavioral equivalent for those skills and values and therefore set benchmarks for them. This means that what is normally intangible and vague can be made more precise and real and that you can therefore mark and measure these values and skills. Take away that there is a process by which you can benchmark skills and values. It may not be easy, but it can be done. End of the Chapter Notes 1. For more on meta-detailing, see the book Sub-Modalities Going Meta. (1999). 2. For the skill of de-nominalizing terms, see and use the Meta-Model questions. See, Communication Magic (2001, Hall) for the Expanded Meta-Model. Nominalizations are verbs or processes that are named or turned into nouns which confuses the active and dynamic process with a static thing.

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COACHING IMPLEMENTATION The Benchmarking Model, Part II Put your Creed into your Deed Ralph Waldo Emerson “We know too much and are convinced of too little.” T.S. Elliot

T

hat you, or your client, want to do better is great. That’s the motivational engine for improving performance and for taking your skills to the next level. Yet it is not enough. When presented with a great idea that someone wanted to use, Edwards Deming, who introduced Quality Control to Japan and the USA, constantly asked, “By what method?” By what method will you actually improve your skills? By what method will you mark where you are and where you want to be? By what method will you apply benchmarking to your skills as a coach and to the coaching process itself? -186-

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By what method? Obviously one answer is benchmarking—which a person can do formally or informally. You can do it conversationally—which is how we most often do it or you can do it formally by creating and using benchmarks. Informal Conversational Benchmarking While Coaching What I’ve described to this point and what follows under the section on “Coaching Benchmarks” is formal benchmarking. So what about informal benchmarking? What about benchmarking during the coaching process itself? Is that possible? If so, what would that be like? It is possible and the best coaches do it. In the Meta-Coaching System, we do informal benchmarking when we ask the 18-questions of the wellformed outcome process and conclude with a KPI description of the client’s goal. This description lets coach and client know what will constituent the end-game of the coaching along with the evidence procedure which convinces the client that he has achieved his outcome. The last question: How will you know that you have reached your objective? What will you see or hear that will convince you? To achieve that level of description, and to get the client’s KPI, occurs through the precision of communication and it shows up in an empirical sensory-based description. That is how you can “benchmark” a client’s objective while coaching. That’s because when something is described in the visual-auditory language, then we can measure what the person is specifically seeing and hearing. In Meta-Coaching, this is translates from the high levels of the mind, from abstractions, principles, ideals, truths, etc. into action. We use the Mind-toMuscle pattern for this. Another way to think about this is to say that the Mind-to-Muscle pattern is actually a benchmarking process. That’s because, in the end, we can measure a client’s desired outcome in the subsequent results. The Mind-to-Muscle pattern enables you to take a conceptual learning that you know intellectually and turn it into a something that you know experientially. When you know it experientially, it governs how you live, how you move through the world, how you feel, and how you live the information. -187-

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The Mind-to-Muscle pattern is also a meta-stating pattern. Its design is to enable you to turn highly informative, insightful, and valued conceptual principles into neurological patterns in your body. If you have learned how to type on a keyboard you have already done this. The original learning may have taken a considerable amount of time and trouble to get the patterns and coordination deeply imprinted into your muscle response pattern. Yet by practicing and training, the learnings eventually become incorporated into the very fabric of neurology. You then lose conscious awareness of the learnings as the muscles then perform the program automatically. At that point, you have translated principle into muscle memory. The same holds true for expertise in all other fields, from sports, mathematics, teaching, to surgery, selling, and public relations. Begin with a principle—a concept, understanding, awareness, belief, etc., and translate it into a neurological pattern to be coded in your muscles. I have found this especially true in our modeling projects regarding resilience, leadership, wealth creation, selling excellence, learning, etc. This pattern creates transformation as you move up and down the various levels of mind so that you map from your understandings about something from the lowest descriptive levels to the highest conceptual levels and back down again. When you learn the pattern, you’ll be able to take any great principle and coach your body how to feel that principle. This will somatize the concept. There is one warning: Make sure you pick a principle which is true and reliable. The ecology of this pattern is not inside the pattern, but in your initial choice. So be sure to pick a good one. In the pattern which follows, I have used one general principle in the area of creating wealth. The Mind-to-Muscle Pattern This is also known as the Closing the Knowing-Doing Gap Pattern. Invite someone to read the questions and run the processes so that you can coach your body to feel and neurologically know the principle.1 The Pattern: 1) Identify a principle or concept you want incorporated in your body. What concept or principle do you want to put into your neurology? What do you know or understand about this that you want to set as a frame in your mind? -188-

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How can you state it in the a way that’s clear, succinct, and compelling? Finish this sentence stem: “I understand . . .” When you facilitate this, or do it with yourself, watch for the natural gestures that you use when you say the words. Do this with this example: “I understand that wealth is created by spending less than you make.” Note your tone of voice, your muscle tension, your face, your movements. These are your expressions of your “understanding” state. Generally it is a weak state in terms of your body’s energy. When I am in this state, I gesture with my right hand to my forehead, “I understand...” and my voice is matter-offact, calm, and the feel is one of being in an intellectual mode. How about you? 2) Describe the principle as a belief. Do you believe this principle? Would you like to believe that? If you really, really believed that, would that make a big difference in your life? State the concept as a belief and notice what happens: “I believe . . .” Did you state it as if you really believed it? When you state it with as much conviction as possible, what do you feel? In this second step you are using more of your neurology as you say the statement as a belief. Again, notice with an exactness the quality of the voice, muscle tension, posture, movements, gestures, face, eyes, etc. as you (or another) says, “I believe that I can create wealth and build capital by spending less than I make.” If there is little difference between step 1 and step 2, then return to step 1 and notice your understanding state then move into the belief state and exaggerate it. If you have to move back and forth several times to notice more and more differences, do so. Also, exaggerating the belief state will help you to feel how knowing differs from believing. When I move into a belief state my gesture completely changes. I now use my right hand moving it in an up-and-down movement, usually with a fist. The muscles in my arm and forearm becomes firm and tense and I speak as if I’m punching the air with my belief statements. My body also tenses up, my breathing becomes stronger, I focus my eyes as I look forward. How about you? -189-

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Notice also the linguistic changes that occur. Your statement in step 1 will be intellectual, conceptual, and mental. “Intellectually I understand that wealth is created by adding value by solving the problems and desires of others.” When you move to the belief state, the words you say will become more personal and intimate. Now use the personal pronoun words. “I believe that I can create wealth by adding value by finding ways that I can solve problems for others.” How are you feeling as you make your belief statement? What emotions are emerging? Notice them. 3) Reformat the belief as a decision. Would you like to live by that belief? [Yes.] You would? [Yes.] Really? [Yes.] Will you act on this and make it your program for acting? State it as a decision saying, “I will . . .” “I want . . . it is time to...” I choose to . . .” “From this day forward I will .... because I believe...” From the belief state you now move to the decision state. Again, it requires more of your neurology to move here and make statements reflecting a decision. I like raising my right hand as if taking a vow. “I will look for ways to add value to people and solve more important problems and so create wealth.” “From this day forward, I will spend less than I make.” You will undoubtedly also notice more changes in your body as you move into the decision state. My right hand typically gestures to an imaginary line right in front of me and at my feet or a point as if that is the “decision point.” And while the tension may be similar to the belief state, the muscles in my forearm and arm moves as if cutting a line. How about you? Notice how your linguistics change when you state things as a decision. As you keep repeating the belief and decision statements, you are essentially looking for the right words, the best words that summarize your belief and/or decision. “From now on I am going to look for how I can add value and stop looking first for what is in it for me.” How are you feeling as you make your decision statement? What emotions are emerging? Notice them. 4) State the decision as an emotional state or experience. As you state the belief decision, noticing what you feel, what do you feel? What do you feel as you imagine living your life with this empowering belief and decision? -190-

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Be with those emotions . . . let them grow and extend. State feelings, “I feel . . . I experience . . . because I will . . . because I believe . . .” Now throughout the two previous steps of belief and decision, feelings, sensations, and emotions will be evoked and will rush through you. This is great because you can now use the energy of these emotional states to fuel the actions which will make the ideas and principles real. Embrace the emotions that result from the belief and decision and welcome them to energize your body. 5) State the actions you will take to express the great idea. The next statement is a short succinct one. Here you are translating the inside thoughts and feelings into behavior so that it energizes your actions. To do this finish the following semantic sentence stem: “The one thing that I will do today as an expression of this concept, belief, decision, and state is . . .” Doing this will enable you to begin to formulate specific actions that will enable you to execute your principles. Now you are turning all of the mental-and-emotional energy that you generated with your Belief statement and your Decision Statement into an action that begins to translate it so that it shows up in the external world. What one thing will you do today to make this happen? You will do that? Really? What else will you do? What one thing will you do tomorrow? And the day after that? 6) Step into the action and repeatedly move to the next meta-level. As you fully imagine carrying out the one action that you will do today ... seeing what you will see, hearing what you will hear, and feeling what you will feel as you do it . . . now move up through the levels . . . into the state from which this action emerges, naming the state and experiencing it fully, owning the decision, affirming the belief with a powerful “Yes!” as you do, and stepping up even higher in your mind into a full awareness of your reasons, understandings, concepts, and principles that drive this way of being in the world ... and as you step into that place fully, now bring it back down again through belief, decision, state, and action . . . noticing how it transforms everything even more and creates an even greater sense of empowerment. -191-

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Repeat this several times, future pacing as you do. Why will you do this? And you’ve decided on this? Is that really what you have finally decided to do? And what idea or principle governs this? And you will do this? How do you feel about all of this? Will it affect your identity? It will? How? From Implementation to Scaling Identifying the core competencies of coaching is not enough. Nor is knowing them, and maybe surprisingly, not even being able to do them. The reason is because you could perform them, yet not at a high enough level so that they achieve what you want to achieve with them. To be effective, you not only have to perform them, but perform them well. This requires that we distinguish low to high expressions of these skills. In order for us to apply the coaching processes to ourselves, we need to scale the core coaching competencies so we can distinguish the level of the skill. To do that means setting up a scale of benchmarks of the core coaching skills. With this, we then have a process enabling us to continually improve our skills and expertise. With a set of benchmarks you can now monitor your coaching performance and compare it against the skills and qualities of coaching experts. This will enable you to plan for how to keep improving. This is not for the faint of heart because as you operate in a context of benchmarks, you search for and identify glitches in your performance—the things you do which fail the mark. You search for the things you need to do to reach the next step in developing your expertise. The person who plays the game of continual improvement needs to have a robust attitude—the attitude of truly wanting, and even hungering, to do better, to take one’s performances to the next level. When a person has that and has the willingness to look the facts in the face without caving in, then the process of benchmarking performance will enable you to identify specific next steps so you can deliberately practice in a way which will refine your skills.

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Benchmarks enable you to apply the levels of competence to yourself. If you, as a coach, are committed to your own development and want to learn how to coach effectively, then video-tape your sessions and use the benchmarking form to mark where your coaching skills are. This will enable you to know how you are actually making progress. The power of the benchmarks lies in the precision they offer in identifying the behavioral equivalences of the skill or experience. These answer the questions: How would someone know you are accomplishing skill X? What would I see or hear that indicates skill X? What are the critical factors for success with X? What behaviors are critical in this experience? The Coaching Benchmarks In benchmarking the intangibles of skills and experiences, we seek to manage what we have traditionally not been able to measure. Yet now we can. We are taking a purely qualitative experience and seeking to quantify it in terms that give us a handle on it.2 The first skills we benchmarked in Meta-Coaching were the seven core coaching skills which we deemed essential to the coaching process. We used a 0–to–5 scale and identified specific behaviors for each stage of skill development. When you read these on the following pages, it will make more sense to begin at the bottom with zero (0) for each skill and then move up. As you then move up the list, the increasing numbers indicate a higher quality of skill level. You could also start at level 3 for a description of full competency and then move either up or down and get a sense of what the skill would look and sound like at higher and lower levels. Level 0: Level 1: Level 2: Level 2:5: Level 3:

None Skill: No evidence of the desired skill. Whatever the person is doing, it is not the identified skill, but something else. First Steps: The baby-steps of the skill. Awkward: The skill is now present, but the person is clumsy and awkward in expressing the skill, not yet good enough to be competent. Sufficient: Sufficient development of the skill to get by even though not fully competent. Competence: Full competency of the skill

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Level 3:5 Level 4:

Level 5:

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Expert: The skill at the expert level, many advanced skills now being demonstrated. Expertise: The coach can demonstrate all of the coaching skills at level 3 simultaneously. The level of competence completely integrates the skills so that they fit one’s style making the person’s style and the skill difficult to separate. Mastery: The demonstration of level 4 can be shown at any time and any place, not dependent on the coach being in the right state— mastery.

“Quotes”—in the following descriptions words in quotes indicate nominalizations or concepts. Sometimes these are de-nominalized in the immediate text, sometimes these are not. We detail them with more precision in Meta-Coaching by specifying them until we can see, hear, or sense them empirically. Often that involves a lot of description, I’ve condensed those details here. 1) Listening: Design: To give total attention and presence to the client while listening so the client feels deeply understood and heard.

The Seven Core Coaching Skills Relationships 1) Listening — Active and Attentive 2) Support — Rapport and Presence Exploration 3) Questioning — Precision 4) Meta-Questioning — In-Depth Probing Mirroring 5) Receiving Feedback — Calibrating 6) Giving Feedback — Sensory Specifics Experiential 7) Inducing States — Embodying

Operational Definition: Actively look at and attend to the client, collect sensory information (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic) and non-sensory specific terms and -194-

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accurately reflect back the person’s responses, give signals that encourage speaking, listen for value words, meta-terms, meta-programs, frames, etc. Listen by watching gestures, movements, and the client’s use of his or her body. Sub-Skills: Eye contact: Look at the client, hold eye contact most of the time. [If eye contact means something other than listening and respect in a given culture, then turn body toward client or equivalent.] Percentage of Speaking: Speak less than client: Create context for client to speak 60% of time to 40%. Use sounds, nods, words to encourage client to keep speaking. “Encouragers” to speak: Ahhh, ohh, yes, hmmm, okay, etc. Auditory sounds that inform the client that the coach is listening. Precisely repeat words, not paraphrasing in the coach’s words. Tracking: Track words and gestures over the time of the session. “Tracking” (metaphor) as following someone through the woods, noticing where goes, when returns to a theme, etc. Clarity checks: Check for clarity by asking about the definition meaning of words. “How are you using the word “delegate?” Without checking, questions and responses will tend to be vague and not precise. 4 to 7 in 25 minute coaching session. Invite self-listening: Invite client to attend to what has said or is thinking. Example: “Do you hear what you just said?” “When you were talking about X, what was in the back of your mind?” Mirrors: Call attention to the client’s words and gestures and feed back the client’s words and gestures to provide a mirror so client can “see” him or herself, do this explicitly. Gestures: use the client’s “semantic” gestures— movements connected by client to some word that means a lot to him or her. Identified by emphasis (stress in voice, embedded command, question, statement) or by repetition (repeating several times). Not said: Ask about what’s not been said. Example, “You said you want a better relationship with your wife, but you have only been talking about how busy you are at work.” Silence: Remain quiet after person finishes speaking, look at person and “hold the space” to give a moment for reflecting on thoughts or being with emotions. After 3 seconds, it counts as intentional “silence.” Inferential listening: hear words or descriptions that imply more than is said. Example: “I want to be an effective leader.” (This implies leading someone somewhere for some purpose. “You mentioned leading, who are you wanting to lead? Are they following you now?” Semantically loaded: hear words and see gestures that the client packs with high meaning or significance (value).

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Benchmarks for Listening 3.5

3

2

1 0

Speak approximately 35% of the time. Turn body to client to be facing and physically present to the client, acknowledge the talking by maintaining eye contact, uses soft “sparkling eyes” (eyes opening wider when responding to client), nod the head in acknowledging and use encouragers. Ask about what is not being said. Ask questions that invite client to ask themselves more questions or share what they are thinking and feeling, client talking extensively. Ask questions that probe for more details about client’s view, ask questions for self-listening (“Did you hear what you just said?”) to enable client to know what’s “in the back of the mind,” give space and time for person to be with those thoughts and feelings, is silent as the client speaks 40% to 60% of the time. Actively explore what the client speaks about to understand fully, encourage client to speak by using head nods, “encouragers” such as “hmmm,” “ahhh,” “yes, go ahead,” “say more.” Use pauses so client speaks at least 50% of the time. Ask “awareness” questions, “How aware are you that you have said lots of things about X, but nothing about Y?” Use extended pauses. Maintain eye contact 75% of the time, repeat back specific words and some paraphrasing that matches client’s words, speak 60% or more of the time, give little or no time for client to speak. Speak immediately when client stops, rush to make comments or ask questions. Make some eye contact, paraphrase client’s words, only partially keep general track of the precise words, ask “Where are we?” Take notes on other things than client’s statements and eyes internally processing while client speaks. No or little eye contact, no tracking of words or actions being said, talk over, tell, teach, make “evaluations,” and interrupt.

2) Supporting: Design: To provide support a client by caring for him or her as a client so that he or she feels cared for and believed in by the coach so the client trusts the process and allows him or herself to be challenged. Operational Definition: Create an environment by using an interpersonal set of actions which facilitate a client to respond by talking openly about thoughts, emotions, needs, wants, fears, hopes, etc. Do that by questioning, listening, celebrating, expressing belief in the client’s potentials and skills. Match the client’s postures, gestures, voice, words, etc. Treat the client so he thinks and feels respected, cared for, and enabled to perform. Sub-Skills: Manage the physical environment eliminating distractions. Calibrate and match physiology, postures, gestures. [Physical matching: partial or half-body matching if full body matching is inappropriate, not mimicking, match gestures only when you are speaking not when client is speaking!] Match voice, tempo, volume, etc. [This is auditory matching.] -196-

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Match client’s speed of processing information and/or emoting and give time to process. Match words, values, beliefs, meta-programs, meta-states, etc. [This is linguistic matching.] Acknowledgments: Repeat in a sentence what the client says without turning it into a question. “I heard you say that you wanted to step up to the next level of leadership in your company.” Confirmations: Listen beyond the words to the person’s “heart” (intentions, spirit, state) and validate that in the person. Say words which speak to that inner experience. “Even with three attempts that have not succeeded, you are still here learning, changing, and so committed to your vision—Wow! I’m impressed with what seems like persistence and resilience!” “I would say that shows a lot of courage!” “I’m touched by your willingness to be so open!” Summarize what you have heard. In a sentence or two pull together all that has been said as if in a bullet-point. Reduce one to 20 minutes of conversation, “And your point is Y. Do I have that right?” Framing: During session, classify (categorize) what the client says, feels, or does as an “interpretative schema”—to give meaning to what happens to prevent misunderstanding and/or to construct more useful meanings. To set a frame is to establish the meanings that facilitate an ideal context / environment. Start by framing your style, intention, and things that could be mis-understood. Name what happens in the moments of the session. “What I’m now going to do is describe two beliefs which strike me as creating limitations, listen to these and tell me what you think.” Hold a frame: Repeat words of client and invite further exploration. Comment on (put into words) emotions, gestures, physiology. Comment on what client does (experience) to give it words and bring it into language. [This is languaging the experiences of the client.] Challenge: Invite client to take a risk, face a situation, step up to take on a challenge, stretch self to reach a higher goal. Identify patterns the client demonstrates in words/actions. A “pattern” is a set of words or actions that is repeated (3 or more times) that indicates a characteristic way of operating. “Is this set of actions something you recognize as familiar, as a habit?” Express commitment to the client. “I want you to know that I’m here for you and that together we will find a solution so you can be your best self in this.” Confrontation: Bring up to the client what could potentially be unpleasant such as incongruencies, blind-spots, excuses, failing to accept responsibility, etc.—things which undermine the client’s values or outcome.

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Benchmarks for Supporting 3.5

3

2.5

2 1

0

State concerns and care by stating a willingness to invest in “the other’s wellbeing and resourcefulness” so the person gets his outcomes; send the message, “I’m here for you,” “Use the calls between sessions when you need to.” Use voice and gestures to match the client’s emotions when smiling, tearing, etc.; invite client to access and apply her resources to situation, makes statements that affirm a belief in the person and what he can become (“potentials”), say words that recognize when the client succeeds, identify and match “meta-programs” (their perceptual lens), “meta-states” (meta-cognitive thinking about one’s thinking and feeling), “concepts,” and “values.” Confront client on blind-spots which interfere with her goals. Actively listen, ask about emotions, physiology, and gestures, invest energy by speaking with voice tone and volume to emphasize certain words, acknowledge what client says, confirm the person of the client (his heart, intention), summarize, make an empathetic statement, “That must have been challenging.” Connect a client’s words and gestures to identify their “semantic use of space.” Match posture, breathing, voice tone, tempo, speed, energy, and see and use the gestures of the client that seem to be “semantically loaded” [connected by repetition or emphasis to what the client says]; arrange the chairs, room, and the environment to assist and support the session and the client to stay focused. Only partially match client’s words, posture, breathing, etc., some facts and details mentioned by the client which are not used or referred to, little or no matching of the other’s gestures and non-verbal expressions. No or little eye-contact, fiddle with other things, fail to follow up by expressing emotion, preoccupy self with other things, little or no attending to context of room where there are noises or other things distracting. Dis-confirm the client in words by disagreeing or arguing. Does not track words, postures, non-verbals, etc. of person, repeatedly ask “What did you just say?”, fire off questions without time to respond. Interrupt, judge, evaluate, blame, and interpret client’s words (“interpretations”).

