Coaching is about finding the space, the freedom to dream.  Expanding your map of the world.  But it’s also about taking action.  It’s only by acting that you move, that things change, that you grow, and learn. 

This has been bubbling away for me at a personal level ever since I jotted down my unwritten chapters or ‘gotta get goals’.  If these are your dreams, the inner question goes, what is the next step to making them a reality?  Some are still hazy, dreamy, and I’m happy to leave them floating for just now.  Others are more specific.  If I want to be able to speak and read Gaelic there’s only one way of doing it: learn the language.  So as a start I’ve booked myself into Sabhal Mor Ostaig (the Gaelic college on Skye) for two weeks intensive Gaelic in the summer.

And then there’s the place.  Somewhere wild, wet, overlooking the water.  How will I find it if I don’t start looking?  Even if it takes me a decade the only way to discover this – and other new shores – is to push the boat out, to venture out into new places, to start exploring, to see what you might find…

So I’m off tomorrow for a five day trip round the north west of Scotland: two days in Ullapool, taking in the book festival (hits a storytelling goal too!), then two days in Stein, a tiny fishing village on Skye, followed by an evening with the palm trees in balmy Plockton.  Appropriately enough for my dream of a wild, wet and windy landscape it’s started to rain again after weeks and weeks of sunshine.  (Apologies to other holiday makers if I’ve jinxed you…but don’t worry – the north west coast will look gorgeous, wild, stunning, amazing whatever the weather.)

Not sure if I’ll manage (or be looking for) an internet connection when I’m away, so if you don’t hear from me for a while you’ll know I’m busy pursuing my goals: watching the boats pulling out of the harbour, listening to a poet in a pub by the shore, battling with the wind on a wild cliff top walk…

• a relation of mutual understanding or trust and agreement between people
• a feeling of sympathetic understanding
• sympathetic compatibility

I’d highlight a few important words from that definition:

Relation… between people. It’s not something one person ‘does’ to another.  It exists between people.

Trust. Rapport is connected to but not the same as trust.  Rapport can be built (and lost) quickly.  Trust takes time.

Feeling. There’s often a ‘feeling’ of connection with someone – but you might not be able to put your finger on why, or how

So rapport is all about the relationship between people.  Although there are things that you can do to build rapport you cannot manipulate another person into feeling it.  To build rapport you also need to let yourself
be open to influence – and to respect the other person that you are communicating with.

You can create rapport by relating to people in a way that creates a climate of trust and understanding.  Although we can learn ways to build and create rapport it is important to remember that rapport is natural.  It is integral to human communication.

As Joseph O’Connor reminds us: “we do not need to create it as much as stop doing what could be preventing it…”

Richard Bandler defined NLP as an attitude and methodology that leaves behind a trail of techniques.  John Grinder said it is an accelerated learning strategy for the detection and utilization of patterns in the in the world.  Some people say it is the influence of language on our mind and subsequent behaviour.  Or you could say that it is learning to read maps – your own and other people’s – and the art of changing those maps, playfully and lovingly, to create more choices and open new doors.

Or you might say that NLP is like the story of the 18th camel…

A wise man rode into a desert village one evening as the sun was setting. Dismounting from his camel, he asked one of the villagers for a drink of water.

‘Of course,’ said the villager and gave him a cup of water.  The traveller drank the whole cupful.  ‘Thank you,’ he said.  ‘Can I help you at all before I travel on?’

‘Yes,’ said the young man.  ‘We have a dispute in our family.  I am the youngest of three brothers.  Our father died recently, God rest his soul, and all he possessed was a small herd of camels.  Seventeen, to be exact.  He decreed in his will that one half of the herd was to go to my oldest brother, one third to the middle brother and one ninth to me.  But how can we divide a herd of 17?  We do not want to chop up any camels, they are worth far more alive.’

‘Take me to your house,’ said the sage.

When he entered the house he saw the other two brothers and the man’s widow sitting around the fire arguing.  The youngest brother interrupted them and introduced the traveller.

‘Wait,’ said the wise man, ‘I think I can help you.  Here, I give you my camel as a gift.  Now you have 18 camels.  One half goes to the eldest, that’s nine camels.  One third goes to the middle son, that’s six camels.  And one ninth goes to my friend here, the youngest son.  That’s two.’

‘That’s only 17 altogether,’ said the youngest son.

‘Yes.  By a happy coincidence, the camel left over is the one I gave to you.  If you could possibly give it back to me I will continue on my journey.’

And he did.

So how is NLP like the story of the 18th camel?

Well of course, the best stories, like the best magic tricks, are never explained, but just this once here are some possible meanings….

The wise man demonstrates some key principles of NLP.  He:

• Establishes rapport from the outset
• Respects the family’s view of the world, but doesn’t have to believe what they believe
• Realises that they are doing the best the can with the resources they have available
• Is flexible in his choice of response
• Introduces new possibilities, using existing resources

The intervention:

• Delivers the result the family wanted
• Doesn’t take any longer than it has to
• Doesn’t require the family to rake over the past or relive the arguments
• Leads to increased wholeness (all the camels survive!)

Joseph O’Connor, who coined this example, wonders if NLP could be like the 18th camel as it is brought into the situation by a wise person, it solves the problem quickly, and then disappears as if it had never been there…

With thanks to Joseph O’Connor’s NLP Workbook for the fabulous story!

Metaphors are great at communicating meaning – in particular multiple or ambiguous meanings.  Metaphors take us beyond one meaning and open up new possibilities and avenues.

Here are some great metaphors for metaphors from Joseph O’Connor’s NLP workbook:

“A metaphor is like shining a coloured spotlight on an object, making it appear to be a different colour, or like taking a piece of music and transposing it into another key while making it more elaborate.  The tune is the same but the expression is different.  A metaphor can be like a breath of fresh air in a stuffy classroom.”

Metaphors have an important role to play within coaching and NLP.  Milton Erickson – whose work had a profound influence on the development of NLP – used metaphors, stories and analogies to access a client’s unconscious resources, bypassing conscious resistance and allowing the client to make connections at a deeper level.

You will be familiar with the idea that we pay attention to the outside world through our five senses:

seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting

These translate in NLP terms as:

visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, olfactory, gustatory

Sometimes you will just see the letters that stand for them:

V, A, K, O, G

Well, just as we see, hear, taste, touch and smell the outside world we also re-create or re-present those sensations in our mind, using our senses inwardly.

We use all of these systems, but we will tend to favour one over others.  This is what is known as the preferred representational system.

Joseph O’Connor defines this in the NLP workbook as “the representational system that an individual typically uses to think consciously and organise their experience.”

You might find references to representational systems in relation to learning styles.

For example a visual learner will want to see things (pictures, diagrams, handouts); an auditory learner will gather information from the spoken word, sounds, and noises; someone with a kinaesthetic learning style will want to learn through touching, feeling, holding, doing or practical hands-on experiences.

Increased awareness of these representational systems can help us communicate better with other people.  It can also make us more self-aware – perhaps of things that help us to learn, or get in the way of our learning.

Words that link to a particular representational system are known as predicates.  You can find out more about predicates here.