These days, there is a lot of talk about Coaching.

People are confused. Not knowing which school would give them better assistance.

Those who Coach, would always say theirs is the best system.

The point is that none of them explain their system. Leaving the layman wondering.   I believe that students of Ericksonian studies, like Ericksonian Psychotherapy, Indirect Hypnosis etc…will find the following article quite interesting.

The article was written by the creator of Neuro Semantics, L. Michael Hall Ph.D.

It is presented as it is, word for word. Giving you the reader the opportunity to reach your own conclusions. It is directed mainly towards those of you who practice NLP and Ericksonian Psychotherapy.

Does it mean, that you too can Coach efficiently and effectively?

You decide.

Can You See Milton Erickson as a Coach?

by L. Michael Hall Ph.D.

_ Can you imagine Milton Erickson as a life coach, executive coach, or personal coach?

_ Would Erickson have liked coaching as a field?

_ How Ericksonian is coaching or could coaching become?

_ Is there anything that’s hypnotic and magical in coaching?

_ Would Milton have liked what’s happening in the field of coaching today?

_ How could Erickson’s thinking, spirit, and ways of working with people enrich the field of coaching?

As a psychologist who has been modeling both Milton H. Erickson and the field of coaching, the longer I explore the field and models of coaching, the more similarities I see in it with the work of Milton H.Erickson. In so many ways, coaching is by its very nature very Ericksonian in nature.

And no wonder - both began with many of the same assumptions and so are founded on similar premises about people, growth, development, and assistance. What are these presuppositions that each share?

The following summarize the key ones.

_ People have the resources within for solving their problems and finding their way.

_ People only need assistance in facilitating the accessing and unleashing of these inner powers of learning and empowerment.

_ Every person’s reality makes sense from within the client’s model of the world.

_ Any helper has to begin by making contact, creating rapport, and entering into the world of the client. It is pace, pace, pace, and then lead.

_ The helper works as an awakener of the possibilities, potentials, and powers within.

_ Facilitating another’s awakening and empowerment comes from a relentless probing into the frames of mind that governs a client’s reality.

_ Sometimes the facilitating involves provoking the client to take action.

_ Sometimes it involves tasking a client in a way so that the client can discover for him or herself. There are more but these are the beginning ones.

No wonder the Ericksonian approach has led to solution-focus therapies and fit so neatly with the assumptions of Maslow called the third-force in psychology, the Human Potential Movement.

Today coaching is all about unleashing the potential in clients so that they can maximize their possibilities.

What does a coach do in working with clients?

He or she works to unleash those potentials to the client’s outcome. In this, the coach cocreates with the client the kind of inner mapping, framing, and experiencing that brings this about.

And doesn't that describe so much of what Erickson did and was about?

From Erickson, Bandler and Grinder modeled and invented their NLP take which highlighted Erickson’s verbal and non-verbal expressions, his patterns of using hypnotic language for accessing resources and restructuring a client’s mapping of the world. They contained Erickson’s genius in the field of therapy. Fast forward thirty-years and we now find that NLP has shifted to NLP Coaching with various leaders like Ian McDermott (The NLP Coach) having the trainings certified through the ICF (International Coach Federation and Robert (From Coach to Awakener) Dilts being a regular keynote speaker at the ICF conferences.

Why? Because the heart of Neuro-Linguistic Programming which comes from Erickson along with two other leaders in the Human Potential Movement, Perls (Gestalt Therapy) and Satir (Family Systems) highlights that people already have the inner resources, at least in potentiality.

This reframes therapy or helping as a respectful facilitative process that works with a client in cocreating a new way of living and relating.

Coaching today grew out of the work of a sports psychologist, Timothy Gallwey as he found his way from a teaching and “doing things to people” approach to a more facilitative way of working.

His inner game books and style focused on the special healing awareness of non-judgmental awareness and the ability to be present to the actual senses of the experience whether it be tennis, golf, music, or work. Later Thomas Leonard used his genius of organization and collaboration to found Coach U., the ICF, and Coachville to turn Coaching into a movement and then a field.