3) Questioning: Design: To curiously explore with questions so that the client becomes increasingly interested in discovering oneself and one’s frames. Operational Definition: Ask a client to respond by inquiring about the client’s words, gestures, and states; raise eyebrows to indicate an inquiry, explore the client’s world of ideas, “beliefs,” “frames,” goals, etc. Ask in tone and words that give client the chance to explore his own answers. Ask to obtain a precise description of the “situation” and the client’s goals, ask to probe current “state.” Sub-Skills: Ask: Inquire about thoughts, feelings, needs, fears, hopes, etc. Tone: End sentence with a tone that goes up as an auditory indicator of a question.

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Facial expression: Raise eyebrow, opens eyes wider, pause for a response as non-verbal indicators of questioning. Relevant: Phrase inquiries to engage client to explore what’s relevant to her outcome. Outcome: Co-create a clearly defined outcome of the client’s goal by asking the 18 WFO questions. Quality Control: Ask if a response fits client’s values, quality, and the ecology of his system. [“Ecology” a choice fits and does not “cost” by hurting health, relationships, career, etc.] Testing: Check to see if the client considers something valid or not. “So you do want this?” “This is something you are ready for?” “You’ve made a decision already?” Checks: Asking to check one’s understanding of the client. “Am I understanding you accurately? You are struggling about the permission to sell yourself?” Ask to determine if something (word, event, response) is “semantically loaded.” Know Nothing: Asking from a non-assuming state regarding what the client means or wants, ask to detect what is meant, how it is coded. Indepth probing: ten or more questions that delve into a single exploration to fully explore the “landscape” and meaning. Clinches KPI: Asks until the client constructs a specific answer to “how will you know that you have reached your goal?” This last well-formed outcome (WFO) question specifies the person’s evidence and criteria for “knowing.” Benchmarks for Questioning 3.5

3

2

Ask to explores how client structures his thinking, challenge client to look at the “meanings” (“frames”) governing the experience, inquire to expose a critical factor to empower client’s outcome (i.e., responsibility to /for; self-esteem — selfconfidence). Probe thoroughly with a client about thoughts-and-feelings “in the back of the mind” that influence the state, invite client to become aware and then next level of “meta-awareness” to flush out the client’s full “matrix of frames,” invite client to talk about “solutions” by collaborating with the client’s words and “outcomes.” Inquire first about client’s desires and outcomes, ask all of the WFO distinctions, clarify with client along way, test to confirm, invite a search without a prescribed end (open-ended), explore areas that fit with the client’s outcome (“relevant”) so client attends to things that move her toward the desired “outcome;” ask client to sign-off on the KPI statement after it is developed for that session or for the coaching program. Phrase an inquiry to direct attention to a prescribed answer (leading question— “Don’t you want to handle this situation using X ?”) that “controls” conversation to the coach’s agenda rather than the client’s outcome. Ask the unuseful questions, closed questions which are not useful to the client’s outcome.

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Phrase inquiry as closed-ended or in a way not useful to the client’s outcome, that is rhetorical, or “nosy” about irrelevant details and content; make few inquiries. Tell, tell stories, and give of personal judgments, no questioning.

4) Meta-Questioning Design: To curiously question and explore the meanings and frames which are not obvious, which are in the back of the mind so the client feels as if on an inward journey of discovery, expanded self-awareness, and a safe vulnerability. Operational Definition: Ask about a client’s “higher level” thinking or feeling, invite client to explore “higher frames of mind” to determine what is being held in mind (“meaning”) as the client thinks and feels about thinking and feeling. Probe to the patterned thinking (“beliefs,” “meanings”) that govern an “experience.” Detect multiple layers of thinking. Sub-Skills: • Grounded: Repeat words of a client’s state or experience to establish the referencing point of the question and inquire about thinking and feelings about that primary state. “When you consider the state of appreciation, what belief would support you staying in that state as you work?” • Congruence: Inquire in a way so voice and gesture corresponds to the subject, ask without hesitation to move conversation to the frame or metastate governing the primary experience. • Relevant: Inquire about second and third level thinking about an outcome or an experience. “Who do you need to be (in your identity) in order to make your dream for opening a coaching practice?” • Detects frames: Identify two or more levels of ideas (“frames”) about an experience and check to see if client recognizes the levels. “I think I just heard three levels. You said that you were afraid that if you took that risk, it would expose you to embarrassment, and that you were set against being embarrassed. So the fear of the risk is embedded in a decision against embarrassment. Anything about that description that I missed?” • Complex: Layer multiple levels into the inquiry. “What do you believe about that decision to access the flow state?” • Frame by Implication (FBI) Questions: Introject useful premises into the inquiry in a way that presupposes what the client wants by using “language patterns” that phrases thinking in layers. This will then presuppose the client’s “values,” “outcomes,” dreams and “states” that the client has described. “How surprised will you be to discover that your commitment to being compassionately challenging will begin to show up in your everyday conversations in a way that’s natural and highly persuasive?” • Indepth Exploration: Probe 10 times into the “layers” of thoughts in the back of the mind. -200-

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Quality Control: Question to put a person at choice point in thinking about the quality or value of an experience. “Would courage to be resilient enhance your sense of self?”

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Ask about something in a way that presupposes what is required (“introjecting premises, FBI questions”), ask in a way that implies the creating or existing of what is needed to facilitate a shift in the client’s thinking and feeling. “How surprised will you be this next week when you find yourself using this new frame so that you stay comfortable and yet excited as you make that presentation, just how much will that fit into your primary goal, and how much will that enrich your sense of self?” Ask about multiple “frames” and “states” (“complex meta-questions”) that correspond to the client’s outcome with the discovery of new resources. “What does it mean now that you have made this decision; how will that affect your sense of self?” Hear meta-comments by a client and ask about the meta-comment to explore it. Detect adverb modifiers (happily, interestingly, curiously, regretfully, sadly, etc.) and explore or use the modifier to explore the client’s frames. Ask one meta-question every two minutes, delivered in matter-of-fact tone of voice and matching gestures, speak specifically about the client’s “content.” Congruently inquire without any hesitation. Inquire about second level, third level, etc. thinking about the client’s outcome and experience (“relevant”). Repeat the client’s state or experience and inquire about thoughts and feels about such (“grounded”). Ask a client about what he thinks or feels (“simple meta-questions”) deliver with pauses or broken voice (“hesitantly”), speak incongruently so voice and gestures do not correspond to what the words mean. Ask without grounding the inquiry so client can’t follow the request. Ask a client about what she thinks or feels (“meta-questions”) that do not relate to the client’s outcomes “By the way, what do you believe about your pet peeing on the carpet?” Ask only about the world of actions “out there” (primary level question).

6) Giving Feedback Design: To provide a clean and unbiased reflection of what you receive from a client in a session so that the client feels seen and fascinated by the mirroring, and to expose the client’s responses of incongruencies and blind spots. Operational Definition: Say words about a verbal or behavioral response with supporting gestures, movements, voice tone, etc. which matches what you saw or heard from the person as you mirror back to the client a specific behavior, words, gestures, tone, etc.

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Sub-Skills: Mirror: Match an experience in words, gestures, tone, volume, etc. seen or heard to mirror back to the person. Outcome oriented: Use client’s outcome as point-of-reference for what’s relevant. “In terms of your goal of asking meta-questions, what I hear was X.” Empirical: Speak in sensory-based terms (see, hear, feel). Timely: Speak immediately in the moment or shortly after an experience so the feedback is fresh and current. Tentatively: Offer comments tentatively, not absolutely (“this is the way it is”), own them as your experience of the person. “From what I can tell, it seems to me that you blinked your eyes and spoke with tension in your throat muscles.” Relevant: Give a response that relates to what the person says is important to him. Check: Ask client if the mirrored response seems accurate and valid to her. “How does this feedback fit for you?” Actionable: Offer suggestions for a next step for improving skill or response, something the person can do. “To take your listening skills to the next level, eliminate the level 1 behavior of talking over and give the person time to finish.” To the number: When using a benchmark, mention the number of the level. “At level 3, I saw you do X and Y.” Celebrate: Check person’s values and goals and recognize when person achieves a desired outcome. “To your goal of asking 1 meta-question every two minutes, you reached your goal. Well done! Meta-High Fives!” Benchmarks for Giving Feedback 3.5

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Present words about “the next level for improving,” in specific measured steps, offer in a tentative tone and slower speed of voice, saying “I think...” allowing time for client to reflect on it, ask questions to invite “responsibility.” “What will you take away from this?” “What opens up for you that will create even more positive changes?” Speak sensory-based words to client in slow (“patient”), measured way in an even tone or calm voice; support and individualize the facts to the person. Speak in specific sensory see-hear-feel terms so the person can see or hear the behavior; acknowledge and match the client’s responses, give facts in short concise sentences which correspond to what the person says or does. When giving feedback to an established benchmark, mention the number of the level. Make statements that are not sensory based, but that evaluates, use one’s own “values” and “criteria” about the actions, rather than the client’s “criteria.” “I think you ought to really stop thinking being egocentric about that job, and develop your skills.” “I recommend that you...” Starting sentences with, “You are...” -202-

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Speak quickly with little or no checking with the client, show no evidence of thinking through one’s comments, without speaking about the state it induces the client into, criticize, blame, argue, tell, use words that personalizes (e.g., about the person rather than about behavior), “You are just not very good at this, are you?” No comments on responses from the client, judge client for behaviors or response, raise voice and yell about something the client does.

5) Receiving Feedback Design: To be completely open to a client in receiving from him explicit and implicit messages so the client feels safe to be open, vulnerable, to disagree, to correct the coach and to fully express himself. Operational Definition: Receive the words of the feedback, see the actions and gestures, and calibrate to the client’s state, notice and track the details about how the client is coming across in presenting herself, consider and/or reflect on those responses. When presented with verbal feedback, ask questions about it, use what the coach finds useful in order to improve facilitating skills and presentation. Sub-Skills: Notice: Calibrate to the presence of a response in another (see and acknowledge). Silent reflection: Silently reflect on the information presented. Stay calm: Breath deeply as listening and acknowledging what is said. Acknowledge: Let person know one has heard the information given. Inquire: Ask about the experience of an event or a statement. Curiously explore. Seek more information: Ask about the sensory evidence regarding the information or response offered. “Would you tell me more about what you saw and heard me do?” Distinguish levels: Recognize evaluative language and seek to have it translated into sensory based information. Ask about meaning: Explore what the words means to the other person. Ask about intention: Explore what the person giving the feedback is seeking to do that’s positive for self or for the other. Give thanks: Express appreciation for the information given. Integrate: Use and implement the words to make a change in your talk, tones, gestures, behaviors, and actions. Benchmarks for Receiving Feedback 3.5

Say words that appreciate a response (e.g., “Thank you for sharing that.”), celebrate the “information” by saying how you will use it for improving, recognizes how the sensory information suggests “patterns” that call for changing in some behavior, make plans for integrating it and enhancing one’s performance. Demonstrate implementing by using different tone of voice, gestures, etc. Ask -203-

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questions that explore and clarify the data, ask for details about when, where, how, etc. for more precise representing (“information”). Silent when reflecting on the information, ask how it fits or doesn’t fit, show interest and curiosity by asking questions. Explore and clarify when, where, how, etc. (the evidence), person in a neutral or a slightly positive state, not showing anger, fear, or stress. Accept the words by acknowledging (nodding, saying, “Yes”), and explore them, “Yes I remember doing that. What did that mean to you?” “How did that affect him?” Silent when listening to the feedback, seemingly pondering it (e.g., eyes moving), and ask no questions, no exploring of its meaning and does not ask for details. Respond to the “information” by stating with a strong emotion (i.e., anger, fear, stress, frustration, etc.), respond by making statements that defend self (“I had to do that because ...”), say things that argue, deflect, discount, or disagree with the words and data (“That is about you, not me!”). Disengage to receiving or being a part of the dialoguing, refuse to listen, walk away, avoid it and refuse to deal with it.

7) Inducing States Design: To be expressive enough in speech to induce client into a state that facilitates her outcome so the client feels and experiences safety, trust, engagement, curiosity, change, etc. Operational Definition: Invite a person to recall or imagine a mind-bodyemotion “experience” so that the client begins to think-and-feel in ways that correspond to the idea or referent. Elicit a thought and embody it in one’s neurology. Access and use a felt “experience” to facilitate the process of enabling the client to reach outcome. Use metaphors, stories, gestures, facial expressions, voice, etc. to amplify the state. Sub-Skills: Address: Speak about mind-and-body “states” (thoughts and feelings) that the client is experiencing or wants to. Reference for Eliciting: Refer to “experiences” or events that call forth feelings, use such as triggers for the state. Non-verbal eliciting: Use voice and gestures to increase likelihood of evoking the experience. Sound like and look like the experience. Repeated Attempts: Repeated attempts to elicit the embodied experience. Name: Name an experience a “state” or give it a label. Silence: Withhold speaking when the client is processing information or emotion, be silent to allow the person to experience a state. Meta-Questioning: Ask meta-questions that help and/or presuppose the accessing of a state. Menu List: Provide a list of possible choices for evoking a state. “What triggers you to melt in appreciation? Would a beautiful sunset, walking on a beach and watching children splashing in the waves, having your back and shoulders massaged, watching kittens play, holding a newborn?” -204-

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Induction language: Use induction language patterns and distinctions from the Milton Model and/or a storytelling voice and reference. Coach the body: Ask client about his or her breathing, muscle tension, facial expressions, voice, etc. in order to feel an idea or experience. Benchmarks for Inducing States 3.5

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Ask client to fully experience the state in breathing, walking, moving, gesturing, speaking, etc. (“coaching the body”), tease and test to see how much of the state the client is experiencing, amplify it and anchor the state for further use. “Be with the emotions of the state and show them to be fully in your body.” Evoke an experience or state by using metaphors or stories. Indirectly induce a “state” by using language patterns and distinctions that suggest one idea after another to layer multiple suggestions upon each other. Use a menu list of suggestive referent experiences likely to elicit the experience. Suggest and/or invite the “desired state” and speak with a corresponding voice, access the “experience” and use it in one’s voice, gesture, face, breathing, etc. to invite the client into it; refer only to the client’s examples (“referent experiences”). Suggest an experience or state; do some matching and mirroring to pace the person’s current experience and mention the desired experience three or less times; does not provide a reference experience. Speak in a monotone, or with a tone of voice not corresponding to what a person wants, does not access the mind-body experience, or in a different state (i.e., impatient when wanting to evoke patience, tired and fatigued when evoking motivation); mention the experience and order the client to experience it. “Don’t feel afraid, feel courage.” Elicit a counter-productive state. Does not mention mind-body “experiences,” no mention of the desired emotional experience, monotone use of voice, fail to use tone, tempo, or story to correspond to the state or outcome of the client.

What Are Your Take Aways? Take away that benchmarking is a process that you can do formally and informally. You can do it conversationally in the coaching conversation and you can set down with an individual, or organizational client and create a set of benchmarks for measuring intangible qualities that are desired. Take away that in the field of Meta-Coaching extensive benchmarks have already been created for the core and advanced competencies of coaching. These are now available and you can use them to mark and measure your coaching skills. End of Chapter Notes: 1. See Achieving Peak Performance (2009). Also APG for the pattern. 2. See the book on benchmarking, Benchmarking Intangibles (2011).

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COACHING SELF-ACTUALIZATION The Self-Actualization Quadrants & Matrix “If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you will be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life. You will be evading your own capacities, your own possibilities.” Abraham Maslow Every human being is a discontented system who wants to be somewhere else, wants to experience something else, and wants things to change for the better. Why is this? Because every human system is in a process of becoming real, becoming more— we call that journey self-actualization.

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oaching most essentially aims to facilitate actualizing a client’s potentials. This is why clients invest in coaching. These potentials could be visionary potentials that aim to change the world or they could be developmental potentials aimed to change the person so that he become his best version of himself. It could be to actualize one’s highest values about a relationship, family, career, business, or organization. It -206-

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could be to make actual one’s best performance in a specific area. Whatever the subject, the idea of self-actualization focuses on bringing out the very highest meanings and values and incorporating them into the person’s very best performances. What is Self-Actualization? We are working with a double-nominalization, “self” and “actualization.” To understand what we are talking about, and referring to, we have to denominalize it. The verb within actualization is actualize, that is, to make actual, real, or factual. So we make the rich potentials and possibilities inherent in our client’s self—which include talents, natural dispositions, and passions real. We make them present and available in her everyday life. Doing this enables a person to become one’s best self. Actualizing the self refers to probing deep enough to discover the things that are potentially present in a person, identifying them, developing them, and then enabling one to release them in everyday life. In the process it typically activates one’s excitement as it challenges one to step up to being his or her best. As a result the person becomes “fully alive/ fully human”—another description of self-actualization. Abraham Maslow said that self-actualization is the human being at the height of his or her powers, being all one can be. He said it is being able to listen to one’s inner voice and thereby both discover and become one’s real self. He said it was to live at the height of the hierarchy of needs in the selfactualization needs for meaning, beauty, justice, etc. Carl Rogers said it was a human being who is “fully functioning” mentally, emotionally, personally, inter-personally, etc. Coaching Self-Actualization If that’s what it means to actualize one’s potentials, and if that is what a coach facilitates, then how does a coach do this systematically? How do you coach self-actualization systematically? Obviously, you have to know how the self-actualizing process works, how a person identifies, develops, and releases a potential, the mechanisms that play an essential role in this, and the processes to activate the mechanisms. As noted in Chapter 3 on the Psychology of Coaching, the idea of selfactualization and the original models and studies arose from the developers of the first Human Potential Movement (HPM), primarily Abraham Maslow -207-

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and Carl Rogers. They designated the movement that arose promoting selfactualization as “The Third Force” in psychology and it is known today in most Universities as Humanistic Psychology. What did they discover about the process of self-actualizing? What models and patterns did they discover and/or create that we can use to facilitating self-actualization in people and groups today? A little history will help answer these questions. It all actually began as an accident. One day Maslow, having graduated with a doctorate in Behaviorism, was at a party hosted by his two mentors when he was struck with the idea that these two people were “very good species” of humans. Well, that’s how a Research Behaviorist thinks. In studying animal species, they always want to get good specimens so that they study what is normal rather than trying to figure out an animal species by studying a sick or dysfunctional animal. Suddenly at the party Abraham Maslow realized that Ruth Benedict and Max Wertheimer actually were exceptional people—good examples of the human species—they were intelligent, productive, growing, using all of their skills, kind, considerate, loving, collaborative, giving, contributing, etc. So why not study them? That’s exactly what he did. Getting a notebook, he titled it, “Good Humans Studies,” and began recording their behaviors, attitudes, traits, and characteristics. Eventually he had a full page of characteristics for each of them. Then the Aha! moment occurred. When he compared them, he was astonished. “Is this the same syndrome?” he asked himself. And with that he created his first list of self-actualization characteristics. That was 1937 and for the next three decades he continued that exploration—expanding and developing that list and having his graduate students research self-actualizing people. By 1941 Maslow created his first list of human needs which led to the Hierarchy of Human Needs. Yet it wasn’t until 1954 when he published Motivation and Personality that the hierarchy was popularized and the Human Potential Movement (HPM) was launched. Within this concept was the idea of self-actualization as a legitimate and innate human need. It is a drive within human beings —within all human beings, and yet, sadly, it is not fully actualized in most of them. Why not? What happens that prevents this innate drive from becoming real and actual in most people’s lives? -208-

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What can we do to help enable the self-actualization drive to be more robust in people’s lives? These were the questions that drove the HPM. 1 The idea in Self-Actualization Psychology was that of studying human nature at its best, rather than at its worst. Maslow called human nature at its worse “the psychopathology of the average.” By contrast, he studied self-actualizing people in order to describe human nature as it can be optimally when it is not interfered with or sidetracked through trauma or damage. Figure 13:1

