What Coaching Is, What It Isn’t— With Particular Reference to NLP

Dilts, Grinder, Bandler and DeLozier write in one of the founding texts (1980) of NLP:

NLP is the discipline whose domain is the structure of subjective experience. It makes no commitment to theory but rather has the status of a model – a set of procedures whose usefulness is to be the measure of its worth. (6)

In 1933 Korzybski first used one of the key expressions describing a basic tenet of NLP:

A map is not the territory it represents but if correct it has a similar structure to the territory which accounts for its usefulness. (7)

By listening to and observing the coachee the NLP coach may discover with the coachee how they may channel and process the way they anticipate and order events: Visual Auditory Kinaesthetic.+

This Encoding Specific principle is applied to improve communication or learning by building rapport, matching your communication style ( I see what you mean, I hear what you are saying ) to a colleague or primarily using visual or auditory channels to effectively make information ‘stick’. (8)

NLP coaching aims to maximise positive outcomes by allowing goals to be stated in positive language (what you are going towards not what you are going away from) and chunking them into measurable and achievable realistic targets permanently anchored and owned by the client.

In conclusion, we have briefly surveyed coaching in general and the NLP approach in particular.

Working from the definitions of what coaching is and isn’t we can note what coaching can achieve.

All forms of coaching and NLP in particular by working with the coachee in congruence can result in positive outcomes quickly especially relative to other ‘helping’ professions. These outcomes may be macro ranging from growing in a period of exponential change, (9) discovering and realising new goals (10) or the more apparently micro e.g. using NLP reframing and modelling to move a client from fear to confidence in presentations.

Coaching may be ineffective, inappropriate, counter-productive or even unethical if the coachee has not knowingly or willingly entered into the coaching relationship, there is inter-cultural interference or if there is a pathological layer.  However the capacity of a professional coach to concisely facilitate positive change in the ‘now’ is likely to mean coaching itself will continue to grow in the personal and corporate worlds.