In NLP we are curious as to how the client is producing whatever problem or issue they are in their life. How is it that they have not yet got the results they want? NLP is not about looking at how people are “broken,” but rather how are they getting the results they are. Then to look at how can that person get the results they actually want. In achieving that goal, NLP employs a number of techniques that have been modelled from a rich history of experts.
One such person was Milton Erickson, who was one of the world’s foremost hypnotherapists. He was also a practising medical doctor and he was helping his clients in achieving phenomenal results. Erickson practised hypnosis for around 60 years and saw many clients during his career. One of the things he was really great at was to tell stories. He used metaphors and as if by magic, when he told his client’s the metaphors, their problems disappeared. A famous example of one of his metaphors was him telling a client a story about tomato plants. The client wanted to lose weight and so he told the client all about how tomatoes were really good at taking in just the right amount of nutrients and water to grow into the perfect shape and size a tomato should be. Of course he used a number of words that would have been important to the client, specifically paying attention to their predicates and other important language to the client. The result was that the client lost the weight they wanted. We know that metaphors can be very valuable in coaching, by helping the client shift their perspective. An example could be telling a story about how somebody else has overcome adversity and the client could then change their perspective from doom and gloom to one of potential.
Another person who was modelled was a renowned family therapist by the name of Virginia Satir. She seemed to get amazing results with her clients by getting really specific about things. An example would be if somebody came to her and said “She really hurt me,” then Virginia would say “how specifically?” From modelling Virginia Satir, Richard and John created the “Meta-Model,” which means over model. We are not going to cover the Meta Model in this article. The aim is only to suggest that it is important to get really specific about what is going on. As we know in coaching, it helps to get really specific with our clients to help them focus on what is actually the reality and what specifically they want to achieve. Getting rid of the fluff and dealing with the facts can be in itself very helpful to clients.
Another concept that popularised NLP is the concept of anchoring. Anchoring is the process of stimulus response and it comes from Ivan Pavlov and his book called “Conditioned Reflexes.” The interesting thing is that the notion of stimulus response was actually the creation of William Twitmyer around 1902 who noticed that every time he hit his patient on the knee, their knee would jerk. He called it “The knee-jerk reflex.” He noticed that if he told his patients he was going to hit their knee before he hit, he could get the client’s knee to jerk without actually hitting it. Ivan Pavlov read about Twitmyer’s work and began his work that led to “Stimulus Response and Conditioned Reflexes.” In NLP anchoring is where we capture a stimulus and apply an anchor at the same time as the person is in a state. Much like Pavlov’s work with dogs, whereby he would ring a tuning form and give his dogs a steak. After a number of repetitions over time, he would ring the tuning fork and even though he did not give the dogs the steak, they still salivated. Using the concept of anchoring in coaching we could use the following example. Let’s say the client is not feeling confident about something they need to do, even though they have prepared for it. We can help the client to associate into a time when they did feel confident and anchor that state so that they can recall that feeling of confidence at will, and feeling that confidence, focus on doing their best and letting go of the non-productive state they may have been in before.
The NLP communication model is really a useful thing to talk to clients because it allows us to understand that people have different ways of communicating. It shows us that the internal representation is the most important thing and how we hold that internal representation in our head really makes a difference. It shows how our values, beliefs, Meta-programs and other factors can impact on our actions.
The human nervous system is designed to produce the behavior based on the internal representation that we hold in our mind, the state that we are in and our physiology. So to change our behavior or the results that we produce, we need to pay attention to our internal representation, state and/or physiology, changing any of these can essentially change our external behaviour and thus our results.
The concept of eye patterns in NLP is useful in coaching as well.