The strength of the Human Potential Movement was that they did not study sick or dysfunctional people to understand “human nature.” They studied and modeled healthy people. It began with Maslow’s mentors—Ruth Benedict, founder of Cultural Anthropology and Max Wertheimer, cofounder of Gestalt Psychology. Nor was the idea of studying healthy people just Maslow’s idea. Others were thinking along the same line—Carl Rogers, Viktor Frankl, Rollo May, and dozens of other pioneering thinkers. -209-

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The shift that now occurred created a new focus in psychology—the focus was now on “fully functioning humans” (Carl Rogers) and full humanness (Abraham Maslow). They studied those who were well-adjusted to reality, had robust ego strength, who were not “full of nerves” (neurotic), or unable to cope with life’s demands (psychotic). They modeled those who were contributing greatly, living at the peak of their skills and contributions, pioneering new creative ideas, and who regularly experienced “peak experiences.” This strength-based positive psychological approach was completely new and revolutionary in the field of psychology. Yet while there were so many positive and attractive things about this new emphasis, the Human Potential Movement (HPM) and the idea of selfactualization was not without its problems. Actually several key problems plagued the movement. 1) Their imprecise and vague language. Among them was the lofty, vague, abstract, and even mystical and “spiritual” language that the HPM developers used. They spoke and wrote about focusing on “experiencing,” “being with a client,” transcendence, “cosmic consciousness,” and shifting to an equal partnership between therapist and client. At that time this emphasis offered a strong counterbalance in treating clients as objects rather than people. It certainly re-humanized therapy and education. 2) An anti-technique focus. There was a downside. A great part of the HPM avoided most techniques—specific tactics to facilitate selfactualization. Assuming that development was natural and inevitable, there was a strong anti-technique and anti-directive focus. Carl Rogers popularized his new approach by describing it as non-directive. For him, to facilitate this all one needed to do was to “give unconditional positive, accurate empathy, and authenticity” to the client. Growth would occur naturally and spontaneously.2 3) No singular dependable technique. Others in the movement, however, did use techniques. There were techniques that arose from a great many sources—from Gestalt Psychology came Fritz Perls’ Gestalt therapy and all of the techniques within Gestalt, from Virginia Satir all of the processes in Family Systems. There were body techniques (relaxation, Rolfing, etc.), there were hypnosis and hypnotic techniques, there were group processes (nude bathing, encounter groups, etc.), there were all of the altered states from drugs that they experimented with (Ram Doss and LSD). -210-

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Yet overall, what the Human Potential Movement (HPM) lacked was any singular technology and/or methodology which would be able to consistently, regularly, and dependably facilitate the unleashing of potentials. They tried everything they thought of and yet had no single signature process. The first HPM has been criticized for being too idealistic, too mystical, too abstract, and too spiritual. The movement for the most part lacked, and even disdained, the rigors of the scientific approach of quantifying results, operationalizing terms, and inventing processes and techniques that could be replicated.3 Yet it did achieve several valuable contributions. Primarily that movement awakened thousands of people to the untapped potentials within human nature. It spurred many new forms of psychology. Yet overall, it failed to specify the process of self-actualization. In the end, it left the key questions unanswered: How does the process of self-actualizing actually work? What are mechanisms facilitate the actualizing of potentials? What can we do to dependably enable people to actualize their highest potentials into their best performances? Finding the Self-Actualization Model I began my search for the self-actualization model or even a selfactualization model in early 2003. I wanted it so that we could incorporate it into Meta-Coaching. Many years previously I had studied Humanist Psychology and had read two of Maslow’s books and so I thought that I would do some re-reading and quickly identify the model or models which we would then use in Meta-Coaching. Was I in for a surprise! First of all I was surprised that there really was no single Self-Actualization Model. In researching the HPM, it surprised me with how many things that they tried for the purpose of unleashing potentials and yet how none of them consistently and dependably would identify, develop, and release potentials. No wonder the movement, as a movement, ended in the mid-1980s. That was also a surprise, I did not know that the movement died. As I then revisited Maslow, May, Rogers, and others of the first HPM, I read everything that each of them wrote. But in book after book I could not find the Self-Actualization Model. The two models of Maslow were helpful: the Hierarchy of Needs and the Growth Model. Yet they were also insufficient for what I wanted. In terms of learning how do we unleash -211-

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potentials, the point of the Hierarchy of Needs is: “Meet the lower needs, gratify them adequately, and then the higher needs will automatically emerge.” Maslow’s Growth Model says, “Reduce fears that move people away from growth and reinforce safety and motivations that move people forward toward growth.” These are valid generalizations about what to do and so certainly good beginnings. Yet they are not specific enough to give us a step-by-step process. I wanted some more precise and systematic. 4 In fact, most of all the readings focused on the theories and theoretical understandings of the humanistic approach rather than any specify guidelines for putting the theory into action. The literature is inspirational, but not pragmatic. What I was searching for were the details, variables, and elements of the component pieces along with some organizational process that would give us a pattern. Only then would we have a process that could dependably and systematically use to replicate the peak experiences of self-actualizers. The Matrix Embedded Hierarchy of Needs What eventually resulted from my research into Self-Actualization Psychology was a fuller appreciation of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and a new use of his model. Now the older psychologies had postulated lots of things —sex, power, love, hate, fear, superiority, control, hunger, survival, safety, etc. The Hierarchy of Needs arose from Maslow’s studies of Chimpanzees with Harry Harlow, Female Sexuality at the University of Wisconsin, and the Blackfoot Indians in Alberta Canada during the 1930s. These experiences led him to begin to ask, “Of all the things that motivate people is there any order or structure? What are the mechanisms behind motivation?” By developing a hierarchical understanding of the way human needs arise to drive people, Maslow answered the questions by saying all of these needs operate as drivers, but not in the same way, at same time, same level, or same order. There is an order and sequence to them. Survival needs come first, then safety needs, then the social needs, the self needs, and finally the self-actualization needs. Nor does a need have to be completely gratified—just enough to get by, perhaps 30% gratified. These needs or requirements for living and thriving operate in a structured way, they are organized in terms of potency. Because some are prepotent to others, they operate hierarchically. That is, as some needs are sufficiently gratified, other needs emerge. -212-

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Maslow’s next discovery was even more radical. The four lower categories of needs (survival, safety, social, and self) are needs of deficiency. Deficiency, as lacking sufficient or accurate satisfaction, drives them. We experience the lower needs as driving impulses when we lack or are deficient of that requirement, hence they are deficiency needs (D-needs). We feel a drive or impulse that motivates us when we do not have what we need. When we do not have air, food, water, sleep, etc. (survival needs)— we experience that motivational energy as a very strong drive. These needs clamor to be satisfied. They activate our faculties of mind and body to come into service to enable us to cope with that need. And when the need is satisfied, the drive goes away. Gratification as need-fulfillment extinguishes the drive. We are only “motivated” in these lower needs when we feel deficiency. After fulfillment, we experience a forgetting. Maslow called this “postgratification forgetting.” This is true for sex, safety and security, love and affection or affiliation, and self-esteem and recognition. As deficiency needs, we then oscillate between highly motivated, and not motivated at all, depending on how well we satisfy the needs. This hierarchy of needs identifies the developmental nature of our needs. We are born at the survival level and we then progress up through the other needs. And with each move upward, we experience a different kind and level of need and motivation. To move upward to ever-higher needs reveals the success of the coping skills we bring to a given need. If we cope with the need adequately and truly, the next level of needs arise. If we do not, we get stuck at that level. Above the lower or D-needs (deficiency-needs) is another kind and quality of needs— the growth or expressive needs. These are the self-actualization needs. What we need at this level is knowledge, meaning, beauty, truth, honor, justice, contribution, responsibility, meaningful work, creativity, excellence, simplicity, honesty, kindness, courage, order, mathematics, etc. These are also “needs,” or requirements, for living and thriving as a psychologically healthy person— fully alive/fully human. These needs are highly influenced by learning, understanding, consciousness, choice, freedom, etc. These needs significantly differ from the D-needs. Because they are not driven by deficiency, when we lack them, we are not driven as we are with -213-

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lack in the lower needs. Nor does satisfying them extinguish them. In fact, the opposite occurs. With these growth needs, the more you get, the more you want. Yet you want them for a different reason than you want the deficiency needs. You want them in order to express yourself, to fully be and to become your full self. So Maslow called them the Being-needs (Bneeds) in contradistinction to the D-needs. The first set operates from “the more —the less” pattern; the other from “the more—the more” pattern. The B-needs operates from the principle of abundance whereas the D-needs from the principle of scarcity. All of this comprises what Maslow called a Theory of Meta-Motivation. He said that we cannot understand human “motivation” strictly from the model of the survival needs. Hunger drives us when we have a deficiency and goes away when we gratify it. That model works for the D-needs yet it does not work at all for the B-needs. At the being level, we have a meta-motivation for a set of things that are values—values that make us truly human, values to which we come alive to our highest nature as human beings. The Hierarchy of Needs offers a model that describes needs, drives, urges— motivation and therefore “personality”— how we experience ourselves, our person as we move through the world. Accordingly, this model distinguishes two dimensions in which we experience requirements for life, one set of needs for living or surviving, the next set of needs for thriving. This gives us the lower and the higher needs; the D-needs and the B-needs. Deficiency Needs and Motivation—The Lower Needs The lower needs seek homeostasis—a relatively stable state of equilibrium. The mechanism operating here is drive activation and reduction. Coping here refers to the purposive behavior which is designed to accomplish specific goals: gratify hunger, quench thirst, keep us warm when we are cold, reduce pain, address the need to sleep, etc. These needs are — Primarily based in biology and so feel more instinctual. More immediate, powerful, and driving. Because they are biologically-base, we feel them immediately and directly in our bodies. When lacking, they begin to dominate mind and body. Satisfied directly. When we over-satisfy them, we become bored. Dependent upon others for gratification therefore they are more relational and social. Involve post-gratification forgetting. When the need is satisfied, we tend to under-value it, forget its power and intensity. -214-

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Expressive Needs and Motivation—The Higher Needs The higher needs seek expression—the opposite of homeostasis. At this level, the inner urges seek to be expressed more and more fully. These urges move us to express more and more of ourselves so that as they develop, we can become more ourselves. Drive expression is the mechanism in us which leads to non-purposeful behavior. That is, they are the actions and behaviors that are not aiming to do anything except to be. They are not in service of some further goal. These needs are— Non-survival needs, based more in our psychology and less in our biology. These needs are more ultimate and subliminal. More instinctoid in nature, more just a pure impulse without a corresponding organ in the body where they are expressed. Easier to suppress, even deny, because they are influenced and formulated semantically. With these, we satisfy them more indirectly and through a wide-variety of means. More individualistic and so unique to each person. Less imperative for survival. We can survive without them, but we will not live very fully. Instincts, Instinctless and Instinctoids Another critical, and actually radical, aspect of the Hierarchy Model was Maslow’s analysis of human beings as without instincts. He said that we humans, unlike animals, do not have “instincts” as such. Whereas animals have information-based instincts which “teach” or inform them how to be what they are—how to live, how to thrive, what to eat, what not to eat, how to travel, build nests, or dams, etc., we do not know these things. At best, we have instinctoids— the left-over urges of instincts. Impulses. We have instinct-like tendencies and dispositions, but we do not have the content information. The information about how to be human is missing from the urges. At the DNA level we are not programmed to know how to be human. The result of this is that we humans have to discover and learn how to be human. This is the human adventure. We only have a few basic aptitudes and general predispositions which creates the foundation of human nature. From there we have to learn. We have to use our consciousness to think, reason, belief, decide, choose, re-think, un-learn, etc. We have to be taught how to be human. We also have to consciously choose to think. Yet it is this freedom that is also the cause for both anxiety and creativity.

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Without instincts in our nature, the burden for becoming human falls upon our ability to learn. It falls upon knowledge, truth, and learning. No wonder these are so important in the human experience! Accordingly, when we see human nature in the raw—it involves being a ferocious learner. So if we have any instinct, it is the impulse and drive to learn. No wonder education and culture is critical to our development and actualizing ourselves. It also means that most of our problems and expertise are functions of our learning or “education.” Therefore therapy, and other helping modalities, are more about education or re-education, the learning and unlearning of patterns. This now explains why meaning, truth, and knowledge are essentials metaneeds for us. And this is what Maslow missed. He almost caught this, but not quite.5 What he missed is how each lower need is informed by meaning. I put my formulation of this in a short succinct line: The meaning you give is the instinct you live. This means that all of your lower needs are informed by your meanings. Whatever you understand about a given need, what knowledge you have about it and about gratifying it, whatever truths about it that you have received or invented—those meanings about what it is, how it works, and its significance constructs the information content of your impulse. So now those meanings make up and govern the “instinct” that you feel and live. Consequently we humans invent our instincts. You do, I do. This gives us a lot of flexibility in how we experience our lower-needs. This can be to our detriment as it can also work to our glory. If the meaning you give to food is that it is “the good life,” “rewards,” “love,” “de-stressing,” “being social,” etc. then you will probably have the instinct to eat and eat unless you are extremely active, to become obese. Conversely, if the meaning you give to food is that it is “dangerous,” “being out of control,” “losing your femininity,” etc. then you will have an instinct toward anorexia (anorexia nervosa) and/or bulimia (bulimia nervosa). The Matrix Embedded Pyramid Maslow left something out. What he left out, and did not take into account, was the meaning dimension, that is, the neuro-semantic dimension within the Hierarchy of Needs. He researched and explicated in wonderful detail the nature and workings of the human needs showing that these are our initial “values.” He showed how they work developmentally. Upon that research we stand so that when we see further, it is because of the -216-

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foundations he created. Now, standing on his shoulders we are privileged to go further. Yet Maslow missed several things that we can now see with the advances in psychological research, the neuro-sciences, etc. What Maslow missed may have arisen from the metaphor of a hierarchy from which the diagram of a pyramid arose. As a crusader for process, change, growth, and the process world of continuous change, and against dichotomizing, Maslow’s model suffered from the static nature of a rigid pyramid so that we experience the “needs” in one direction only, from lower to higher. What Maslow failed to map was the fluid nature of human consciousness about our needs and the extent in which our meaning-making transforms the basic needs. What does this mean? As we experience the lower needs for the first time, we invent and create meanings about those needs and our experiences. We map and frame ideas and emotions about how we think about these needs. In a word, we are meta-stating and creating reflexive layers of meaning in our meaning/intention matrix. The first of the self-actualization needs is the need for knowledge. That’s because knowledge provides the information for our instinct-like impulses so that we know what something is, how it works, what significance it holds for us, and what intention to set about it. For meaning, we need and we inevitably create many kinds of knowledge—empirical meanings, practical meaning, conceptual meaning, linguistic meaning, etc. With a set of meanings that you map about yourself, others, time, and the world, then now every time you move through the deficiency needs, your meaning informs your experiences. You no longer experience even your most fundamental and biological needs innocently or naively. As mind now enters the scene, it filters your perceptions of your needs. Now your meaning-loaded-mind perceptions (your neuro-semantics) governs and controls your experiences. Now those needs are semantically influenced, loaded, or distorted. This transforms your needs and how you experience them. As you frame them— so that’s what they mean to you. As you frame them so you

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experience them. They may be more demanding or less. You can frame them so that they become totally irrelevant or “the meaning of life” itself. You no longer just need food for nourishment and energy. Now you eat for a wide range of psychological meanings. Now food can, neuro-semantically, mean and feel “love,” “comfort,” “reward,” “being a good boy,” “being social,” or a dozen other meanings. It is in this way that you psycho-eat. And that changes the need itself so that it is no longer just biological, but also psycho-logical.6 The same dynamic happens to sexual activity and to love making. Now it can mean “proving my masculinity,” “de-stressing,” “proof that I am lovable and that I count,” etc. In fact, every need can be coded so that it becomes a greater need, more driving, more motivational, or less. Anorexics give “food” and “eating” such negative connotations that they fear it, they dread it, they refuse it, they can even starve themselves in order to fulfill a greater need, a psychological need constructed in their meaning-frames. The human needs requires that each of us learn how to cope with those needs, that is how to gratify them truly and accurately. This is what we have to first learn. How do you satisfy your lower needs (survival, safety and security)? To do that you bring your meanings (i.e., understandings, knowledge) about the needs and develop coping skills. As you meta-state your basic needs with your meanings, you set the frames for how you understand them and how you are strive to satisfy them. If what you are doing is working, the drive of the need goes away. The energy and motivation within it dissipates. And you are left with more energy to focus on the next higher level needs. You move up the hierarchy. After coping with your needs comes the ability to master those needs. This requires that you master your meanings and intentions and turn those meanings into effective actions—so effective that you do not just get by, you thrive. You are left with lots of extra energy and vitality for living more fully and humanly. -218-

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As you develop your mind about the needs, your meanings move you to experience them from that perspective. Then your meanings and intentions influence how you cope with things, and how you interpret the lower needs. In the coping phase, you may experience a thousand different meanings and beliefs and so experience the needs from a multitude of coping perspectives. All of this results in a new model—the Matrix Embedded Pyramid. By putting the Matrix Model inside of the hierarchy, the relationship between the B-needs for knowledge and meaning informs the D-needs and so sets up an internal feedback system that connects these different needs. The higher self-actualization needs now provide the content information to the more primary needs so that the meaning you give is the instinct you live. As this makes the hierarchy dynamically alive, it simultaneously identifies the key change mechanism in human experience—the framing of meaning. The Self-Actualization Quadrants The second model that we developed for the Meta-Coaching System is the Self-Actualization Quadrants Model. Recognizing that whatever any person self-actualizes will be simultaneously highly meaningful as well as a high level performance for that person at that time, I constructed two axes— one for meaning and one for performance. Most people are highly aware of the performance axis. This is the axis that moves from incompetence to competence to expertise and finally to mastery. Take any behavior or response and then look at that action or set of actions, in terms of its development. What does it look or sound like when a person first develops it? What does it look or sound like prior to learning it? When a person can do it mediocrely? When a person is fully competent? What does it look or sound like when it is at the level of expertise? -219-

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On the performance scale regarding almost every behavior there are a dozen or more sub-skills. We can use these sub-skills to measure performance in these dimensions of actions.7 1) Verbally expressive and precise — Articulate what you are going to do. 2) Planning — Write a plan, schedule for what to do, create strategy. 3) Social, interpersonal — Get along with others, invite others to help. 4) Coping — Satisfy your basic needs adequately and truly. 5) Effort, discipline — Put forth the effort for learning and development. 6) Practice — Repeat required actions, turn into a habit. 7) Procedures — Identify the specific steps and follow them precisely. 8) Persistence — Stay with it, not give up through setbacks and plateaus. 9) Refining — Continuous learning and refinement through feedback. 10) Resilience — Come back (bounce back) after set back. 11) Feedback — Look for, ask for, receive, and use feedback. 12) Manage risks — Create plan B and plan C contingencies. 13) Identify core competencies: Make specific, work on one by one.

The meaning axis is more complex and more hidden. It comprises the invisible semantic filters that you use as your frames for interpreting things. The first meanings that you construct involve the following dimensions: identity, causation (cause-effect), significance (values), intention (purpose), analogous (metaphors), etc. Here also you can discern the quality of the meanings that you make along a continuum from low to high quality (meaningless or futile, trivial, conventional or normal, idiosyncratic, legacy or sacred). When we put the two axes together, we can generate four quadrants: undeveloped, performers, dreamers, and self-actualizers. -220-

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What are Self-Actualizing People like? A major misunderstanding of self-actualization confuses it with perfection. Of course, that’s wrong on several accounts. First of all, because there is no such thing as perfection, and secondly, because self-actualization, as a process, it never ends. No one ever fully reaches it. That’s why the verb, self-actualizing, more accurately describes it. Maslow described the self-actualizing person as, not the ordinary person with something extra added, but the ordinary person with nothing taken away. This led him to say that the “average man” is a full human being with dampened and inhibited powers and capacities. “All individuals have an in born urge to become a person; that is, they have the tendency toward developing their uniqueness and singularity, discovering their personal identities, and striving for the full actualization of their potentials. To the extent that they fulfill their potentials as persons, they experience the deepest joy that is possible in human experience, for nature has intended them to do so.” (The ExistentialHumanistic Approach, p. 49)

Maslow said that one of the first problems that presented itself to him in his studies of self-actualizing people was the vague perception that their motivational life was in some important ways different from all that he had learned. In Toward a Psychology of Being he wrote: “Self-actualizing people, those who have come to a high level of maturation, health, and self-fulfillment, have so much to teach us that sometimes they seem almost like a different breed of human beings.” (p. 71)

How do we Unleash Potential in Clients? Given all of this about selfactualization, how do we facilitate the unleashing of potentials in clients? 1) Facilitate the client’s ability to construct and reconstruct meaning. After all, self-actualization is about meaning and -221-

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driven by meaning. So coaching self-actualization begins when you take your client into the Construct and enable him to discover how he has been constructing his meanings, what he does to build up his semantics, and how he can de-construct and re-construct meanings. In Coaching, this is the Inner Game. This is the heart of things—and where the client will find the leverage point for generative change. 2) Facilitate the establishing of a solid sense of self. One of the wonderful paradoxes of self-actualization is that it is not about the self, yet it is through the self. To actualize your highest values and best skills, you need to get your self out of the way and the best way to make it so that you have nothing to prove. This is the place and reason for “unconditional positive regard,” or self-esteem. Then, establishing that solid sense of self, you get your ego and ego-investments out of the way. When a person knows that he is more than what he does; more than what she thinks and feels, are more than his history, experiences, and so on, then the person becomes free to be one’s best self and take chances in trying new things. By separating person from behavior, you facilitate the client to create the conditions for growing as a person and experimenting with new actions. Conversely, when a person personalize what he experiences, what she feels, what one goes through (a hurt or trauma), the person defines herself in terms of those events. Identifying oneself in this way distorts personality. Personality can then become limited to external conditions and so is conditional on those events. 3) Identify the person’s potential talents. Given that self-actualization is about finding, developing, and unleashing potentials within, once the self is secure and the person takes ownership of his or her meaning-making powers, the place to start is with finding one’s vision given one’s potential talents. “What do you do well?” “What would you love to be able to do?” “What do you do that makes you come alive?” This will reveal the person’s uniqueness and where she could uniquely contribute. Celebrate this. Bring appreciation to what a person can contribute and, if needed, enable your client also to allow it to count.

