Can NLP help you to be a better coach? Absolutely.
NLP at its core, is really about evoking resources in other people.
A resource is anything that is required in order to move a person from where they are now to where they want to be.
Using NLP to assist a coaching client can be described loosely as the process of defining the desired state, present state and identifying and applying resources to help a person move from their present (problem) state to the desired state (goal).
Working With A Client Using NLP:
So let’s say you have got a coaching client. They come to you typically with a present state, with a problem. They want to be able to change their career, they want to be able to make more money, they want to for example, to become a better communicator etc., and they’ve got some constraints or what they perceive as constraints that are blocking them or preventing them from having what they want.
So the desired state might be, for example, somebody who wants to become a better communicator to make presentations in public, they want to be able to get up in front of 500 people where they feel they can communicate confidently and competently. For now let’s just address the confidence issue.
In NLP, unlike some other coaching schools you may have trained with, we are specifically interested in defining the behaviors that demonstrate when someone is expressing a behaviour called “confidence”. We want to define what that word means to the person and how they would know, through their 5 senses when a state of “confidence” was occurring.
For example it might be that the person is breathing fully from their belly, that they are holding the microphone firmly to their chest, that they make eye contact with the people that they’re communicating with etc. etc.
What we are looking to do is quantify and qualify what the desired state is and the contexts we want it to occur. After you’ve qualified what the desired state is you’re going to be interested in, what’s the present state? And by the present state we mean, what is it about how the person is thinking, feeling and behaving that’s keeping them from achieving their desired state.
A resource is anything that is required in order to move a person from where they are now to where they want to be.
So we might have it that right now the present state is that actually they feel nervous, that their mouth gets dry when thinking about getting up in front of 500 people. That they stutter, that they’re not able to get their words out, etc.
So these might be some of the present state factors that you’ve got to address.
In terms of the third component, resources. As an NLPer or as somebody who is a coach, what you’re looking to do is evoke resources within the individual in order for them to be able to achieve their desired state.
Resources can be internal and external things. So internally one might be talking about certain states, habitual ways of thinking, behaving etc. External resources can be things like information, knowledge, strategies, the person’s friends, family etc. The resources you will use will vary from client to client and context to context. However they will be the things in this instance that help us move the person from their current state of anxiety, stuttering and dried mouth to the breathing fully, smiling, relaxed sensation around the jaw line, perhaps butterflies of excitement in their chest etc.
As a coach using NLP, we are looking at what resources you can bring to bear to move the person into a confident state. And NLP offers us exceptional tools and strategies for helping access, amplify and utilize state resources.
So for example, if you’re talking about a person who is nervous, we might go and find a context in which they have confidence. And the cool thing about NLP is that we can borrow resources from different areas of their life.
So if the person is for example very confident playing football, well we can have them re-access that state and there is a particular process and a technique, a procedure really, and starts with intention of helping the person evoke that state. We anchor the state and then we put them into the context where they’re thinking about or whether they’re beginning to do the behavior that we want them to. For example we have them imagine that we’re going to step in front of 500 people and at the same time we fire off the resources, in this case the resource of the confident state.
And as they’re in the feeling of confidence and feeling good and breathing from their tummy, etc., we’re having them run through the movie for example of what they will be doing when they step forward in front of 500 people.
Or we might have them role play out the action for example, connecting with the audience, looking at everybody holding the mic. And as you’re doing that you’re beginning to wire up, to train, to entrain into the nervous system and the mind body that when the context of 500 people are there, the behavior of walking and communicating confidently and breathing fully, is the desired result and that’s the behavior that gets automatically fired off when the person is in the context of the public communication.
So as a coach, NLP brings a phenomenal set of tools to your toolkit. Frameworks and models like the Meta model, the Milton model, sleight of mouth, The T.O.T.E framework, strategies model etc.
All of these have been used widely by expert coaches such as Tony Robbins and many others.
In Closing:
There is a huge array of tools that NLP brings to you as a coach.
If you have no prior experience around NLP, then I’d highly encourage you to look into it as a coach because it’s arguably one of the most powerful personal development and personal change technologies that are available, and if you’re a coach, you’re in the business of helping your clients achieve their results hopefully quicker and faster and much better than they would be able to do, so to speak, without your assistance.