In the field of Neuro-Semantics, my associate Michelle Duval, a master coach and executive director of one of the fastest growing coaching organizations in Australia (Equilibrio) has co-created with me Meta-Coaching that utilizes many of the processes of Erickson. While we focus on performance coaching, we go beyond mere improvement and enhancement of performance to developmental coaching and transformational coaching.

We do that by focusing on the importance of entering the client’s model of the world, his or her matrix of belief and value frames and move up the levels of those belief frames within belief frames to understand the client and invite the client’s own self-understanding of how that matrix works and the reality that it creates.

In doing so, we focus on facilitating and co-creating with the client the outcomes and dreams that most awakens the client. Because it invites a person to move up the levels of the mind, we call this meta-coaching. In coaching we also induce states, altered states and hypnotic states. It’s inevitable.

The coaching conversation invites a client to “go inside” and imagine (hallucinate) desired futures of unleashed possibilities. Yet for that coaching differs from hypnosis. It is much more indirect in its inductions and does so more as a by-product of communicating. Hypnosis proper is much more direct and usually involves inviting clients into a more passive role. Coaching utilizes hypnosis more conversationally and invites clients into a more active and direct role.

Summary

So can we imagine Milton Erickson as a coach?

And would he like what’s happening in the field of Coaching? To the extent that coaching is facilitating and unleashing the potentials of clients, I think that the answer is yes to both of these.

About the Author

L. Michael Hall, a cognitive-behavioral psychologist, studied NLP and Ericksonian hypnosis, then later created the Meta-States and Matrix models in the field of Neuro-Semantics. He also cofounded the Meta-Coach training system with Michelle Duval of Equilibrio. See www.neurosemantics.com and www.equilibrio.com.au.

References:

Gallwey, W. Timothy. (1974/ 1997). The Inner Game of Tennis. Revised Edition. New York: Random House.

Gallwey, Timothy; Kriegel, Bob. (1977). Inner Skiing. NY: Random House.

Green, Barry; Gallwey, W. Timothy. (1986). The Inner Game of Music. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, Doubleday.

Gallwey, W. Timothy. (2000). The Inner Game of Work: Focus, Learning, Pleasure, and Mobility in the Workplace. New York: Random House Trade

Paperbacks.

Haley, Jay. (1985). Conversations with Milton H. Erickson, M.D., Volume I. New York: Triangle Press.

Hall, Michael. (1995/2000). Meta-states: Managing the higher levels of your mind’s reflexivity.

Grand Jct., CO: Neuro-Semantic

Publications.

Hall, L. Michael. (2000). Secrets of personal mastery: Advanced techniques for accessing your higher levels of consciousness. Wales, UK: Crown House Publications.

Hall, L. Michael; Duval, Michelle. (2004).

Coaching Conversations (2004). Clifton, CO.:

Neuro-Semantic Publications.

Hall, L. Michael; Duval, Michelle. (2004). Meta-Coaching: Reaching higher levels of success and transformation, Coaching Change, Volume I.

Clifton, CO.: Neuro-Semantic Publications.

McDermott, Ian; Jago, Wendy. (2001). The NLP Coach: A Comprehensive Guide to Personal Wellbeing and Professional Success. London: Platkus,

Action Printing.

Zeig, Jeffrey, K. (Ed., 1994). Ericksonian Methods: The essence of the story. New York:

Presented to the reader by:

Emil Capone

Certified Trainer of NLP, CCHT and Advanced Practitioner of EFT.

In a previous article about Ericksonian Psychotherapy we pointed out, that the Ericksonian school split into two different disciplines.

One of these disciplines was tasking.

Tasking known today as "The family systems theory", originated from the way  Milton Erickson worked.

When Milton worked with clients he used at times to give them tasks. The idea behind tasking was to let the client reach inner understandings and results, by performing the appointed tasks.

There are many stories about such tasks.