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4) Set a compelling vision with supporting goals. Nothing unleashes potentials as a compelling vision that calls to something deep within a person. “What excites you? What do you find so compelling that you can’t ignore it?” “How passionate do you feel about that? What meanings do you need to attribute to it so that it becomes exciting to you?” 5) Build supportive social networks and relationships. Another misunderstanding about self-actualization is that it is a private adventure. The fact is that it is always with and through people. It is very seldom a solo adventure. We become a real selves and our best selves in relationships. What facilitates the unleashing of potential is having someone believe in you. When someone mentors, holds you accountable, affirms and validates you, these are the interpersonal skills which build self-actualizing relationships and create the supportive contexts where new potentials emerge. 6) Create safety nets for experimenting and taking smart risks. New emergent properties, talents, skills, visions, etc. often are blocked by fears. “Eliminate all fears” said business expert Edwards Deming. Fear creates hesitations and can even shut a person down from trying, from experimenting, and from dreaming. A sense of safety to experiment enables courage to arise that unleashes potentials. Then you can experiment with possibilities and give opportunity for new ideas to emerge. 7) Set an ecology frame. Not everything that could be developed and unleashed should be; there are other considerations—time, energy, relationships, money, etc. “Is the unleashing ecological?” explores the client’s larger system to see if it is good for him to commit to a particular self-actualization. Against ecology, there may be certain interferences or restraints which could stop it. Sometimes these not only can stop things, but should stop something from being actualized. What’s stopping your client? Is there a personal weakness to be managed so it does not sabotage things? 8) Tap into the power of immediate, rapport-based feedback. The value of immediate, precise, sensory-based feedback lies in seeing what works, when, and how. This then enables you to refine your activity and take your response to the next level of effectiveness. Without feedback, you are in the dark about what others see as working and what you can do about it. -223-

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What are Your Take Aways? Take away the importance of Self-Actualization Psychology for the field of Coaching and learn as much as you can about the processes that enable the unleashing of potentials process. Take away the importance of coaching both at the level of the Malsow’s List of Characteristics of Self-Actualizing People Self-actualizers are people who regularly experience a peak state or flow experience and who have the following attitudes and characteristics: 3 The capacity to tolerate uncertainty Acceptance of self and others Spontaneity and creativity Need for private and solitude, detachment Capacity for deep and intense relationships Genuine caring and love Altruistic Self-transcending A sense of humor and lightness An inner directedness and absences of artificial dichotomies (love/hate; weak/strong; work/play, etc.) More efficient perception of reality Spontaneity, simplicity, naturalness Autonomy: independence of culture and need for conformity Mystic or peak experiences More democratic in attitudes and dealings with others The ability to discriminate between means and ends More a philosophical attitude about things A greater sense of the sacredness of life Continued freshness of appreciation

deficiency needs and the growth or self-actualization needs. People sometimes unleash their potentials is learning how to cope with their basic needs more effectively. The Human Potential Movement presented great ideas, even if sometimes they were carried away with their own idealism. Yet it failed to become a lasting force due to the lack of techniques, processes, and patterns for translating the grand ideas into everyday realities. Today this is what coaching provides. -224-

The Neuro-Semantics of realizing potential or actualizing talents, predispositions, and fullest powers endows life with meaning and meaningfulness.

End of the Chapter Notes: 1. For a history of the first Human Potential Movement, see Chapters 20, 21, and 22 in the book Self-Actualization Psychology (2008). 2. Roberto Assagilioli was the exception to the general tendency in the first HPM with regard to techniques and patterns. In Psychosynesthis he directly sought to create “techniques.” In the early 1990s I wrote several articles about his “almost discovery” of NLP back in 1965. I wrote about his form of the Swish Pattern, and incorporated his version of the Dis-Identification Pattern as one of our Neuro-Semantic patterns (see MetaStating Magic). 3. This is true of the HPM movement but not of Maslow and Rogers. In fact, Maslow wrote an entire book about research, The Psychology of Science (1966). 4. I have described the Maslow’s Growth Model, see Chapter 9 in Self-Actualization Psychology (2008). 5. See the chapter, What Maslow Missed. In Self-Actualization Psychology (2008). 6. For more about psycho-eating, see Games Slim and Fit People Play (2001). 7. These are detailed in the book, Achieving Peak Performance (2009).

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Y

our identity and vitality of full humanness begins with your inner needs—which you feel as driving urges and emotions, as positive and negative. One understanding of self-actualization is that it is a function of gratifying the human needs. By gratifying the lower needs first you are enabled to then move up to the higher life of your meta-needs (the B-needs). Your capacity to cope effectively with your basic needs, to master those needs enhances your capacity to actualize your highest potentials. Failure to do this leads to all kinds of problems: stress, fight/flight responses, distraction from the highest and best, pathology, living life only at the animal level, etc. Yet knowing what you really need is actually a considerable psychological achievement. Most people don’t. To be aware of your impulses is to know what you really want, which is a prerequisite of self-actualization. “To be natural and spontaneous, to know what one is, and what one really wants, is a rare and high culmination that comes infrequently, and that usually takes years of courage and hard work.” (Maslow, 1970, p. 273)

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The Matrix Embedded Hierarchy of Human Needs is a Neuro-Semantic model developed from the work of Abraham Maslow and his Hierarchy of Needs model. In Meta-Coaching we embedded the Matrix into this model to expand Maslow’s original work which makes it more dynamic and alive. Now the Matrix-Embedded Pyramid enables us to understand, recognize, and work with gratifying the human needs. We are, after all, a needy species. Biologically we are animals and Maslow strongly recommended, “Be a good animal; have healthy appetites.” “Needs” are simply the requirements for living and thriving. As you learn to effectively understand your needs and cope with them by gratifying them adequately and truly, you move on to the next level of development. This is the first requirement for self-actualization— having a healthy biological foundation with sufficient physical energy, emotional energy, and personal energy. As a strength-based model the Self-Actualization Assessment Scale enables you to look at yourself (or another person) through the eyes of human strengths and potentials. It enables you to identify strengths, talents, and resources that can be tapped and more fully utilized for actualizing the person. The following tool provides a way to use the Hierarchy of Needs for Needs Assessment for coaching and training in service of selfactualization. This Self-Actualization Assessment Scale is designed to answer the question that Tim Goodenough asked, which originated this tool, “How can we use the Hierarchy of Needs for facilitating and enabling selfactualization?” Self-actualization means being “the best you” that you can be and it means finding and unleashing your highest values and visions into your best performances. This allows you to be “fully alive, fully human.” It means being what you are and when you do, you live authentically, congruently, and with integrity. As an assessment tool, you should be able to do the first level analysis by yourself. For deeper analysis, I recommend that you ask a Certified MetaCoach to facilitate the process with you.

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How to Use the Self-Actualization Assessment Scale

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1) Start at the bottom and work up. Begin with the survival needs and work up the diagram. The diagram of the pyramid is made up of many continua of needs, several in each category (survival, safety, social, and self). Use the framework of each line as a continuum that measures your overall, global, or general sense of efficiency in meeting your needs. How are you doing? What is your overall sense? Are you getting by? Then you are in the middle. If you are not quite getting by, there’s some stress and strain in getting your needs met effectively, then you are on the left side—in the Red Zone. If you are not only getting by but doing pretty good, then you are to the right of the middle, in the Green Zone. 2) Think of the continuum as a measurement of your overall coping. The continuum goes from the far left side and gauges several stages in the process of handling your needs: dysfunction, distortion (coping at the extremes of too much or too little), not quite getting by. The Red Zone is where the deficiency needs are crying out that you are just not satisfying/ gratifying the needs very well. You are either not using true gratifiers or the gratification is too much or too little (the extremes), or a need and its satisfaction has become distorted so that it now creates some kind of human dysfunction. The continuum on the right side of the middle gauges the stages beyond Getting by: getting by pretty well, doing very good, optimizing your coping skills (having some expertise in handling the need), to maximizing the need (being absolutely masterful in handling your needs). No one is completely at the right hand of the continuum. “Masters” can move there from time to time. It is the ideal of where you can reach in terms of effectively gratifying your needs. When there, your consciousness, emotions, and energies are completely freed from that driving need. Then you have all of that energy available for moving up the hierarchy and into the human self-actualizing needs at the top. Dysfunctional Maximizing Neurotic Psychotic

Extremes Too much Too Little

Not Getting By Cravings, Dissatisfaction

Getting By

Getting by

Doing Good

Doing Ok Well – Thriving Normal concerns Feeling Good

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3) Mark your default point and your range. [ ] Without identifying any particular context, answer it globally or generally for your life. (We will use various contexts later). Put a check (or tick ) where you basically are today. Then put brackets [ ] around where you move back and forth—the range of your coping gratifications. The check is your default point, if you are doing this on paper, you could use one color for this. The brackets is your range so use a different color. 4) Sort for Quantity and Quality. [ V — Q or Q — V ] As you think about gratifying each need —note the amount (i.e., number, volume, quantity) of how many gratifications, or how much, you have in the gratification for the need— this is the Quantity (or Volume). Then note the quality of those gratifications (from low to high; from poor to excellent, from inhuman to highly humanizing, whatever qualities you like to give the experience). For Quantity use a “V” which stands for “volume” of (i.e., amount, times, how often, degree, volume, etc.) and “Q” for the Quality of the experience. Quantity could be eight hours of sleep; quality could be 60% for partly rested, but not refreshed, 80% for refreshed. How many hours do you get and what is the quality of the sleep. Under food: how much do you eat, how often, how many calories— and what is the quality of that food (junk food, healthy). Under safety: What is safe, what is not? How many threats to your physical well-being? Thefts in your neighborhood, break-ins, carjackings, murders. Stability: How often do things change, quality of those changes. 5) At the top — check your Highest Meta-Needs. Above the “lower needs” (your animal or biological needs) are the “higher” human needs. These self-actualization needs define human life at its best. What drives you? What do you live for? Key higher needs: Meaning, contribution, justice, fairness, music, beauty, mathematics, making a difference, well-being (health), spirituality, excellence, honor, loving, wisdom, etc. What is the highest meaning and vision of your life? What do you seek to actualize? Deepening the Analysis By using the Self-Actualization Assessment Scale you can achieve numerous degrees of analysis, depending on how deep a needs analysis you want with -230-

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yourself or a client. You can use the Hierarchy Needs Analysis in numerous levels to go deeper and deeper with each new layer of analysis. 1) General Analysis: First use the Assessment Scale to get a general picture of your coping skills as you to gratify your basic human needs. Here are essential questions to ask after you complete the diagram: Where are you overall? How are you gratifying your needs? Doing what? How coping? Do you live in the Red Zone mostly or in the Green Zone mostly? Is there a particular level of need (survival, safety, social, or self) that demands most of your mental and emotional energy? What have you discovered from this first level analysis? What are you aware of? Weaknesses: Are there any strong areas of deficiency? Strengths: Are there any strong areas of optimizing or maximizing that provides an extraordinary resource? Interferences: Is there any need that you are not gratifying effectively which is interfering with your self-actualization? Did you leave any of the need continua blank? If so, why? Volume— Quality Relationship: Notice where you put the V and the Q for each need: Is the Quality always after than the Volume? Is the Quality always after than the Volume? Do the Q and the V shift around depending on the need? Is the Quality and the Volume always or usually together? 2) Semantic Analysis: Next explore the thinking, understanding, believing, deciding, etc. (yours or another’s) that sets up the standards of evaluation: What do you think or believe about X? [Any continuum need] What do you understand about the need? How accurate do you judge your thinking and understanding? What is your intention? What evaluations have you heard from others about need X? What criteria and standards are you using to make your evaluations? What does it mean to you to “get by?” How do you feel about that? How stressful is it when you are not “getting by?” How stressful when you are in the Red Zone?

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3) Thinking Pattern Analysis: Another analysis can be around the thinking style used to create and evaluate the need and ways of coping with it. Examine the thinking and evaluating by the list of Cognitive Distortions to detect to what extent they play a role in how you think and cope: Cognitive Distortions 1. Over-generalizing 2. All-or-nothing thinking 3. Labeling 4. Blaming 5. Mind-reading 6. Prophesying the future 7. Emotionalizing 8. Personalizing 9. Awfulizing: Amplifying 10. Should-ing: Demands 11. Filtering out the positive 12. Impossibility thinking: Can’t-ing 13. Discounting 14. Identifying

Adult Cognitive Styles Contextual thinking Both-and or in-between thinking Reality-testing thinking Responsibility thinking Current sensory information Tentative predictive thinking Witness thinking Objective thinking Meta-cognitive thinking Choice thinking Perspective thinking Possibility thinking Appreciative thinking Dis-identifying thinking

4) Other Perspective Analysis: For this analysis, imagine yourself “in the shoes of someone who knows you very well.” Now fill out a second SelfActualization Assessment from that second-position perspective How does that compare to your first Assessment? What insights or awareness does this stimulate in you? Next, if you are brave enough, invite your mate, a colleague, a manager, one of your children, etc. fill out the Scale about you. Get a 360 feedback on how others experience you and your needs, and how you gratify your needs. 5) Context Analysis: Another level of analysis that you can use is that of contexts. If you use a specific context: work and career, home, relationship, hobby, sports, leadership, management, etc., then what new or different information emerges? What contexts are important to you? Identify one and fill out the Needs Analysis again using that context. What new awarenesses or insights does this elicit for you? Dysfunctional Neurotic Psychotic

Extreme Too much Too Little

Not Getting By Cravings, Dissatisfaction

Getting By Getting by Doing Ok Well – Normal concerns

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Doing Good Optimizing Maximizing Thriving Super-Thriving At one’s very Feeling Good best

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Background for Understanding the Hierarchy of Needs Maslow organized human needs using a hierarchical structure known as the Hierarchy of Needs. The first four levels, “the lower needs” are animal needs. The higher intelligent animals also have these needs. These are driven by deficiency. When you do not adequately gratify them, deficiency motivation creates energy within us to generate coping behaviors. When they are gratified, the drive goes away. The “higher” growth needs make us truly human are not driven by deficiency at all. Quite the opposite—the better the gratification, the more the drive increases. These make a person richer, fuller, and more self-actualizing. 1) Survival Needs: Food, water, shelter, clothes, money, procreative sex. 2) Safety Needs: Physical safety, order, structure, control. 3) Social Needs: Love, affection, connection, bonding, part of a group, approval, acceptance. 4) Self Needs: Importance, dignity, value, worth, respect, status, honor, image. 5) Self-Actualization Needs: Knowledge, meaning, beauty, music, excellence, exploration, contribution, legacy, justice, fairness, democracy, wonder, etc. Exploring Human Needs After you have filled out the Assessment Scale, you can use it to explore the human needs in more depth. 1) Health and Vitality. Identify the health and vitality of each need: What level of health and level of vitality do you feel with regard to this need? 1) How strong is your need or drive for X? 0 to 10, how intense? 2) Is the drive or need at a level that you can handle? How dominating is it? 3) How often do you think about your need? (Hourly, daily, weekly, monthly) 4) Do any of the needs stress you? How much stress does it create for you? 5) Does the way you gratify the need create a leash? How does it leash you to prevent you from reaching your potentials? 6) What activates the drive or need in you? How does it get amplified? 7) How do you experience it? -233-

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8) Are your coping skills able to effectively gratify your needs and leave you with energy and vitality for the purpose of your life? 2) Meanings: Identify the meanings informing and governing each need: 1) What do you think about need X? [One of the needs] 2) What do you believe about the need and what do you believe about your behaviors for coping with it? 3) What is your criteria and standards for making the evaluation about it that you did? 4) Do you experience or seek to experience “the meaning of life” through any of the lower needs? If so, which one? (i.e., money, status, friends, acceptance, etc.) 5) At what level do you find yourself most frustrated? 6) What need level do you feel stuck at? Which seems to prevent you from going after your dream and unleashing your highest and best? 3) Semantic over-loading. Identify if there is any semantic over-loading of meaning creating distortions of the need: 1) Is there any need that you have given too much meaning? Too much importance? If so, which one? 2) Is there any need that you have given too little meaning? If so, which one? 3) Do you have any limiting beliefs about that need? Has anyone suggest that you might? If so, which one? 4) How much of your mental and emotional time do you think about that need? 5) Do you engage in psycho-coping behaviors? (Psycho-eating, psycho-spending, psycho-sexing, psycho-saving, etc.) [Addictions] 6) Are you facing any negative behavior consequences from your eating, exercising, earning, saving, relating, etc.? (i.e., health problems, relationship, career problems) 7) What happens to your needs under some or moderate stress? 8) What happens to your needs under major stress? 4) Contexts: Explore the semantic environment around the need: 1) What are your meanings and beliefs about the context of any given need? 2) In what contexts do you thrive? -234-

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3) In which contexts do you just get by and need more effective ways of coping? 4) In which contexts do you struggle to even “get by” in meeting your needs? 5) Skills: Explore your skills for gratifying (satisfying) the needs: 1) With any given need, how do you gratify this need? How else? 2) How effective are you in these coping skills? 3) Which skills need improving or changing? Which are excellent? 4) How extensive is your repertoire of skills for gratifying any given need? 5) What are your very best skills in meeting your needs? 6) How often do you use your coping skills to satisfy the drive or need? How often do you forget to use them? 6) Peak Experiences: 1) Have you and do you still hear your true voice? What is it? What message summarizes the highest value and vision in you? 2) Do you express your true voice? How true are you to your inner calling? 3) How often do you experience peak experiences? (Daily, weekly, monthly) 4) What are your five highest self-actualizing needs? 5) What do you feel that you were born to do or experience? How much have you actualized that today? 6) Now that you know your strengths and resources for unleashing potentials, what does that open up for you? 7) How else could you use your strengths to unleash more potentials? What are Your Takes Aways Take away the fact that you are needy—you have legitimate lower D-needs and higher B-needs which creates the driving impulses of your life. These provide you an unending source of motivation if you handle them aright. Take away that your needs are informed by your meanings. This is great and this is dangerous. Dangerous if you misunderstand and erroneously frame your needs and great if you give appropriate understanding and meaning to them— then you thrive with vitality. -235-

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End of Chapter Notes: 1) Maslow’s best work is in Toward a Psychology of Being (1965) and Motivation and Personality (1954; 1970). For the Neuro-Semantic models that have extended and expanded Maslow’s work, see Unleashed! (2007), Self-Actualization Psychology (2008), and Unleashing Leadership (2009).

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COACHING PERCEPTUAL FILTERS The Meta-Program Model

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here is another model in addition to the seven models of MetaCoaching. It is a model that identifies the thinking patterns within how we construct meaning—the Meta-Programs Model. This NLP model describes the perceptual lens which we all use as we think, reason, perceive, make decisions, communicate, interact, etc. I say as we think, it is also how we think, perceive, etc. These “programs” govern the programming of our thinking styles, our perceptual sorting patterns, and our cognitive biases. They are not the content of what you are thinking, but the structural processes that describes how you are thinking, feeling, and experiencing. That’s what makes them important in Coaching.

