Why engage in coaching with Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)? As coaches, we understand that every discipline has its strengths and limitations. From this, it becomes essential to have a sufficiently comprehensive toolkit that allows for maximum flexibility in our daily work. We are also aware that there are no universal solutions to the limiting situations experienced by those we support. Depending on the client group we choose to work with, we find ourselves needing specific additional tools.
NLP, an essential methodology for coaches
Among the disciplines often chosen to enhance our toolkit is NLP. Opting for coaching with NLP is a popular choice because NLP offers a flexible and nuanced approach to human behavior, making it an excellent complementary tool for coaching.
Thanks to the behavioral flexibility it provides, NLP becomes an indispensable tool that facilitates change across all areas of daily life, challenging limits and expanding the realm of possibilities for our clients.
Yet, some coaches wonder why they should train in NLP, given it is fundamental to coaching. This article aims to shed light on what NLP adds to coaching and how it can make a coach more effective through the combination of NLP and coaching.
NLP stands out from other methodologies because it employs an approach that is distinct from the majority of other methods. While other disciplines often listen to label and thus confine their view of a person, NLP allows coaches to tailor their support to the uniqueness of each client and their goals.
Cultivate trust and safety
This begins from the onset of the session by establishing a bond of trust and intimacy with any client. Rapport is foundational to all NLP interventions and, once established, allows the coach to create an atmosphere of trust almost immediately. When trust is established, everything becomes possible. The coach’s work becomes more potent because if the client feels secure, their readiness to engage intensifies. The coach can then synchronize with the client and guide them towards the desired outcome.
NLP enables coaches to understand the mechanisms involved in creating and maintaining trust throughout the session.
Eliciting desired outcomes
The process of eliciting desired outcomes is significantly enhanced by using questioning tools such as the Meta-Model, which bridges what is said to what is experienced.
This approach allows a coach to develop exceptional precision in clarifying the desired outcomes. A coach using NLP can easily identify the most pertinent information without becoming overwhelmed.
They can discern, within a linguistic structure, which questions to ask and when, to quickly gather relevant information concerning the client’s goals. The language clients unconsciously choose reveals their internal workings, and understanding this enables coaches to become significantly more relevant in their support. The coach can then delve deeper or prompt the client to clarify their expressions to truly understand what lies behind their words.
Beyond the words, the coach is able to listen, not just to what is said, but how it is said, and to grasp the client’s mental dynamics. Considering this enables them to engage in powerful questioning. By dissecting this information, they can uncover how the client limits themselves and co-construct a reality more conducive to the client’s goals. A coach integrating these tools develops remarkable finesse in listening and questioning.
Exploring reality
In exploring reality, you quickly understand how a person limits themselves. A lack of precision in their language can lead to misunderstandings. Too vague a discourse and overgeneralizations reveal where a person creates their own barriers. When a client distorts reality, they create their own suffering, thereby envisioning a far more limited reality than it actually is.
Acting on these filters that clients apply to their reality once again through powerful questioning based on the Meta-Model allows changing the framing, the meaning the person gives to their situation. This awareness fosters the opening of options, more freedom, and flexibility, in other words, a new frame within the same situation.
This approach to coaching with NLP empowers the coach to reframe, reinterpret the client’s expressed experience, thus offering them another way to hear, explore, and live it, opening a new, more supportive and expansive frame for the person. This expertise enables the coach to engage in impactful direct communication and facilitate a powerful awakening.
Fine observation
NLP also aids the coach in developing a keen observation of the client’s micro-behaviors, such as breathing, skin color, and eye movements. This subtle information allows the coach to know when to delve deeper. The coach knows precisely when to probe with a powerful question, noticing a significant change. This approach considers all dimensions of the human being: mind, body, and heart (emotions). Awareness then arises more naturally than if we were only accompanying the intellectual part.
Coaching with NLP to unveil new options
Relying on this awareness and the desire to do things differently, the coach can then unveil options and design tasks in a relevant and precise manner, enabling the client to generate new behaviors.
The client can quickly evolve their functioning towards something more useful and supportive for themselves. Here, the diversity of NLP tools offers a wide range of possibilities.
Thus, coaching with NLP enhances the ability to support change by using more effective strategies for clients, generating new behaviors, and giving new meaning to the client’s life story. Added to this is the coach’s ability to use supportive and constructive language to amplify resources and assist the client in transforming limitations into opportunities and breaking free from restrictive patterns.
This makes NLP an indispensable tool that significantly improves the eight ICF competencies and allows a coach to practice effective support.