The way it worked was by asking the client for a commitment to accomplish the task. Explaining that the task was possible to be achieved, and giving the task once the commitment was obtained.

In his book "My voice will go with you", teaching tales of Milton Erickson – Sidney Rosen gives numerous examples.

An example of such a task is a story from old folklore.

Once upon a time there was this husband and wife, who kept quarreling.

Life was unbearable.

The wife deciding to change things asked for advice. The elder women advised her to go and see a certain witch that lived in the woods.

The wife went to that witch and after recounting her problems with her husband, the witch advised the following.

During a full moon the wife should take a big jar and go to seven special wells and fill the jar with water from all seven wells.

Having acquired the water, each time her husband started quarreling she should take a sip of water and keep it in her mouth until he was finished. Swallowing the water, only after he has finished shouting.

Lo and behold, the quarreling stopped.

This task teaches in an indirect way, that when someone starts shouting at you one of the wise ways to eliminate a quarrel would be to keep quite.

When your mouth is full with water you cannot answer back.

When one stops to think, for a moment. Tasks can be simple yet very powerful.

According to the wonderful work done by Don A. Blackerby, people suffering from ADD have been found, to have a deficiency in their auditory faculty.

By tasking the client to read loudly certain articles or books, the auditory sense can be enhanced.

As you see, the possibilities are endless and the beauty is that it can be applied to any situation. Be it to the individual, a family, or any group and even in business situations.

Tasking was only one part the genius of Milton Erickson.

For us, it is a real treasure.

Emil Capone

Certified Trainer of NLP, CCHT and Advanced Practitioner of EFT.

As we wrote in a previous article NLP is composed of many tools and techniques.

There are the tools for gathering information. Those for analyzing the client’s map of the world and those with which to do change work.

I do not believe any of these tools can be pointed as the best. I believe all of them are good and the only difference in their capabilities would be the need for them at that specific time.

With all that said, one of my favorites is the Meta Model.

To explain the Meta Model, we need first to understand our mental processes.

When we are faced with an event, which can be anything from seeing something that is happening, through hearing some noise or feeling something. Be it internal or external. We gather the information with our senses. We then go on to processing it.

We do the processing through a set of filters until we get a feeling of completeness.

Finishing the process by making an imprint of that specific event.

The filters are our beliefs, our values, our criteria, our experience and many others.

It is a known fact that anything passing through filters gets refined. What that means is that part of the substance is excluded. That is true for everything including information.

Considering the type of filters mentioned we can conclude, that we Delete, Distort and Generalize a big part of the incoming data.

Therefore the output will not be the same as the input. In that sense we say that "The map is not the territory". The map is only our subjective experience of reality.

Taking all this into account it becomes obvious that we need a tool with which to reconstruct or rebuild the missing information.

The Meta Model is just the tool for doing that.

By listening carefully to the way a person talks we can regain a big part of the missing information by using challenging questions.

We recognize, by the way the person talks about his experience, when he is deleting, distorting or generalizing.

One of the beautiful kinds of deletions is called "Nominalizations". It happens when a person changes a process (verb) into a name.

For example: "My relationship is in trouble".

Just by changing the verb "relating" into a nominalization "relationship" he has deleted considerable information.

Challenging the deletion by turning the "Nominalization" back into a verb or process, we can rebuild a big part of the lost information.

In this case the challenge would be: "What about the way in which you are relating is causing you to feel troubled?"

Learning to use the Meta Model gives the operator a wonderful tool with which to enrich the client’s map of the world.

For deeper knowledge and understanding of the model you can find much information in NLP literature.

There is also a software program that coaches you into learning how to use the model.

It is produced by my friend Paul Jerome at :

Http://www.NLPCoach.uk.net

Emil Capone

Certified Trainer of NLP, CCHT, Advanced Practitioner of EFT.

One way of understanding Ericksonian therapy would be by understanding the Milton Model from the world of NLP.

The Milton Model is built of Hypnotic language patterns that pace the listener’s experience allowing him to process the information by himself, without any external additions.