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When we originally defined “coaching,” we did not define coaching as involving the client’s perceptual lens. So you might be wondering, “Why not?” I’ve been asked that question many times in recent years and the only authentic answer is, “I didn’t think of it!” Probably because the way we all perceive things—see them, sort for them, process information is so much a part of our “thinking” that it did not seem sufficient to me at that time to make this a separate distinction. Yet it is. And that’s something I learned very early in the process. So over the years as I was engaged in training coaches in the MetaCoaching System, myself and other Meta-Coach trainers, found ourselves increasingly talking about meta-programs. By 2004 I found myself saying that as coaches, “We coach to the client’s meta-programs.” “When you coach to the client’s meta-programs, you often coach precisely to the leverage of change.” What do these statements mean? They refer to the fact that, not infrequently, the problematic frames which a client may be struggling with are his perceptual frames—how he perceives things. For example, suppose a client operates from the pessimistic meta-program filter. Then every time she interacts with others at work as a senior manager she “looks on the negative side of things, on what could go wrong.” Then the 360-feedback shows that those who report to her constantly complains that as a manager, she is always “picking on them,” “focusing on the negative,” “criticizing what they are doing wrong,” and “never able to look on the positive side of things.” Here we have the meta-program that is commonly known. In everyday language, it is called “the glass is half-empty or half-full perspective.” In NLP, it is the meta-program of optimism / pessimism filter. Obviously, the “glass is half-full filter” is a very useful frame for doing quality control, doing due-diligence, checking out possible problems, but it is not all that useful as a filter if it is used exclusively when for encouraging people, relating, managing, leading, etc. Detecting this pattern of perception gives you, as the coach, a very specific frame to coach to. In a word, by knowing the meta-program and a description of each meta-program as a kind of thinking pattern, you have a heads-up in detecting and getting quickly to a critical factor.

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Governed by Context Different contexts call for different meta-programs. In any given context, situation, or activity there will often be one or more thinking patterns that will be most effective. As people recognize this, it is a natural learning process to shift from one side of a meta-program to the other side in order to be effective in that context. In this way, meta-programs are context specific. This flexibility of consciousness is also what enables a coach to be effective in working within a wide range of contexts of clients. In most contexts they naturally shift meta-programs. If the context requires details, people focus on details. If it requires operating at a more general perspective, they go there. If the tasks calls for seeing things that match, people do that. When a person uses a particular meta-program in most or all situations, we call that a driver meta-program. It drives the person and the person doesn’t have the flexibility of consciousness to shift to the converse meta-program which would be more effective. Detecting Meta-Programs To work with the meta-programs of your client or yourself, obviously you first have to detect them. Nor is this so difficult; it is primarily a process of learning and practice.1 The learning part involves making the necessary distinctions so that you can recognize different processing and filtering styles. For example, you will almost always want to distinguish the following meta-programs in your clients: Degree of specificity / abstraction: How global (General) or detail (Specific) is your client? Comparison style: To what degree does your client match for sameness (Same) what you are saying or mis-match for difference (Difference)? Degree of flexibility: To what degree does your client take words absolutely and totally (Aristotelian) or fluidly (Non-Aristotelian)? Systemic Degree: To what extent does your client think in terms of polar opposites (black-or-white, Either-Or) or a continuum (degrees of gray, Systemic)? Semantic space: When your client makes a movie about some event in his mind and enter into it (In) or stay outside to observe (Out)? Authority space: When your client thinks about the right or the authority to do something, is it within her circle of influence (Internal) or outside (External)? -239-

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Who’s First: When your client thinks about a social context, does his focus of attention go to self (Self) or to others (Other)? Motivation: When your client moves and feels motivated is it toward (Toward) what she wants or away from what she doesn’t want (Away From)? Influence: When your client thinks about influencing, does he want to leave as small a footprint as possible in the world (Perceiver) or is he a mover and shaker and wants to create the world as he envisions it (Judger)? Choices: When your client thinks about choices, does she want lots of choices (Options) or prefers to do something in the right way (Procedure)? There are a lot more, but this gives you an idea of what a meta-program is and the distinctions required to detect it. The primary way to detect a metaprogram is through language. By listening to the way a client speaks and frames things, you can pick up most meta-programs. Yet because how we think and perceive affects the way we experience ourselves, our bodies, our world, and others, you can also see and hear meta-programs by watching how a person gestures and moves. For example, when global processing, people tend to step back, look up and/or make large gestures. When detail processing, people have a tendency to make small movements with their fingers, point down, move in, pinch their fingers, etc. If you watch closely and listen for metaprograms, you will see things that have been invisible up until now. Don’t confuse this with what is falsely called “body language.” This refers to the semantic space and gesturing which a person performs. Which is the Best? Which Meta-Program is Bad? Meta-programs are not right or wrong. They are simply processing styles and, depending on when, where, and with whom you are using them, they can be effective or not effective. They can facilitate your ability to understand, perform, and relate in highly effective ways or they can undermine that effectiveness causing you lots of frustration and distress. In fact, every meta-program will be effective in some places and ineffective in other places. These programs for thinking and perceiving are about efficiency, not morality.

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These programs, meta to content, are not moral or immoral. They are simply ways of thinking, filtering, and perceiving. Yet because we all tend to repeat whatever we do regularly or are especially good at—we can develop a meta-program as a preference to such an extent that we become addicted to it. Now it has us! We do it so often and repeatedly, it habituates and we lose all flexibility to move to the polar opposite. Now it is a driver meta-program. This is what typically creates problems and why we need to expand the meta-program so that we have full flexibility of consciousness. There’s another thing. In NLP, our regular meta-programs tend to become our style, our way of operating in the world, and hence our “personality.” These solidified meta-states can become so strong that they form what we call our personality. But this is just a way of describing how we default to one style so much that we lose flexibility and then falsely assume, “That’s who I am.”2 Coaching From Your Meta-Programs Now precisely because as a coach you prefer some meta-programs over others, over the years of your life you become more and more skilled with particular filters so that they can become one of your driver meta-programs. At that point that meta-program is both your strength and your blind spot. It is your strength because it is what you do so very well. You make lots of distinctions around the meta-program and it formulates your best thinking, feeling, relating, and performing. It is also your blind-spot. That’s because as a meta-program, it first tells you what to focus on and pay attention to it and then it simultaneously tells you want to not pay attention to. This creates a blindness to everything on the polar opposite. If you are excellent at the global perspective, you are probably not very good at details. Now imagine meeting a highly detailed client. The problem that then arises is that you and the client process things so very differently. It’s as if you are on different channels or from different worlds. This will undermine your client’s sense of connection and rapport with you, and therefore trust in you. There’s another problem. As you look at your client through your metaprograms, you will tend to see things filtered through that sorting device rather than what is actually there. Meta-programs color our perspectives. This is true for all of us. It explains why all of us are so quick to project -241-

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things onto others which are really our stuff —our perception, and not what is actually out there. Knowing this, of course, is the beginning of the solution. Now you can take your meta-program filtering into account in your perceptions. Coaching to Your Client’s Meta-Programs When your client shows up with all of her meta-programs intact, the great majority of the time, the person has no idea that what she sees and feels and how she relates and performs is to a great extent a function of her metaprograms. She may know a little bit about this, but will mostly be uninformed, ignorant, and clueless about this. And yet if you know metaprograms and can detect them, they will shout out to you the moment the client begins speaking. First of all, this will give you a real heads-up about what’s going on and what needs to be done. Often the client’s challenges will be a function of his meta-programs. Now we have a problem. That meta-program may be the client’s strength and personality signature, and if that’s the case, the worst thing would be to label it as the problem! If you attack it, you will most likely alienate the person and make it much harder for both of you. First you have to acknowledge it and even validate it ... and then invite the client to see the value of expanding it. Now you can do all of this without having to teach about meta-programs. As with the glass-is-half-empty or half-full meta-program of optimism and pessimism, you can use awareness questions to bring most clients to a conscious awareness of the meta-programs. You don’t even have to call them meta-programs— you can call them filters, lens, ways of perceiving. “You’re looking at the situation with a ‘glass-half-full’ perceptions aren’t you?” “Are you thinking in terms of the glass-half-empty?” This invites awareness of one’s thinking style. The power of questioning is that it allows you to re-directionalize a person’s focus. “What is the most critical detail about this report?” “If you were to step back and tell me your overall point, what would that point be?” Coaching to Expand Meta-Programs To expand a meta-program, all you have to do as a coach, is to ask your client awareness questions about the opposite end of a particular meta-242-

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program’s continua. Again, this is the power of awareness questions—they send brains places. And here we send the brain to a place where the client seldom or never goes. By inviting the client to go somewhere that’s not within their ken of perspective, they begin to discover new things and then realize that there are more things to attend to, things they didn’t even know were present. What would be the most critical detail in getting rapport with your boss? What would you have to match so that he feels that you are with him and on his side? What would you say is the biggest or largest perspective that puts that task into perspective so it doesn’t feel so tedious? What parts or aspects of your relationship with your wife fits and matches what she is saying? Anything else? If you were to find some aspect that doesn’t fit what your colleague suggested, what would that be? By planting the question and letting the person think about it, the search for the answer begins to expand that person’s perceptual filter. Later or at other times, you will want to be more direct and call attention to the way your client is thinking, perceiving, feeling, and so on. Are you aware that you are mis-matching what I am suggesting? Are you aware that you are matching and never mis-matching even though I’m inviting you to do that? As you might have noticed that you are constantly doing an external reference to me or to your husband or your boss, how does that settle with you in terms of your own independence and your right to choose for yourself? Further, for the purpose of expanding meta-programs, we have in MetaCoaching an explicit pattern for facilitating a client to consciously do this. The pattern, Expanding Meta-Programs is in the book on meta-programs, Figuring Out People and in numerous Neuro-Semantic training manuals. What are Your Take Aways Take away that the NLP model of Meta-Programs provides a fantastic way to “read people” and profile perceptual patterns and styles. You can count on human beings having a number of very consistent and predictable patterns for thinking, perceiving, and responding and when you are able to detect and match these patterns, you will be able to create even higher levels of rapport as -243-

well as enhance your ability to facilitate change and selfactualization. Take away that you coach from your own meta-programs and that when you are aware and have flexibility of consciousness with your own patterns, this gives you much more power in influencing for your client’s well-being.

End of Chapter Notes 1. For an encyclopedia of Meta-Programs, See Figuring Out People (1997). A very practical book is, Words that Change Minds (1995) by Shelle Rose Charvet. I also designed a board game for learning Meta-Programs, The Meta-Detective Game. 2. See The Structure of Personality: Personality Ordering and Dis-Ordering with NLP and Neuro-Semantics (2001). In NLP, the nominalization “personality” does not refer to a thing, but a process, hence personality is what we do. The word actually describes how we are functioning mentally, emotionally, behaviorally, relationally, etc.

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Chapter 18

META-COACHING PRINCIPLES “Put your creed into your deed.” Ralph Waldo Emerson “We know too much and are convinced of too little.” T.S. Elliot

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rinciples govern every field. Principles are the premises and theoretical understandings that guide one’s understanding of a field. The value of principles is that they provide a succinct and clear way to think about the field. That’s why principles are typically coded in a field stated as “laws,” rules, or “secrets” about how things work in that area. Coded in these ways, it is easier to learn and remember the principles than all of the abstract theory of a field. This is true for selling, influencing, therapy, wealth creation, managing, parenting, leading, etc. As we apply this to the field of Coaching, we can now ask, What are the principles of Coaching and more specifically, what are the principles of Meta-Coaching? Julie Starr in her book, The Coaching Manual (2003) writes: -245-

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“A good coach can be defined by the principles they operate from as much as what they actually do. The principles a coach operates from create a foundation for everything they do.” (p. 218)

Coaching Principles In chapter two, we explored the central cognitive-behavior premises that governs Neuro-Semantics and Meta-Coaching. These premises govern how we naturally learn, grow, and develop and so provide guidelines for effectively coaching a client toward her self-actualization. In chapters four and six on Self-Actualization Psychology, we identified many of the premises for this kind of psychology. In this chapter you will find over 50 governing principles for Coaching as conceived in the Meta-Coaching System. Given there are so many, I have sorted them into five categories. There are the principles for the coach, the client, the coaching process, the change process, and the coaching skills. These principles succinctly summarize what Coaching is, how coaching works, the role of the coach, and so on. The Coaching Relationship Ultimately, the effectiveness of coaching depends on the quality of the relationship you initiate and create with a client. Do this through a respectful approach that honors the client as having the resources and potentials to develop and actualize his skills. The foundation for any coaching relationship is a rich and supportive rapport that actively listens, respectfully explores, and that creates a sense of safety for the client’s inner world. Without this, even clients who really want a coach’s expertise will resist. This is the coach’s first task. For self-actualizing change to occur, there must be a safe place where the client can freely explore and experiment. Create this safe place through respecting the client, distinguishing behavior and person, frame and problem, and creating rapport through listening and attentiveness. Coaching is very personal and demanding. It requires respect, rapport, and collaborative communication, it addresses personal issues, and it entails entering into a very personal relationship. Coaching requires non-judgmental exploration of the client’s frames so that it honors and respects the person while challenging and questioning the frames.

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It is your own congruency that gives your coaching real power. As you call for a new depth and quality of being real and authentic in the client, you also have to be authentic. Those most skillful in coaching receive coaching themselves. Because they live in a state of continual growing and learning, they coach themselves and they receive coaching. Their coaching skills are more developed because they apply the processes ourselves, and so serve as an example. Principles for the Coach 1) The coach is responsible for creating the coaching environment. 2) The coach needs a robust attitude of care and faith. 3) The coach finds and holds the client’s agenda. 4) The coach’s ego has to be put aside. 5) The coach holds an unshakable belief in the client’s potentials and possibilities. 6) The coach’s job is to ask questions, not give answers. 7) The coach mobilizes a client’s engagement via questioning. 8) The coach is both supportive and courageously firm. 9) The coach’s power is his or her authenticity. 10) The coach has to be in a good mind-body-emotional state. 11) The effective coach will play to his or her strengths. 12) Coaching will change the coach. 13) The coach applies coaching to him or herself.

I: The Coach 1) The coach is responsible for creating the coaching environment. Effective coaching depends upon an atmosphere of connection, rapport, understanding, empathy—this creates a sense of safety for the client. This atmosphere, including both the external and interpersonal environments, is the coach’s responsibility to create. How will you create it? What will you do to make sure the atmosphere is right for the client? 2) The coach needs a robust attitude of care and empathy. Above and beyond the skills of coaching is the mindset—an attitude of belief in the client, of care and empathy. This attitude supports the client. It takes a strong, courageous, and robust attitude to coach—an attitude of acceptance, appreciation, respect, curiosity, faith, patience, and firmness. It requires this attitude that reflects that the person is never the problem, problems are functions of the -247-

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interpretative frames a client may hold about things. In the final analysis, a coach has to have a benevolent and unconditional love. 3) The coach elicits and holds the client’s outcome as the session’s agenda. The work of a coach is to elicit, find, and hold the client’s agenda; it is to create a safe and reflective place for discovery. Holding the client’s agenda is a skill which keeps the coaching focus on track. In holding the client’s agenda, the coach becomes a crucible for the client—holding the client’s emotions, passions, fears, worries, joys, excitements, etc. The client is the expert regarding his goals, values, and choices. 4) The coach’s ego has to be put aside to avoid contaminating the coaching. Coaching requires mostly a non-directive approach in determining the coach’s agenda and then a directive approach in facilitating it. To achieve this, the coach has to get his ego out of the way. Coaching is never about the coach, it is always and only about the client. Paradoxically, it takes a lot of ego-strength to coach because it is not about the coach. In getting the ego out of the way the coach develops and expresses non-judgmental awareness. What is it of “ego” that gets in the way? Numerous things: the need to succeed with a client (one’s reputation), knowledge about what’s best for the client, need to get credit for the changes, need to prove one’s worth or value to the client, need to do it your way, need to be quick, and effective, etc. 5) The coach holds an unshakable belief in the client’s potentials. Often the coach will need to believe in the client much more than the client believes in herself. As a humanistic approach, coaching assumes equal value of all persons. Those effective in coaching keep probing for the client’s truth so the client will not sell herself short. For this, the coach separates person and behavior and holds this frame throughout. 6) The coach’s job is to ask questions, not give answers or advice. The coach’s job is to ask hundreds of questions, questions that get to the heart of the matter, and especially questions that the client isn’t asking himself. To coach is to ask questions—profound questions, fierce questions, supporting questions, exploration questions, etc. -248-

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7) The coach mobilizes the client’s engagement via questioning. If the quality of learning and developing comes from within, then the premier coaching skill is asking powerfully reflective questions. While making statements, setting frames, and many other verbal skills are important, the most essential skill is that of asking questions. Asking questions facilitates the inner discovery and construction of frames of understanding, decision, belief, and intention in the client. Then it belongs to the client. 8) The coach is to be both supportive and courageously firm. Effective coaching involves challenging a client for accountability, truth telling, and responsibility. This makes coaching powerfully profound. Effective coaches courageously champion selfactualization as they push and awaken the client to his best. This often demands a firmness from the coach and persistence, the willingness to provoke, tease, probe, and not let the client off the hook. 9) The coach operates from the power of authenticity. The best coaches are congruent and aligned in themselves—they are authentic. Coaching experts are fully human and fully fallible as they continue to grow by applying the coaching processes and patterns to themselves. They have dealt with their own fears of being fallible, of looking foolish, and of not having all the answers knowing that such fears interfere with the coaching process. 10) Effective coaches operate from a good mind-body-emotional state. The quality of coaching depends on the coach’s states of mind and body. A coach’s mind, presence, and skills depends on being physically alive and alert, being physically fit and healthy. State management is one of the first prerequisites for high quality coaching. A coach who does not, or cannot, manage her own states will not be consistently effective. A coach who is tired and exhausted will not be able to use her thinking and feeling effectively and be in peak form to coach. Coaching when you’re not feeling good, when your attitude stinks, when you’re stressed out, or when you are in the grips of a negative state will inevitably undermine the process. Coaching quality depends on being in positively resourceful states. If, as the coach, -249-

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you can’t coach yourself into a resourceful place, you have more preparation to do. Being skilled in state management is not a luxury, it is a basic prerequisite. Are you open, loving, and approachable? Without these, you will not create the rapport, trust, and respect required for effective coaching. 11) Effective coaches play to their strengths. Every coach has strengths and weaknesses, knowing and accepting them enables you to play to your strengths while being open to your vulnerabilities. Use your strengths and weaknesses as a pathway of discovery to discover your uniqueness and niche. 12) The coach is open to the coaching changing oneself. Be prepared to be influenced and deeply affected by the coaching. It will have a powerful influence on you. Coaching cannot be divorced from your personal life as a coach. Not only must you, as the coach, walk the talk, but you must also be open to be changed by the experience. The personal things you explore with clients— attitudes, beliefs, understandings, decisions, etc., cannot but affect and change you. 13) The coach applies coaching to self. “Applying to self” is critical in order for a coach to be truly open and authentic. This is the foundation for self-coaching and for the power for being truly congruent as well as a good role model. Because so much of the power of coaching arises from the coach’s presence, self-application is essential. II. The Client 1) Coaching is all about the client. In coaching, the coach works to unleash the client’s resources, potentials, visions, untapped talents, and truths. For this reason, coaching is never about the coach. Coaching is in service of the client and the person of the client is always more important than any particular process or objective. Accordingly, coaches always check the ecology of the processes and techniques—Do they serve the client?

