Mathias MaulMarketing at the Interface

As announced, I’ve condensed the results of my recent seminar on effective coaching and therapy into this post.

Many people have been writing or talking about the merits of maximal simplicity in various contexts; recent examples include John Maeda’s book and blog, or David Pogue’s presentation at TED 2006 focusing on simplicity in software.

It seems that in many contexts, simplicity is the basis for complexity, so why make coaching more complex than it is?

Take another example: During my AI studies, we equipped simulated ants with some simple, local rules. Then we watched our ant colonies evolve very complex behaviour patterns such as ant trails or elaborate attack/retreat patterns. It took only very few simple, local rules to effect large-scale, systemic change. Dee Hock carries this notion to extremes:

Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behavior. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behavior.
(Dee Hock, quoted in Getting Things Done by David Allen)

My goal is to make coaching and therapy more effective by reducing rules and radically simplifying methodologies. So here is my first, probably still drafty, attempt at a listing of all things necessary to be a great coach:

Step One: Prerequisites

1. Know Your Role And Responsibilites. Be aware of the role(s) you take on as coach or therapist. Are you a “helper,” a “supporter” or even a “saviour”? Learn to adapt your role to what serves yourself and your client best. Also, be aware that the client’s goals are not your responsibility but entirely his own. Your resposibility as coach or therapist is to do the best you can to support your client strengthening his responsibility for himself. The best way to achieve this is by taking responsibility for yourself. Once you get this right, you are out of the exhausting my-client-isn’t-changing-that-means-that-I-have-done-it-WRONG! issue that plagues many newcomers to the field.

2. Be Flexible. It helps to be able to adapt to the client’s point of view. It helps to have a radical constructivist approach. (Further reading: Paul Watzlawick, Richard Bandler, Ernst von Glasersfeld et al.).

3. Optimize yourself. Be aware of yourself and strive to resolve your emotional issues that arise before, during or after working with a client. You are doing yourself and your clients a big favor by staying alert, awake and mentally healthy.

Step Two: A Basic Process

This basic coaching process, cited by many authors, is all you need, even for large-scale systemic changework. Don’t be fooled by its simplicity; instead, be inspired.

1. Find A Compelling Goal. This might range from simple issues such as “be relaxed in front of large audiences” to “knowing what my life is all about”. Use Steve de Shazer’s “Miracle Question” and/or NLP’s “SMART” process to find, formulate and fortify (alliteration not intended) a goal.

2. Test Whether You Have Reached Your Goal. As soon as the goal is found, support your client in staying focused and continually evaluate whether the current behaviors, emotions, belief sets etc. actually support reaching the goal. If not, intervene by using one of the tools mentioned below.

3. Continue until the goal is reached. As simple as that. Of course, the goal can be re-formulated during the process—Actually, in most cases it must be re-formulated because the systemic changes that happen during a coaching/therapy process can not be predicted when you’re defining the goal for the first time.

Step Three: Tools

Prerequisites and process are not enough. You need some basic tools to support your client to actually make the changes he desires.

1. Sort. It helps to know how to support a client in sorting his or her issues. Most clients enter your practise with little or no knowledge about the various aspects that make up their issue. Use Robert Dilts’ “Logical Levels” model to quickly scan through various aspects of an issue. (Yes, I know, the LL are neither logical nor are they levels. However, it is a vastly useful framework, and usefulness is all that counts.)

2. Listen And Talk. Be able to talk to your client and understand what he means be asking process-oriented questions. The “meta model” used in NLP, Robert Dilts’ “Sleight of Mouth” patterns and the type of circular questioning used by some systemic schools works wonders.

3. Decouple. You need at least one reliable method to decouple emotional reactions from external or internal stimuli. Cognitive behavior therapy helps a lot, even ultra-simplistic CBT tools like EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques® by Gary Craig) can clear out severe emotional distress in minutes.

I am quite sure that there is nothing more to add to become a great coach or therapist when you heed those recommendations. I invite you to prove me wrong, though! As always, this is work in process, so comments are welcome.