The patterns move the listener into higher levels of thought and more introspective states of mind and therefore induce trance naturally.

Cause and effect: Where what is said proposes that it came to be because of a cause.

Which can be true or not.

For Example. "If you do not eat ,you will not grow".

Mind reading: Where one claims to know what someone else is thinking or feeling..

For Example. "I know that you think I am bad".

Presuppositions: Where something that is not stated is taken for granted.

For Example. " After you relax for a while I wonder what you will be doing next".

Nominalizations: Where a verb is turned into a noun.

For Example. "Trance is a naturally occurring phenomenon".

There are something like 21 language patterns that can be found in any NLP literature.

The point is that those language patterns are only part of Ericksonian therapy.

There is of course also the beautiful part of Tasking.

In which you give the client a task that while performing it he processes the

meanings of what he is doing and thus reaching new conclusions.

To add to all these, we have Embedded commands, Metaphors with nested loops or without and we have Guided Imagery and the workings of Gestalt.

Milton used to say, "Utilize everything".

Putting all those tools together we can do Indirect Hypnosis and achieve wonderful results.

No wonder therefore that Ericksonian therapy is so proclaimed among therapists.

Emil Capone

Certified Trainer of NLP, CCHT and Advanced practitioner of EFT.

Now that we have met with NLP, we can go on to discuss the question of why.

Why is NLP perceived as problematic ?

When we look at the history of NLP, we can also ask…why did it take NLP so long to surface and become so popular?

The answer to those two questions can probably be, the fact that NLP is a body of growing knowledge.

The other that NLP is very systematic and includes a lot of methods and techniques.

At the beginning the originators used a special jargon in order to explain the methods and techniques.

There were those who found it difficult to understand the language.

There were those who believed the system to be too complicated.

Even today, there are those who want only parts of the system and find it difficult to accept the fact, that in order to know, one must learn.

There are so many variants and variables that one has to learn methodically in order to achieve proficiency.

Yet when you look at the things one must learn you can see that every part is a stepping stone to the next one.

It starts with the understanding of our brain and how it works. It goes on to how our senses gather the input. How our brain processes the information and how we produce the output.

When we have that, we go on to learn how to read and understand the information we gather.

We proceed in learning how language works on our brain. We learn of the different ways people present the information they have gathered.

From here we go on to learn how we can bring change or just teach others how to do something with exceptional results, the same as the model we modeled.

As we can see there is a lot of knowledge to be obtained.

From gathering information easily and correctly, through interpreting minimal cues.

On to understanding how language is used and how we can get the correct information by using a model called "The Meta Model".

How to induce states of mind and how to change them.

We learn to anchor states and break states.

Then we learn how to frame content and how to reframe it.

We learn about "The Milton Model" with which to induce change.

It goes on and on and constantly develops.

I believe that only what I have written until now can show how there would be some people who would call NLP complicated. Yet becoming a professional is never easy.

We can say that today we have become lucky due to the simple fact that the knowledge can be taught in very simple terms and all one has to do is find the right teacher.

In concluding I would say that if one wants to master the knowledge he has to decide that he wants to and go and do it methodically.

One day he will realize that it was above any expectations and worth every minute and dollar of his investment.

Emil Capone

Certified Trainer of NLP, CCHT and Advanced practitioner of EFT.

This website was built with the purpose of discussing NLP and Ericksonian Psychotherapy.

Everyone who comes here is invited to join, send articles or just write a comment.

With time, the site will grow and become a basis of free information for all who wish to extend their knowledge and enhance their practice. Be it as teacher, user or just curious.

Mainly I believe it would be a place for similar minded people who practice NLP, Psychotherapy or Coach.

You do not need to be certified in order to participate. All you need is a flexible and open mind.

Of course the information will be moderated and only articles and comments that follow the purpose and trend of this site will be published.

So let it be…

Enjoy.

Emil Capone

Certified Trainer of NLP, CCHT and Advanced practitioner of EFT.