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2) The client sets the agenda for the coaching experience. Effective coaching begins and ends with facilitating the client’s outcome, goals, objectives, values, and visions about life, not the Principles for the Client 1) Coaching is all about the client. 2) The client sets the agenda or outcome for the coaching experience. 3) Clients are responsible for the results they get. 4) The client is responsible for finding his or her own answers. 5) The client does the work. 6) The client has to become experientially involved. 7) The client has all of the needed resources. 8) The client’s success depends on his or her coachability.

coach’s. To effectively coach, the coach has to operate with no agenda or outcome for the client or about where the coaching session should go. Coaching is about being with and present to a client and staying open to the moment. Effective coaches have the flexibility to follow the energy of the client. 3) Clients are responsible for the results they get. While coaches are responsible for facilitating the client’s awareness, choice, powers, meanings, etc., the client is responsible for the results. Successful coaching elicits and excites the client to take complete responsibility for oneself. Coaches have to release their need for the client to succeed since that is the client’s responsibility. 4) Clients are responsible for finding and choosing their own answers. As the facilitator of the exploration for resources and answers the coach is not responsible for the client’s answers. This releases the coach of the need to give advice or to solve problems. To achieve this, the coach operates constantly in putting the client at cause for herself. 5) The client does all the work. In the coaching relationship, the client does the work. Until the client takes the responsibility for the work and effort of coaching, the client hasn’t entered into the coaching experience. When the coach gives advice or directs the coaching agenda, the coach has slipped into counseling, training, consulting, or mentoring. To the extent that the client accepts responsibility for learning, developing, -251-

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and changing, the coaching will work to access, develop, and mobilize his resources. 6) The client has to become experientially involved. The modality of coaching is about the client experiencing new learnings, actions, behaviors, feelings, etc. In effective coaching, the coach does not do things to a client, but with the person so that the client moves forward on her journey. Clients do this when they become involved experientially in the coaching relationship and conversation. To facilitate this, the coach will induce states to activate the client’s emotions and embodiment. 7) The client has all of the needed resources. Effective coaching doesn’t have to teach, train, fix, or give advice because coaching is about enabling the client to access, find, create and/or sequence the resources that he already has within. A coach seeks to facilitate the client accessing, developing, and mobilizing these resources. In the end, the client is responsible for his own solutions. While the client has sufficient internal resources, the client often does not have ready access to them and/or may not be organized for effectively using them. This then becomes the focus of the coaching— to awaken and develop the client’s ability to activate and unleash these resources. 8) The client’s success depends on one’s coachability. Not everyone is coachable. Many people are not ready for the level of challenge or intimacy involved in coaching. Effective coaching results from the elements of being coachable: willingness to be coached, the readiness for change, an openness to exploring, a responsiveness to tasks, experimentation, an openness in dialogue, and focus on solutions. The degree of the client’s coachability governs, to a great extent, the richness and success of the coaching. III. The Process of Coaching 1) Coaching occurs in levels and typically involves stages. The coaching levels are: performance coaching, developmental coaching, and transformation coaching. Recognizing the stages of coaching enables us to see that coaching is not a quick fix, instead it involves an ongoing process of learning and developing. -252-

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The Process of Coaching 1) Coaching occurs in levels and stages. 2) Coaching requires emotions for emotional intelligence. 3) Coaching involves states. 4) Coaching is predominately a relationship. 5) Coaching is a meta profession. 6) Coaching is centrally about meaning. 7) Coaching is a fierce conversation. 8) Coaching is a collaborative outcome-focused conversation. 9) Coaching is a facilitative conversation. 10) Coaching focuses preeminently on facilitating solutions. 11) Coaching eliminates interferences. 12) Coaching balances reflexive learning with proactive performance. 13) Coaching activates a passion for life. 14) Coaching is holistic by nature. 15) Coaching ultimately seeks to put the coach out of a job.

2) Coaching requires emotions for emotional intelligence. At its best coaching elicit and activates the client’s positive and negative emotions. The emotions are used for motivation for change, exploration for discovery, commitment for decision, etc. The coach needs to be comfortable with strong emotions in the client and able to create a crucible space for those emotions. Coaching enhances emotional intelligence as it facilitates four facets of E.Q.— emotional awareness, monitoring, regulating and controlling, and relating. 3) Coaching involves States. The coach coaches from a mind-body state to the client’s mind-body state. The coaching elicits more resourceful and appropriate States in clients. In this the coach awakens and develops state awareness and state management thereby strengthening emotional intelligence for the client. 4) Coaching is predominately a relationship. The coaching relationship is created by rapport, respect, care, validating, questioning, listening, etc. At its best, coaching builds a solid relationship by being open, approachable, and honest with one’s heart. The way the coach relates to his clients sets the frame for the quality and depth of the coaching relationship which ensures. -253-

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5) Coaching is a meta profession. In coaching, coach and client move to a meta-level to expose and address the structures of meaning which govern the client’s life, communications, and skills. This step back skill moves a client to a higher level to her experience. The skillful coach makes a metamove to a higher position to distinguish structure and content. Process-oriented coaching is not primarily about the client’s contents (the details of the story), but structural processes. 6) Coaching is centrally about meaning. The coaching conversation focuses on how the client represents things and the meaning frames he puts around the representations. At its best, the coach enters the client’s meaning matrix to expose the specific meanings which are governing the client’s life and experiences. This facilitates awareness, clarity, and choice. From there the client may choose to keep the framing, reframe it, deframe it, or outframe the meanings altogether. 7) Coaching is a fierce conversation. Coaching is a fierce conversation which first invites the client to come out from behind himself and become real. To facilitate this level of conversation, the coach engages in a dialogue around outcomes, possibilities, skills, explorations of meaning, solutions, and so on. The coach becomes a great conversationalist through asking great questions— questions that bring out the best in the client and accesses the client’s resources. 8) Coaching is a collaborative outcome-focused conversation. Effective coaching necessitates connecting with a client and enabling the client to focus on a highly desired goal. Coaching requires a democratic style for exploring, learning, and transferring knowledge and skills. Coaching is directive to the extent that it is outcome oriented. Coaching inevitably begins with the creation of a set of well-formed outcomes and objectives against which coach and client can measure progress. It’s not just a nice chat about vague wishes. The coach seeks to know the precise game the client wants to play, and why and where the client is currently, and what are the next steps. -254-

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9) Coaching is a facilitative conversation. Coaching means facilitating learning and unlearning which, in turn, enables change to occur naturally and easily. Coaching isn’t about imparting information, giving advice, or fixing things. It is about facilitating higher quality thinking, goal setting, and problem solving. 10) Coaching focuses preeminently on facilitating solutions. An effective coach starts from the premise that “problems” are human constructs—interpretative meanings that the client gives to something. The focus isn’t on the problem, but the solution. Starting from the premise that there’s always a solution, the coach searches with the client for it. This describes the heart of the coaching conversation. 11) Coaching eliminates interferences and solves problems. A “problem” is literally an interference to a desired outcome. Ironically once a well-formed outcome is set, problems emerge as the blocks which interfere with moving forward. To have a problem a person has to have an outcome and a frame that something is in the way. It is the frames which create the problem. Knowing this, the coach will refuse to be seduced by the “seriousness” or pervasiveness of the client’s frames about problems and seek to facilitate new coaching solutions with the client. Coaching focuses on understanding, reframing, and/or eliminating the interferences. Since it’s all about maps and frames, then “problems” and “challenges” are not externally real. They are internal constructs. Apart from the client’s perceptions, problems do not exist. They arise from the way that the client thinks and feels about things, and always make sense in that context. 12) Coaching balances reflexive learning with proactive performance. Insightful change that is consciously chosen occurs when the coach enables the client to learn about himself in a reflexive way. So while the coaching process is outcome and achievement oriented, it is drive by reflection. The bottom-line in coaching is the change in performance— the Outer Game. Paradoxically, this is best won in the Inner Game in reflection. -255-

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13) Coaching activates passion for life. Coaching begins and ends with passion. It begins with the coach’s passion in facilitating the unleashing of the client’s potentials. It ends with the client’s passion in actualizing her values and visions. As a coach you coach from a passionate state about what you are doing which, in turn, awakens passion in clients. 14) Coaching is holistic by nature. Coaching focuses on the client’s whole life and on all of the systems which a person lives within. In the coaching process, the coach is constantly checking on the ecology— the work/life balance, the balance of the mind-body-emotion system, the ecology of one’s frames and changes, and by stepping back to see the set of relationships between things, the coach seeks a healthy coordination of the whole. 15) Coaching enables clients to become independent of the coach. Ultimately, we coach to put ourselves out of a job. The end-game for the coach is to facilitate the client to be able to self-coach. Effective coaching always seeks to facilitate the client’s independence, not dependency. A healthy coach does not need to keep clients dependent either for ego satisfactions or to have a full practice. The value they add in coaching themselves out of a job attracts more and more referrals, which, in turn, grows the business. IV. The Change Process 1) Coaching facilitates change. 2) Change occurs in stages and on multiple levels. 3) Coaching is about generative change. 4) Change must be ecological to be lasting.

IV. The Change Process 1) Coaching facilitates change. To coach effectively, the coach operates as a change agent, understanding the mechanisms and processes of change, how to facilitate it with a client, and where a client is in the process of change. As a catalyst for change, the coach facilitates the client through the stages of change. -256-

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2) Change occurs in stages and on multiple levels. All change is not the same. To effectively coach, the coach addresses both the levels of change and the stages of change. She will facilitate performance coaching, developmental coaching, and/or transformational coaching. He will work through the stages of motivation, decision, creation, and integration. 3) Coaching facilitates generative change. The coaching focus is to improve the quality of life by changing one’s thinking, emoting, attitudes, actions, ways of relating etc. As a client learns and develops, he changes. As coaching enables healthy and well-functioning people to generate new insights and skills, coaching produces generative change. 4) Change must be ecological to be lasting. Effective coaching works to bring a client’s attentions into alignment with his or her highest intentions and to align with all of the client’s internal and external contexts. V. Coaching Skills 1) Effective coaching requires a set of competencies. A coach can coach no better than the level and quality of his coaching skills. Because core coaching competencies enable one to coach professionally, the greater one’s skills, the greater one’s influence and effectiveness in the coaching process. 2) Effective Coaching comes from an intense state of curiosity. A respectful fascination with people and experiences enables the coach’s skills in exploring and questioning what the client brings to the coaching session. The most effective coaches are explorers who are absolutely curious and fascinated by the human experience and by the self-actualization process. The coach’s curiosity makes the conversation an adventure.

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Coaching Skills 1) Effective coaching requires a set of competencies. 2) Effective coaching springs from an intense state of curiosity. 3) Effective coaching requires lots of practice. 4) Effective coaching involves thinking strategically. 5) Effective coaching takes a lot of courage. 6) Effective coaching requires attentive listening. 7) Effective coaching includes humor, joy, and fun. 8) Effective coaching is facilitation. 9) The ultimate coaching is self-coaching. 10) Effective coaching requires the skill of flexibility. 11) Effective coaching operates by framing and reframing. 12) Effective coaching uses the premier skill of questioning. 13) Effective coaching involves detecting patterns. 14) Effective coaching gives behavioral sensory-specific feedback.

3) Effective Coaching requires lots of practice. As with any profession, effective coaching does not just happen, it develops through planning, practice, rehearsal, feedback, and a commitment to continual learning and improvement. Becoming effective in coaching improves with study and deliberate practice in the core skills. Coaching skills improve with practice when there is specific performance feedback. The most effective kind of practice which increases competency is deliberate practice—focusing on a specific aspect of a skill under supervision and feedback.

4) Effective coaching requires strategic thinking. Effective coaching is highly intentional as the coach assists clients in eliciting resources. By coaching purposefully, the coach is clear in his thinking about what the client is in the process. To think strategically involves assessing where is the client now, where does the client wants to be at a certain time, what’s required to achieve that movement, what resources the client has available, what other resources are needed, etc. 5) Effective coaching requires courage — lots of courage. -258-

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Coaching requires courage in order to step into a role that demands getting personal, challenging, asking intimate questions as one explores a Matrix of frames, speaking the truth, giving behavioral feedback, and pushing the client so that he will not sell himself short. No wonder then—Coaching is not for the faint of heart. It is not for those who need approval, fear confrontation, or fear saying the truth of the moment. 6) Effective coaching requires an intense and attentive listening. To be effective as a coach demands a special kind of listening, a listening that goes far beyond what most people have learned. It requires an intense, attentive, and active listening. This means paying close attention to a client’s precise verbal formulations, an intense focus on the client’s non-verbal responses as she externalizes her internal world. Truly effective listening requires releasing one’s own knowledge and assumptions to be totally present to the client. Listening is the most important coaching skill and there’s a reason. It’s because coaching requires attentive listening to truly understand the client on the client’s terms. Further, listening for potentials within the client is the basis for everything else the coach does. This respects the client as it acknowledges that the client is to be in charge of the choices and content of the coaching experience. 7) Effective coaching conversations include joyful humor and fun. The most effective coaching makes the experience of learning, changing, growing, developing, unleashing, and taking on challenges fun. It enables people to treat ongoing development as an enjoyable game. An effective coach brings fun and playfulness to the process. 8) Effective coaching centers in the art of facilitation. Facilitating is the art of enabling, making smoother, and more elegant all of the coaching processes and objectives. It makes room for the client’s discoveries and development. In this a coach cocreates with a client solutions that will enhance the client’s life. By staying meta to the structure, the coach focuses on facilitating processes. While the client often makes change hard, coaching makes change feel easy and inevitable. -259-

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The relationship enables the client to do the work of playing the Inner and Outer Game. As the coach you are not the player in the game, you support the client who is the player. You facilitate and activate the best of the client’s potentials and powers. Facilitating in this way is a meta-game to the client’s game. In the game of selfactualizing change, the client accesses resources, refines skills, applies the skills in new and different ways, changes beliefs, develops a more super-charged attitude, etc. 9) The ultimate coaching is self-coaching. The long-term objective of coaching is that a client will become skilled in coaching himself. To do this a person has to identify an objective, create a well-formed design for reaching it, access the needed resources, implement it in daily life, monitor feedback on the implementation, self-correct, etc. The ability to “apply to self” is the meta-skill that entails stepping back from oneself to see and work with one’s own structural frames. 10) Effective coaching involves relevant flexibility. To effectively coach a client means being flexible enough with the response style of a client, continually adjusting to the client’s responses, and keeping things on target to the client’s agenda. Adaptability plays a critical role and prevents the coach from becoming rigid or closed. Every coaching session is different. Entering into every matrix of frames of a client takes the coach into a new, different, and unique world. You never know what you’re going to find, and to that extent you never know what skills, processes, patterns, or tools you’ll need. This will keep you on your toes! It explains the need for flexibility in adapting to the various circumstances and differing needs that will arise. It takes a lot of flexibility to coach well because to a great extent you will be inventing it as you go. You can’t write a “lesson plan” for each day or each client because you don’t know what new circumstances have arisen, or will arise. To be effective in coaching, you need a pioneering spirit, lots of flexibility, and a partner for the adventure. This is what makes coaching an art rather than just a science. -260-

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11) Effective coaching centrally frames and reframes meaning. Given that human experience is a function of the operational frames that a client embodies, the coaching dialogue focuses on identifying the client’s frames and then choosing which frames will be more positive and empowering for the client’s goals. Coaching is made more effective when the coach assumes responsibility for framing the session, the process of coaching, the client’s goals, feedback, learning, making mistakes, taking risks, etc. In Meta-Coaching we say, “The person who sets the frame controls the game.” 12) Effective coaching is driven by the premier skill of questioning. The primary tool of coaching is questioning. It is asking questions relevant to the client’s objectives, it is asking focused questions regarding the client’s meanings and frames. It is asking questions that activates the client to find her own answers, and answers, and resources. Coaching is much more about asking the right questions than providing answers. In fact, the quality of the coaching is a function of the quality of the questioning. A truly expert coach asks questions that gets a client thinking and reflecting and choosing in new and more relevant ways. 13) Effective coaching involves detecting patterns. To effectively coach requires that the coach takes a meta-position whereby she can detect the client’s patterns and themes. Pattern detection exposes the meanings, strategies, and the governing structures which are running the client’s life. Working with process and structure means you are working at a meta-level to detect and to explore the client’s patterns and themes. As a meta-skill, pattern detection prevents a coach from being seduced by the story. It enables a coach to reflect or mirror back to the client the structural frames that are in the way, interfering, or creating some problem. Pattern detection moves coach and client to a higher level of awareness where they access a larger perspective. This makes coaching a meta-profession. 14) Effective coaching entails giving behavioral sensory-specific feedback. It is the special, and yet rare, skill of giving feedback in real time and in sensory-specific descriptions that enables the coach to mirror -261-

back to the client his responses. Based on high quality calibration skills, this skill enables refinement of skills and accelerates learning. 15) Effective coaching aligns attentions with intentions. From client’s outcomes and intentions, coaching facilitates an alignment so the client experiences a congruent integration and then a laser-beam focus. Coaching invites a client use the highest intentions as the guiding frame for making choices regarding the demanding and urgent attentions. What are Your Take Aways? Take away the value of integrating these principles so they are completely integrated into the way you think, feel, talk, act, and relate. Perhaps you will take each principle that you like and commission your mind-body system to experience it. If so, use the Mind-to-Muscle pattern to coach your body how to feel these great ideas. The coaching premises or principles provide guidance and direction for effective coaching as it summarizes in a succinct statement the philosophy and psychology of coaching.

End of Chapter Notes 1. You can find copies of the Mind-to-Muscle pattern in Secrets of Personal Mastery, and on the www.neurosemantics.com website.

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BECOMING AN EFFECTIVE COACH “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.” George Bernard Shaw

W

hile the idea of Coaching is exciting, transformative, and lifechanging, and while it is challenging and has the possibility for making a good living, coaching as a profession isn’t for everyone. First of all, not everyone can coach. True coaching is a specialized skill. There are several additional reasons. First, to coach requires a special mind-set, attitudes, personal qualities, and orientation. All of that requires a lot of preparation and training. Second, because coaching is a very personal, intimate, authentic, and fierce conversation—to coach effectively requires the ability to handle these qualities, and manage them for the well-being of the client. Again, that requires a lot of professional development. Third, as a profession, most coaches also have to be entrepreneurs if they are to have an effective practice. For most, this means some personal changes and new learnings in the area of business. -263-

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If your goal is to become an effective professional coach and make a living by coaching individuals, groups, or organizations, there’s a lot more to it than just reading some books or taking a weekend course. While many people put out a sign, “Best Coach in the World” without adequate preparation, the great majority of these people do not succeed. Statistics indicate that for the past two decades that 70 to 80 percent of those who take coach training drop out within the first year. They do not stay with it. Why is this? In my perception the central reason involves the Achilles’ heel of the Coaching profession. Most coaches are people-persons and not business persons. As a result, they are generally highly skilled in the personal skills of coaching— listening, supporting, getting rapport, questioning, etc. They are just as not-skilled in their business intelligence and competence— marketing, selling, negotiating, capitalizing, finding and creating business partners, hiring, firing, etc. They are excellent in working in the business of coaching and they are poor and even sub-standard in working on the business. Their strength is their people skills; their weakness is their business acumen. First, the Coach’s Personal Development What does it take to be an effective coach? To effectively coach requires not only a skill-set of interpersonal competencies, it also requires a mature personal development in the coach. That’s why not everybody can coach. What are some qualities and traits that are essential for a person to effectively coach? Coaching is not only what you do, it’s also about who you are, and who you are becoming. In the following, Zeus and Skiffington’s work on coaching (2000) provide a list of ten qualities and capacities that are required to be an effective coach. As you read these, gauge yourself in terms of where you would scale yourself today. Use a 0 (low) to 10 (high) scale: __ Self-awareness __ Inspiring others __ Building relationships __ Flexibility to adjusting to the client __ Communicating clearly, forthrightly __ Forward-looking, future oriented __ Being disciplined in carrying through __ Managing professional boundaries -264-

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__ Diagnosing issues and finding solutions __ Business sense for selling / marketing

To these we can add a list of additional personal qualities that are critical if a person wants to be effective. __ Persistence in staying with a commitment. __ Resilient: able to bounce back from set-backs. __ Love seeing and experiencing people grow. __ The joy of learning with a client. __ Optimistic and fascinated about solving problems. __ Patience in being with a client, embracing uncertainty. __ A strong curiosity about what makes people tick. __ Personal congruence and integrity. __ A strong intentionality and vision. __ Proactively takes the initiative to make things happen. __ Enjoy and willing to challenge people.

Second, Developing Your Business Intelligence What’s involved in the business of coaching? What do you need to do to develop more business intelligence? What are the qualities and features of having a highly developed sense of business? The bottom line is that if you make Coaching your business, then you need to become good at business or you will not be in business for long. And because for most coaches this is their greatest weakness, we have to address it. In Meta-Coaching we give this a lot of attention. So, what does it take to develop a successful Coaching Business? 1) Competence in the art and skills of coaching. Ultimately, the quality of your business will result from the quality of your skills. If you can’t deliver the coaching experience itself, you won’t be in business for long no matter how elegant your marketing. 2) Playing to your strengths. Incompetency will ruin your chance to even stay in business. So make your ongoing development in the skills a central feature in your business plan. Use the SWOT analysis and the Meta-SWOT analysis1 to identify your personal strengthens, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This will assist you in eventually finding your area of expertise. Identify the areas where you need more knowledge and skill as a business person. 3) A strong intention and identity. What coaching do you want to do? What is your passion? How informed are you in this area? How much experience do you have in it? -265-

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4) A clearly defined market. Who is your market? What is your market?2 Do you know? Do you know how to find out? 5) A focused niche. After exploring the various kinds of coaching areas, select the speciality that you want to enter. It may take several years to be exclusively coaching in that chosen area, but at least you have a direction. So, who is your ideal client? 6) A business plan. Do you have a plan? If not, are you willing to create a plan? Will you then follow the plan? Develop a business plan that extends your vision out two to five years. 7) Credibility. Your credibility is your ability to do what you say you can do, to follow through on your promises, and the confidence that you exude in knowing what you are talking about. Identify your current level of credibility. Are you believable? Do people trust you? What will help? Once you know what counts for credibility in your area, you can then begin to match those factors. 8) Influence skills (marketing and selling). How are your selling skills? What do you think of selling? What do you need to think and believe about selling? 9) Collaboration. Who will you collaborate with? If you have a team, who is on your team? Who do you need to include on your team? Who could become a collaborative partner with you? 10) Administration Precision. How will you manage all of the aspects of your business—paperwork, invoices, receipts, billing, pricing, proposals, etc.? What kind of system do you have or need to create? 11) Self-Care. How will you take care of yourself? Take time for the rest of your life? “Oh is that all it takes?” you ask. “Yes, and it is a lot!” I trust that this makes it clearer as to why becoming an effective and professional coach requires lots of planning and preparation. In the Meta-Coaching System, we spend significant time on this in the training and encourage all of the graduates to engage with others in buddy-coaching so that they set up an ongoing process for being coached to their business plan and development. We encourage the coaches to identify their biggest challenges about business and then to be coached for how to handle these challenges. This could be understanding how business works, or self-employment, selfdiscipline, assuming responsibility for oneself for disciplining your time, effort, tasks, schedules, etc., the business acumen about business itself, how -266-

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product development and service works, handling the finances, capitalizing the beginning of a new business, pricing services and products, budgeting, billing, collecting, creating an office (whether virtual or actual office), creating and keeping records, writing and working through proposals, reports, negotiating for coaching assignments, etc. Developing Your Business Plan Given all of this, it really is not smart to try to operate “from the seat of the pants,” do things spontaneously as things come up, or “intuitively.” Being spontaneous is great for parties, but not a promising business strategy. And typically it just does not work in business. What does work effectively for professional business people is to create and follow a plan that guides you in terms of what to do, when, how, etc. What do you need to include in your business plan? First and foremost, identify what it is— what business are you in and what are you doing? Then specify when you will start, where and with whom (if anyone). Next identify how you will do this. What are the actions that you will take? How many steps and/or stages are involved in doing this? What resources do you have, or will you need, to do this? What could interfere with it? How much will it cost? Identify the costs in terms of money, time, effort, etc. How will you finance it? What will you charge? How will you set your prices? What criteria will you use in determining how you will price things? These questions and concerns are basics in developing your business plan. Beyond the skeleton of the business plan, you will want to detail the following things into the plan. This will make the plan much richer and more realistic. Plan to Give Value A business is a business because it solves problems and adds value to people’s lives. Given that, what problems do you love solving? What problems can you leverage for the marketplace area where you add value to people? As a business person, focus on the problem or problems that you are going to become an expert in solving. What human needs and wants are you equipped to handle? How do you communicate the importance of fulfilling those needs? How will you do needs assessment with a client? -267-

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Plan to Create a Solid Credibility for Yourself To sell yourself as a coach and the value of your coaching, your credibility is critical. Develop your credibility via genuine competence in your area that will enable you then to feel confident in the skills that you use to deliver. Develop a straightforward and honest approach so that there is congruence between your talk and walk. Responsibly acknowledge what you will and will not do and as you do, make yourself accountable to your client. To further build your credibility, under-promise and over-deliver as you keep your focus on a long-term commitment and reputation. Study your particular market to understand the values and processes among that population so that you know what convinces them that something is valuable. Plan to Always Operate from Optimal States What is the right state for you when you are doing business? Make a list of those states and then evaluate yourself. “How skilled am I at accessing the best states?” If your best states include being realistically optimistic, respectful, calmly excited, etc., how quickly can you put yourself in any one of those states which you choose? How robust is the state that you access so that you can sustain it? One of the worse states to operate from is feeling needy or desperate for business. If you wake up in that state, and can’t shift it, do not go to work! Stay home and work on your state management skills. Work on accessing a state of abundance. Release your need to be overly attached to any particular account or client. When you “need” an account or a client, you give off an odor that clients can smell and that will undermine your ability to influence and ultimately your credibility.3 Plan to Develop Your Selling and Negotiating Skills Whether you like it or not, you have to sell two things in order to succeed —yourself and what you do. You have to present what you do and the value of what you offer in such a way that others recognize and feel the value that you offer. Does “selling” turn you off? It does for most coaches. Yet that’s only one reason why they are coaches rather than sales persons. If that’s true for you, then you’ll need to do some reframing of what “selling” is so that you can be effective in influencing people to choose you as a coach.

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In Meta-Coaching, we use the Axes of Change Model as the basic format of selling as well as coaching. To understand the significance of this, review the chapter on The Axes of Change with selling in mind. Go through the axes and the roles from the perspective of a sales-person. If you do, then here is one great reframe for selling that I like and use: Selling is enabling people to make great decisions. Then instead of trying to sell, you focus on enabling people to make a decision that they will never regret because it truly adds value to their lives. Another great frame involves thinking of the selling process as qualifying people rather than trying to get a client. Plan to Work Relationally The essence of business is working with people and working through people.4 That means that business is relationship and it is personal! The old adage: “It’s not personal, it’s business” is as wrong-headed as it is untrue and cruel. That’s just wrong. Business is all about people, relationships, getting along well, caring about people, supporting people, etc. That’s why getting acquainted, knowing people, treating people well, etc. all of these interpersonal activities lie at the heart of business. This is critical as part of learning the art of getting in. More often than not, getting in is a matter of who you know or who you know who knows someone. Once you identify your market, target the specific people you need to get acquainted with and talk to. Then, instead of trying to get something from them, operate as someone who has something to give and contribute. This is really the secret of great entrepreneurs. So while “networking” they are not doing self-promotion, they are genuinely relating, enjoying people, getting to know people, caring, etc. It is paradoxical. They are not networking in order to get something from people. Do that and you’ll undermine your effectiveness as well as chase people away. When I first interviewed Executive Coach and Master Coach, Graham Richardson, he described his approach for getting in when he was first beginning. He took a list of business people that Peter Stevenson dismissed as a “dead list.” Then he would begin calling them—lots and lots of cold calling, except it was not “cold” calling. He would call and be warm and friendly with the gatekeepers. He would do that by treating them very well, relating to them as persons, and over time (months and years) so turning them into internal champions for him. -269-

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His belief? That if he treated them well, he would stand out from others who called in and who often would get short and angry with them. Eventually they would notice. Also, if he called over a period of time, once a month for three months or for a year, eventually there would be the day when he would call and something would be wrong. The person would be grumpy or hurt or sad or upset. Then he would take the time to listen and support that gatekeeper as a person. He would authentically be his best self and respond to them as he would with his most valued client. After that, he would have his internal promoter. Plan to do Business by Going the Second Mile “Going the second mile” is the biblical idea of doing more than is required. This is also a great secret for succeeding in business. That’s because when customers and clients get what they want, and then they get more than they expect, they will deeply appreciate you, your attitude, your sense of abundance, and your credibility. As a business man or woman— implement what you promise, execute on time, and give more than they expected. Surprise them by giving a little extra. That will demonstrate your abundance and that you are not the kind of person who seeks to squeeze every dime out of a client. Plan to Create High Quality Products and Services Quality counts. Set high standards and work to live up to them. Be rigorous in holding to your standards. If you have staff, then train your staff and colleagues to understand the value of high quality and hold them accountable for delivering it. Don’t sell customers or clients short by cutting back on quality. In coaching, quality relates first and foremost to the conversation and experience you facilitate with your clients. It relates to how you create a synergy between compassion and challenge. Plan to Develop an Entrepreneur of Passion To be an entrepreneur you have to develop “a fire in your belly” about something—an idea, product, and/or service. What are you passionate about? What excites you? What drives you to become totally captivated by what you do as a coach? What most often excites entrepreneurs is something that adds value and enriches the lives of others. They feel that they are making a difference in the lives of people and making the world a better place.

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After you find your passion, the real challenge is to keep the passion. For this you will have to keep inspiring yourself. You have to keep refreshing your vision in reminding yourself of it and keep expanding it. This skill of being able to inspire yourself is absolutely critical for an entrepreneur. Plan for Self-Management and Discipline If you are doing business by yourself and no one is directing your activities or schedule, if you have any hope of succeeding, you have to become highly disciplined. Effective entrepreneurs show their discipline by being selfmotivated, self-directed, taking initiative, and being proactive. The person who cannot manage his or her own states, motivation, time, energy, daily structure of events, billing, office, marketing, etc. will not do well when engaged in a business that depends entirely on our own efforts. Selfmanagement is critical for the self-employed and for anyone who wants to operate as an entrepreneur. Achieving personal self-discipline means that you will become highly efficient in your use of time and energy. Govern and regulate your energy and efforts. When there is no one to report to, no one to direct your activities, you have to self-regulate. Keep a regular schedule and office hours. Monitor the activities which are most effective for the business. Only in that way will you do what has to be done— hence, effective, and do it in a way that gets the most mileage from your efforts— efficient. Aim to eliminate everything you do that wastes time and energy. Plan to See and Manage the Risks of the Opportunities you Seize Entrepreneurs see what others do not. They are optimistic, love solving problems, and think about what’s possible and even impossible. Because opportunities are not seen with the eyes, but with the mind, the entrepreneur mentally sees beyond and behind problems, difficulties, needs, and challenges. They have a vision of possibilities. Entrepreneurs treat problems as the foundation for intervention and success via problem defining, problem solving, marketing the solution, etc. Be willing and able to manage risk. The person in business for him or herself thinks of being employed by someone else as the most risky thing of all! For them, the most secure way to manage the future involves working for oneself. What is the security here? It is the security of trusting and believing in yourself—in your knowledge, skills, adding value, etc. You know what you have and what you can deliver. “Risk” for them is a -271-

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given and embraced. It is valued and treated respectfully as something to be managed and dealt with as problems are addressed. Further, they have embraced “the risk” by thinking it through, identifying precisely what is at risk, and how much it is at risk, and have created contingency plans. Plan to Systemize your Processes Using systems thinking, entrepreneurs create and operate by a well designed plan. They are able to set up people systems and administrative systems for money (to make the business financially viable), employees, suppliers, clients, customers, etc. This frees them from having to keep re-inventing the wheel over and over. They create a process and may experiment with it at first, but once they have something that works, they make it part of their business system. They formalize it. Then as staff comes onboard, they transfer that system to them. This maintains quality and frees them to apply their creativity and energy to other concerns. Entrepreneurs typically develop their efficiency by setting goals that are specific, realistic, exciting and then monitor their progress on a regular basis. They monitor how they are going and use as feedback for ever-finer

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adjustments. Making and following a plan eliminates the expenditure of time and energy to keep re-deciding things. We can then default to the carefully designed plan. Once you develop your plan, refuse to revise your goals downward when you are frustrated or suffer a set-back. By letting the goals stand regardless of current performance, let them challenge you to step up to your next level of development. What are Your Take Aways? Take away the fact that being a great Coach is not enough. You also have to become great in doing business as a coach, the world will not beat a path to your doorstep just because you are highly skilled. Take away the realization that the coaching skills can benefit you if you apply them to yourself and coach yourself to be a great business person and entrepreneur. When you get stuck, get a business coach to coach you. After all, you do believe in the power of coaching, do you not?

End of Chapter Notes: 1. See Appendix A on SWOT analysis. 2. See Appendix B on the list of kinds of coaching. 3. It is a paradox. To be best at business and to gain business you have to not need business. It is the same with wealth. Wealth is created inside-out so that you have to be inwardly rich— in mind, heart, skills, etc., then you can create great wealth by adding value. See Inside-Out Wealth (2010). 4. See the article on developing an entrepreneurial attitude on the website and/or the book, Games Business Experts Play.

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Chapter 20

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his chapter took 15 years to write. Though I began my research and design for the Meta-Coaching System in 2001, I had to spend the following 15 years training and experimenting with the system before I was ready to write this chapter. Back in 2001 I had no idea, absolutely no idea at all, regarding how long this project would take. Every other modeling project that I had taken on and completed generally took three years. Why did this one take so long? Probably because Coaching itself as a process and then as a business is such a rich and complex experience. It is also not a single discipline, but involves multiple disciplines and in that sense, it is richly interdisciplinary. The seven variables that we began with also made the development of the system intensive and time consuming. At the same time, I decided that I would also put the Meta-Coaching System into writing. The first book took two years, then each following book a year or two later. In the end, I wrote twelve volumes about Coaching as a process and skill. And because everything was based on NLP, then several previous books which deal with specific NLP Models were also inherently implied in the coaching system. As a result, some 16 books minimally make up the Meta-Coaching System. -274-

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The purpose in putting the entire system in print was to continue the process of making this coaching approach highly systematic. In this way, a Professional Coach would be able to read and re-read at his or her speed and learn what to do, when to do it, how to do it, with whom to do it, and why to do it, etc. What follows then is a description of the books that record the models and processes which comprise the curriculum of the Meta-Coaching System. The Curriculum of the Meta-Coaching System Volume I is Coaching Change. This volume presents the idea of change— what it is, the levels of change, the kinds and dimensions of change, the difference between remedial change and generative change, and the Axes of Change Model. See Chapter 12 in this volume for an overview. Volume II is Coaching Conversations. This volume presents the key MetaCoaching distinctions and then the transcripts of coaching conversations from Michelle Duval, Robert Dilts, and myself. Within the transcripts of actual coaching sessions there are notes about what the coach is doing, what skills are being demonstrated, and a running discussion about what’s happening the in coaching session as the coach facilitates it. For more about the Facilitation Model, see Chapter 8 in this volume. Volume III is Unleashed: A Guide to Your Self-Actualization. This volume presents a practical use of Self-Actualization Psychology as it identifies 19 factors in how a person identifies, develops, and unleashes his or her potentials. Within this text, the Self-Actualization Quadrants are presented along with The Construct where meaning is invented. There is also a section on The Crucible for the change of unlearning and the Zone of selfactualization. For more about the Self-Actualization and the models governing it, see Chapters 15 and 16. Volume IV is Self-Actualization Psychology. This volume provides the theoretical background to the previous volume, Unleashed. Here you will find a history of the first Human Potential Movement that led to the development of Self-Actualization or Humanistic Psychology. I have also included what happened to that movement, how it died, and how NLP is intimately linked to it in numerous ways. For more about this see Chapters 4 and 6.

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Volume V is Achieving Peak Performance. Having presented the Construct in Volume III, this volume continues the construction of meaning and focuses on translating meaning into performance. Here you will be the Meaning–Performance Axes and then 13 factors that are involved in actual performance. The key coaching focus here is about implementing what one knows, closing the knowing—doing gap, and executing one’s vision so that it becomes real. This book is full of the basic NLP and Neuro-Semantic patterns which enable you to implement what you know. For more about this see Chapter 13, Coaching Measurable Performance and 14 Coaching Benchmarks. Volume VI is Unleashing Leadership: Self-Actualizing Leaders and Companies. Maslow noted that the self-actualizing of potentials is a creative process— you are creating a new self—your real self. After that problem is resolved, what’s next? It is creating self-actualizing groups —companies, businesses, organizations. And that requires Self-Actualizing Leaders. The book uses the Self-Actualization Quadrants and presents the Axes of Leadership model for leaders leading change. Volume VII is The Crucible and the Fires of Change. The Crucible is the second change model in Neuro-Semantics and Meta-Coaching. The difference between it and the Axes of Change is that this model deals more with unconscious constructs which need to be unlearned. This makes The Crucible a more holistic and systemic model. Based on the idea from the first Human Potential Movement of “the encounter group,” the Crucible is a process for building a crucible space so that a coach can set things up so that a client can experience a deep encounter with oneself. There are three safety elements and then three reality-facing elements and all is designed to facilitate an ecstasy of love and joy. Volume VIII is Benchmarking Intangibles. The Benchmarking Model within this book arises most essentially from the NLP Meta-Model as well as the Representational Model. It provides a way to get the behavioral equivalents of skills and values. Doing this enables you to identify how such intangible qualities show up in the real world and how to measure them. As a coach, the ability to measure intangibles enables you to make the ROI on the coaching explicit. For more on this see Chapters 13 and 14. Volume IX is Systemic Meta-Coaching for Coaching the Whole Person. Coaching from the beginning has emphasized the whole person and dealing -276-

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with all of the systems in our lives. This volume presents the transcripts from numerous coaching sessions and analyzes them using systems language. It also introduces using The Matrix Model for following a client’s information—energy through the system. In addition to this, Pascal Gambardella provides system diagrams of the coaching sessions as a way to see the system in action. For more about this see Chapter 10. Volume X is Group and Team Meta-Coaching. In the Meta-Coaching System, this was the first book devoted in a single niche of coaching— Group and Team Coaching. If coaching a single individual is challenging, how much more so a group of 8 or 20 people! The exploration here is with the many different kinds of Group Coaching, the group dynamics that are inherent in groups and group developments, the unique skills a group coach has to develop and deploy, and how to facilitate effective group development. Here you will find the Group Trust Spiral Model for working with the different levels of a group. Volume XI is Executive Coaching: Coaching Life in the C-Suite. Next application of coaching and Meta-Coaching to a specialized niche is this one on Executive Coaching. This volume looks at the unique challenges of executives, senior managers, and business owners which become the common subjects of the coaching with executives. Here also there is a profile on typical executives and what they look for in coaching and from an executive coach. The focus here is on enabling executives to be the kind of self-actualizing people that bring out the best in themselves and others. Volume XII is Political Coaching: Self-Actualizing Politics and Politicians. One of the newest niches for coaching, and one of the most needed ones, is Political Coaching. The idea of coaching a politician, whether local, citywide, country, or national, entertains the idea of how can we facilitate political leaders to be the very best political leaders possible. Is that possible? Has there ever been a self-actualizing politician or politics? To answer that question this book looks at Political Leadership (Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.) and devotes an entire chapter to Nelson Mandela and Abraham Lincoln. Volume XIII is, of course, The Meta-Coaching System. And you know what this volume is about— overviewing the whole system.

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Volume XIV will be Getting Real: Calling for the Authenticity of SelfActualization. One of the hidden and less explicit aspects of coaching goes back to the heart of Self-Actualization Psychology— enabling people to get real. To find and be their real self. To be authentic. This is not easy and yet in spite of the challenge— it is the most worthwhile adventure of all. It is quintessentially the human adventure. Basic NLP Books for Professional Coaching Coaching as Conversation. For this there is the NLP Meta-Model of Language, and the book that I wrote about that is Communication Magic (1999). This presents the Meta-Model, reviews how it developed in NLP over the years, and how to use it. Then, to make this communication model really practical Mind-Lines: Lines that Change Minds (1997/ 2005) presents the very structure of meaning as we create it with our language and neurology, hence neuro-linguistics. The chapters cover, one by one, how to frame, deframe, reframe, preframe, post-frame analogously frame, and outframe meaning. An essential understanding for anyone who works to facilitate the best in others. Profile Coaching. For this we have in NLP, the NLP Meta-Programs Model. This model provides a picture of the perceptual filters that people use in processing information, paying attention to things, communicating, responding, and more. For this, Figuring Out People (2006) offers an encyclopedia of meta-programs. It describes 60 meta-programs, where they come from, how to understand them, and how to use them to profile a client. The design is to use them to get rapport with that client and figure out how they are thinking, emoting, choosing, and semanticizing. See Chapter 17 for a brief overview of the Meta-Programs Model. In-depth Back of the Mind Coaching. For this there is the Meta-States Model and so several books that introduce that model and apply it. Start with Secrets of Personal Mastery (1997) which focuses on using metastates to build up a “genius” or mastery state for learning, coaching, training, etc. The next application book is Dragon Slaying: From Dragons to Princes, which looks at a dozen or more negative meta-state and how to move to an empowering and enhancing meta-state. Winning the Inner Game (2007) was originally titled Frame Games (1999) and is a very practical application in terms of “games.” If you want the first book and an academic book, Meta-States: Mastering the Higher Levels of Your Mind. -278-

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Systemic Coaching. For this The Matrix Model (2003) offers an in-depth presentation of the eight distinctions which relate Developmental Psychology to Cognitive Psychology and Phenomenology.

Figure 20:1 Coaching

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Meta Models for Meta-Coaching

Communication

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Reflexivity Generative Change

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Systems Thinking Implementation

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Self-Actualization

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The NLP Communication Model Representation Model/ Strategy Model / Sub-Modality Model The Meta-States Model of Reflexivity The Axes of Change Model The Crucible Model The Matrix Model Mind-to-Muscle Pattern Achieving Peak Performance Model Benchmarking Intangibles Model The Meaning– Performance Axes Self-Actualizing Quadrants The Self-Actualization Assessment Scale The Matrix Embedded Pyramid The Ruthless Compassion Model The Trust Spiral Model The Leadership Axes for Leading Change

Process Facilitation — Group & Team Coaching — Leadership Coaching —

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Chapter 21

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esearch in any field is critical because it is through research that we validate the credibility of a field. With the initiation of any new discipline, the question of research inevitably arises. What is the research? What facets of the discipline have been researched? What are the central and critical questions to be researched? How does research in supporting disciplines, or closely related disciplines, support or call into question the new discipline? What has the research shown? One of the unique things regarding the field of Coaching is that research began right from the beginning so that today it is absolutely burgeoning. A similar thing can not be said for the field of NLP. The difference is that for NLP its first three decades transpired with very little research, then in the 1990s research began exploding so that today, it is a very significant factor. With the launching of Meta-Coaching, we began thinking about the issue and question of research from the start and while it is still early, we do have some research. The question about research is especially important with a new discipline. Research is able to turn the premises of the field into hypothesis and then -280-

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set out to ask questions about the particular validity of those hypotheses. Is the premise demonstrated to be valid or not? Research in the Field of Coaching I mentioned the dissertation of Anthony Grant earlier (Chapter 1). It was Dr. Grant who also began sponsoring the Evidence-Based Coaching Conference from his position at Sydney University. Susie Linder-Pelz writes that since her first presentation in 2004 at the University of Sydney Conference on Evidence-Based Coaching, there has literally been an exponential growth in research publications in Coaching and in Cognitive Behavior-based Coaching. Further, a myriad of aspects of coaching have been researched, including a lot on the experience of coaching, the evaluation of coaching, the effectiveness of coaching, learning and coaching, outcomes of coaching, and the coaching relationship. Also coaching practice is now closely linked to the field of Positive Psychology. There is are now many Coaching Research Conferences worldwide. You can get a sense of the range and depth of this research by browsing through past and present issues of the following key peer-reviewed journals: The Journal of Positive Psychology http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rpos20/current Journal of Evidence-Based Coaching and Mentoring: http://ijebcm.brookes.ac.uk The British Psychological Society: The Coaching Psychologist Journal: http://shop.bps.org.uk/publications/publication-by-series/thecoaching-psychologist.html International Coaching Psychology Review: h t t p : / / s h o p . b p s . o r g . u k / p u b l i c a t i o n s / p u b l i c a t i o n - b yseries/international-coaching-psychology-review.html Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rcoa20/current Research in Neuro-Linguistic Programming Beginning in the 1990s research in NLP began in earnest. Peter Schutz of Austria was one of the first to begin to do research and to collect research papers. The NLP Research Conference began in the 2010s under the leadership of Paul Tolsey who also began the NLP Research Journal. Key researchers in NLP began presenting research projects and papers: Lisa -281-

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Wake, Richard Church, Richard Gray, etc. Frank Bourke in the US began the NLP Research Project and Promotion. The Clinical Effectiveness of Neuro-Linguistic Programming was published in 2011 by Routledge, edited by Lisa Wake, Richard Gray, and Frank Bourke. This research book includes chapters by Bruce Grimley, Steve Andreas, Richard Bolstad, Karl Nielsen, Nandana Nielsen, Catalin Zaharia, Lucas Derks, Joel Cheal, Richard Liotta, Peter Schutz, and others. For more on the ongoing research in NLP, see www.neurosemantics.com, click on Writings, and then on Research. A typical paper is the one by Lisa Wake: Leadership Excellence Through Coaching: A Case Study in Regulatory Affairs Using Neuro-Linguistic Programming.’ Regulatory Rapporteur. Vol. 8. No. 11. 2011.

Research in Meta-Coaching In Meta-Coaching from the beginning we planned for research and you will now find on www.meta-coaching.org a button on Research and many of the papers, studies, including one dissertation on Meta-Coaching. No one has done more research on the Meta-Coaching System than Dr. Susie Linder-Pelz, Ph.D. She has written numerous papers, conducted several studies, and written a book on the subject. The book, NLP Coaching: An Evidence-Based Approach for Coaches, Leaders and Individuals (2010) reviews both the Meta-Coaching and Clean Language Models. Among her papers are the following: “Meta-Coaching: A Methodology Grounded in Psychological Theory. International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring. Vol. 6, No.1, February 2008. "Using Clean Language to explore the subjectivity of coachees’ experience and outcomes”. Linder-Pelz and Lawley, submitted for publication, 2014. “Evidence-based’ on what? Exploring coach, coachee and expert evaluations of coaching.” James Lawley and Susie Linder-Pelz, submitted for publication 2014. "Steps towards the Benchmarking of Coaches’ Skills”, International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, Vol. 12, No.1 pp. 47-62, 2014. -282-

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"Benchmarking coaches’ skills: Experiences of benchmarkers and of trainees being benchmarked." Current Research in NLP, Vol. 3, pp. 70-83, 2013. “Questions about ‘Meta-Programs,’” Acuity, Vol. 1, No.2, pp. 7891, 2011. “Review of Benchmarking Intangibles,” Dr. Susie Linder-Pelz. A review of the book, Benchmarking Intangibles (2011). “Meta-Coaching: A methodology grounded in psychological theory”, International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, Vol. 6, No.1 pp 43-56, 2008. Linder-Pelz and Hall. “The theoretical roots of NLP-based Coaching”, The Coaching Psychologist, Vol. 3, No. 1. pp. 12-17, 2007. Linder-Pelz and Hall. “How Does NLP-based Coaching Assist Mature-aged people?” Australian Career Practitioner, Winter 2006. “Developmental career coaching,” in A.M. Grant and M.J. Cavanagh (eds), Evidence-based Coaching Volume Two: Resources from the 2003-2007. Sydney University Conferences, [CDROM], CPU Press, Sydney, 2005. Dr. Linder-Pelz has also presented papers on Meta-Coaching at the NLP Research Conference and at the Sydney Australian, Evidence-Based Coaching Conference. Janine Daniels has also submitted articles. In her Master Degree she wrote her Master thesis on: “How Overlaying Meta-Programs With PsychoNeuro-Immunology. This focused on how archetypes can provide a new model for pinpointing possible disease creating mind states. Scott Pochron presented a paper at the NLP Research Conference (2013) on “Meta-Coaching and Developmental Psychology.” Charles DesJardins, Ph.D. wrote his dissertation on the Meta-Coaching System. He titled his dissertation, “phenomenological Study of Business Leaders’ Self-Actualization: Experience in Business since Participating in Meta-Coach Training.” You can also find this dissertation on the website. The research in Meta-Coaching that has started is just the beginning. There are plans underway for lots of new research in the future, and a part of the small license fee for Meta-Coaches is put aside each year to support such research. -283-

Appendix A S.W.O.T. ANALYSIS COACHING SWOT analysis questions enable you to explore and identify your untapped potentials. Use the following questions to explore your strengths, talents, and capacities and the skills that you have and can develop from those talents, your weaknesses and hurts (which also may be a place of rich potentials and possibilities), and the threats and opportunities before you as a coach and your coaching practice. Strengths: Advantages What are your talents, strengths, and capacities? What advantages do you have in terms of your innate gifts? What competencies and proven skills do you have? What do you uniquely offer? What expertise do you bring into coaching from other areas? What expertise have you developed over the years? What are your passions and interests? What do you love doing? What supporting skills will you need? Weaknesses: Dis-advantages What are your weaknesses? How have you been (or are) hurt in some way by life? What traumas or dramas have you been through? What critical skills are you deficient in? What skills do you need to develop to be fully effective as a coach? What expertise have you developed over the years? What are your passions and interests? What do you love doing? What supporting skills will you need? Opportunities: What opportunities do you see before you? What circumstances could you use as an opportunity? What problems or needs do you have a passion to address? What opportunities could you create or activate? What opportunities do you want and long for? Threats: What threats do you sense blocking your path? What factors might impact negatively on you and your situation? What changes might be threatening or upsetting? What are some of the stresses and stressors that you face? What risks or fears do you sense that lies in your pathway? What things undermine your resourcefulness? Meta-Questioning Your Strengths As you discover or uncover possibilities, through the strength and weakness questions, now step up to a meta-SWOT analysis. Use meta-questions to explore your thoughts and

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feelings about these facets of your experience. [Meta-SWOT was developed by Denis Bridoux.] What do you believe about your strength of _________? What does this strength mean to you? What decision have you made or will you make about it? How does this strength impact your identity or sense of self? What’s your highest intention with this strength? What could be your highest outcome and expectation? What is this strength like? What metaphor activates the strength for you? What inspiration does this create for you? As you think about all of this, what do you now realize? What else opens up for you with this? What does this strength now mean to you? What else can you ascribe to it?

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Appendix B KINDS OF COACHING Personal Coaching (Life Coaching) The focus here is on an individual’s life—the life/work balance, goals, purpose and meaning, relationships, health, career and profession, wealth, lifestyle, value clarification, etc. Within the Personal Coaching category are many specialized areas: Life Coaching Relationship Coaching Unbullyable Coaching Health Coaching Career coaching Values Coaching Spiritual Coaching Wealth Coaching Goal Setting Coaching Sales Coaching Image Coaching Financial Planning Kids and Teens Coaching Negotiation Coaching Executive Coaching Here the focus is on leadership, management, vision and mission, grooming individuals for senior management and CEO roles. Executive Coaching can focus on performance by coaching skill enhancement in such areas as presentation skills, negotiation, career development, leadership, etc. It can also focus on developmental growth in relationships. Leadership Coaching Political Coaching. Presentation Coaching Vision & Mission Coaching Internal Coaching The focus here lies on adding “coaching” as a modality in business for leaders and managers for communicating, relating, giving feedback, evaluating, developing, shaping performance, bringing out the best in others as leaders and managers within an organization. When formal, no report lines; when informal, coaching is used by managers and CEOs for communicating. Manager as Coach Internal Coaches (part of HR) Group / Team Coaching The focus here is on groups, group dynamics, teams, interpersonal relationships, organizational development, coaching for motivation, buy-in, responsibility, contribution, productivity. Within this category we have coaching for team building, coaching to build consensus, understanding, reaching company values, and vision, dealing with conflict, cultural differences, etc. Diversity Coaching Conflict Resolution Coaching -286-

Vision/ Mission Coaching Self-Managing Teams

Team Development Coaching Learning Groups

Business Coaching This kind of coaching focuses on the structure and efficiency of the business, looking at the and helping the business to work more efficiently. The Business Coach will address marketing, positioning, visioning, financial management, people management, skill enhancement, interpersonal skills, time management, problem solving, creativity, productivity, dealing with difficult people, stress management, customer service, etc. Creativity / Innovation Coaching Stress Management Coaching Customer Service Coaching Problem-Solving Coaching Time Management Coaching Brand Development Coaching Sales Development Coaching Peer or Buddy Coaching Agreeing with a peer or colleague for mutual coaching to support personal growth and development. Co-Coaching Two coaches working together to coach a client. This is often a very powerful choice for coaching. Because so many things are going on during a coaching situation, two sets of eyes and ears often enable the coaches to support each other and the client in being able to mirror back to the client and listen even more thoroughly to the client. Shadow Coaching This involves “shadowing” an executive or a group of senior leaders and then feeding back the result of the shadowing one-on-one or as a team or group process. Focused Observation & Feedback Self Coaching Because coaching is designed as a process for development, the end goal is to coach ourselves out of a job. This happens when clients learn to self-coach. SelfCoaching begins when we fully take charge of our own life to run our own brains, manage our states, and commit ourselves to ongoing learning and development. When we are able to do this, we are able to identify skills and states for the next step in development, set up a step-by-step action plan for getting there, and then make it happen.

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Charvet, Rose Shelle. (1995). Words that change minds: Mastering the language of influence. Debuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing. Cooperrider, David L., and Srivastva, S. (1988). “Appreciative Inquiry in Organizational Life.” In Research in Organization Change and Development, vol. I, edited by W. Pasmore and R. Woodman, pp. 129-169. Greenwich, CN: JAI Press.

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L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. L. Michael Hall is a visionary leader in the field of NLP and Neuro-Semantics, and a modeler of human excellence. Searching out areas of human excellence, he models the structure of that expertise and then turns that information into models, patterns, training manuals, and books. With his several businesses, Michael is also an entrepreneur and an international trainer. His doctorate is in the Cognitive-Behavioral sciences from Union Institute University. For two decades he worked as a psychotherapist in Colorado. When he found NLP in 1986, he studied and then worked with Richard Bandler. Later when studying and modeling resilience, he developed the Meta-States Model (1994) that launched the field of NeuroSemantics. He co-created the International Society of Neuro-Semantics (ISNS) with Dr. Bob Bodenhamer. Learning the structure of writing, he began writing and has written more than 40 books, many best sellers in the field of NLP. Applying NLP to coaching, he created the Meta-Coach System, this was co-developed with Michelle Duval (2003-2007), he co-founded the Meta-Coach Foundation (2003), created the Self-Actualization Quadrants (2004) and launched the new Human Potential Movement (2005). Contact Information: P.O. Box 8 Clifton, Colorado 81520 USA (1-970) 523-7877 Websites: www.neurosemantics.com www.meta-coaching.org www.self-actualizing.org www.meta-coachfoundation.org

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Books by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. NLP and Neuro-Semantics: 1) Meta-States: Mastering the Higher Levels of Mind (1995/ 2000). 2) Dragon Slaying: Dragons to Princes (1996 / 2000). 3) The Spirit of NLP: The Process, Meaning and Criteria for Mastering NLP (1996). 4) Languaging: The Linguistics of Psychotherapy (1996). 5) Becoming More Ferocious as a Presenter (1996). 6) Patterns For Renewing the Mind (with Bodenhamer, 1997 /2006). 7) Time-Lining: Advance Time-Line Processes (with Bodenhamer, 1997). 8) NLP: Going Meta — Advance Modeling Using Meta-Levels (1997/2001). 9) Figuring Out People: Reading People Using Meta-Programs (with Bodenhamer, 1997, 2005). 10) SourceBook of Magic, Volume I (with Barbara Belnap, 1997). 11) Mind-Lines: Lines For Changing Minds (with Bodenhamer, 1997/ 2005). 12) Communication Magic (2001). Originally, The Secrets of Magic (1998). 13) Meta-State Magic: Meta-State Journal (1997-1999). 14) When Sub-Modalities Go Meta (with Bodenhamer, 1999, 2005). Originally, The Structure of Excellence. 15) Instant Relaxation (with Lederer, 1999). 16) User’s Manual of the Brain: Volume I (with Bodenhamer, 1999). 17) The Structure of Personality: Modeling Personality Using NLP and Neuro-Semantics (with Bodenhamer, Bolstad, and Harmblett, 2001). 18) The Secrets of Personal Mastery (2000). 19) Winning the Inner Game (2007), originally Frame Games (2000). 20) Games Fit and Slim People Play (2001). 21) Games for Mastering Fear (with Bodenhamer, 2001). 22) Games Business Experts Play (2001). 23) The Matrix Model: Neuro-Semantics and the Construction of Meaning (2003). 24) User’s Manual of the Brain: Master Practitioner Course, Volume II (2002). 25) MovieMind: Directing Your Mental Cinemas (2002). 26) The Bateson Report (2002). 27) Make it So! Closing the Knowing-Doing Gap (2002). 28) Source Book of Magic, Volume II, Neuro-Semantic Patterns (2003). 29) Propulsion Systems (2003). 30) Games Great Lovers Play (2004). 31) Coaching Conversation, Meta-Coaching, Volume II (with Michelle Duval & Robert Dilts 2004, 2010). 32) Coaching Change, Meta-Coaching, Volume I (with Duval, 2004/ 2015). 33) Unleashed: How to Unleash Potentials for Peak Performances (2007). 34) Achieving Peak Performance (2009). 35) Self-Actualization Psychology (2008). 36) Unleashing Leadership: Self-Actualizing Leaders and Companies (2009). 37) The Crucible and the Fires of Change (2010). 38) Inside-Out Wealth (2010). 39) Benchmarking: The Art of Measuring the Unquantifiable (2011). -294-

40) Innovations in NLP: Volume I (Edited with Shelle Rose Charvet; 2011). 41) Neuro-Semantics: Actualizing Meaning and Performance (2011) 42) Group and Team Coaching (2013) 43) Executive Coaching: Facilitating Excellence in the C-Suite (2014) 44) Political Coaching: Unleashing Self-Actualizing Politicians. (2015) 45) Collaborative Leadership (2015?). With Ian McDermott. 46) The Field of NLP (2015?). With John Seymour and Richard Gray. Volume Books 1) “Neurons” — Meta-Reflections, 2008 2) “Neurons” — Meta-Reflections, 2009 3) “Neurons” — Meta-Reflections, 2010 4) “Neurons” — Meta-Reflections, 2011 5) “Neurons” — Meta-Reflections, 2012 6) “Neurons” — Meta-Reflections, 2013 7) “Neurons” — Meta-Reflections, 2014 8) Meta-Coach Reflections, 2009 9) Meta-Coach Reflections, 2010 10) Meta-Coach Reflections, 2011 11) Meta-Coach Reflections, 2012 12) Meta-Coach Reflections, 2013 13) Meta-Coach Reflections, 2014 14) Trainers’ Reflections, 2010 15) Trainers’ Reflections, 2011 16) Trainers’ Reflections, 2012 17) Trainers’ Reflections, 2013 18) Trainers’ Reflections, 2014 Other books: 1) Emotions: Sometimes I Have Them/ Sometimes They have Me (1985) 2) Motivation: How to be a Positive Influence in a Negative World (1987) 3) Speak Up, Speak Clear, Speak Kind (1987) 4) Millennial Madness (1992), now Apocalypse Then, Not Now (1996). 5) Over My Dead Body (1996). Order Books from:

NSP: Neuro-Semantic Publications P.O. Box 8 Clifton, CO. 81520—0008 USA (970) 523-7877

Neuro-Semantics as an Association In 1996 Hall and Bodenhamer registered “Neuro-Semantics” and founded The International Society of Neuro-Semantics (ISNS) as a new approach to teaching, training, and using NLP. The objective was to take NLP, as a model and field, to a higher level in terms of professional ethics and quality. Today Neuro-Semantics is one of the leading -295-

disciplines and movements within NLP as it is pioneering many new developments and demonstrating a fresh creativity similar to what characterized NLP when it was new. Dr. Hall is known as a prolific writer, having authored 50 books in the field of NLP, many of them best sellers through Crown House Publishes (Wales, UK) and many of them translated into numerous languages: German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Norwegian, Portuguese, etc. www.neurosemantics.com www.meta-coaching.org www.metacoachingfoundation.org www.self-actualizing.org

The Meta-Coaching System As a complete and comprehensive coaching system, the Meta-Coaching System began in 2001 when L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. modeled four expert coaches. He then applied the Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and Neuro-Semantic models to the burgeoning field of Coaching. As a systemic model, the Meta-Coaching System enables a professional Coach to answer the question: How do you know what to do, when to do it, with whom to do it, how to do what you’re doing, and why? When you can think strategically as a Coach, you will be able to recognize where you are with a client and what to do. Having a theoretical model that answers the why are you doing that? question saves your coaching from being a grab-bag of tricks so you don’t have to coach-by-the-seat-of-your-pants. To met this rigorous criteria, the Meta-Coaching System is based on eight models—models which are based in Cognitive-Behavioral, Developmental, and Self-Actualization psychologies. The design is to give Meta-Coaching a credible scientific basis. Then as a coach you will not fall back on what you “feel like” on a certain day, your “intuitions” (which may be your own unresolved issues), or some trick that you have picked up on a weekend training. Today Meta-Coaching standards are the highest in the field of Coaching as it offers specific behavioral benchmarks for every one of the 50 coaching skills. It also has developed a Benchmarking Intangibles Model for how to generate rigorous benchmarks for any value or skill. The Meta-Coaching System also has an accountability structure to the ethics and standards which governs every licenced Meta-Coach. With this book there are now 13 books that detail out the entire curriculum of MetaCoaching, and several more in the works. The Meta-Coaching System is inclusive of other systems as Meta-Coaches around the world in 50 countries are often on the board of ICF and many other Coach training programs. Trainings in Meta-Coaching occur every year dozens of times in every continent. For more information, see www.meta-coaching.org and www.metacoachfoundation.org.

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THE META-COACHING SYSTEM Volume XIII L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Can Coaching be systematic? Is there a structure and order to the process of Coaching? In The Meta-Coaching System: Systematic Coaching at Its Best the answer is a definite “Yes!” Beginning in 2001, the Meta-Coaching System is now in twelve volumes and three training manuals. That’s a lot of material for the entire system. But now, in a single volume, you can get an over-view of the whole system and discover the most systematic approach to coaching anywhere. The Meta-Coaching System provides a summary description of the eight models which make up Meta-Coaching and a full description of the Coaching Psychology that informs and governs Meta-Coaching—Self-Actualization Psychology. Discover the single uniqueness of Coaching, the principles of Coaching, the Art of Process Facilitation, and much, much more.

NSP Neuro-Semantic Publications ww.neurosemantics.com

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