THE POWER OF COMMUNICATION IN COACHING

THE POWER OF COMMUNICATION IN COACHING How to supercharge your skillset.

To be the most effective coach and trainer I can be, I embed the powerful tools and techniques of Neuro Linguistic Programming in every training I deliver. To be an excellent coach, it is imperative to have excellent communication skills to be able to understand others. NLP helps you to deepen and develop these.

Seek first to understand. When you understand your client, the work you do as a coach is life-changing. You may also hear someone who has trained in NLP say it has also been a life-changing experience. Training in NLP offers a very a powerful shift on a personal and professional level. WHAT IS NLP? Neuro Linguistic Programming has been described as the ‘art and science of personal excellence’. It’s all about the mind and the patterns that are programmed in and how we can change them for the better. It is a methodology for modelling excellence to obtain extraordinary results. It deepens our ability to understand ourselves and others on a new level and to identify with who we really are, what we believe in and why. It gives us opportunity to achieve the goals we set in life and business when we free ourselves of unhelpful belief systems. NLP is a set of tools and techniques for understanding the patterns of thinking and behaviour that we all run unconsciously. These patterns are embedded from a very early age and are built from what we hear, see, feel and experience as a child and the belief system we have built around that and what we believe to be true in our worlds. It also provides processes for identifying and changing those patterns when they don’t serve us and when they produce negative behaviours as a result that slow us down in performance and thinking; when they limit us and show up as unhelpful in our lives. You may have heard the term ‘self-limiting beliefs’ This means anything we think that tells us we ‘can’t’ or we are ‘bad’ at something or limit our thinking around what we can achieve in that area. We are all different, we think differently, we have different sets of values and beliefs, we interpret differently, we make meaning differently. We ‘map’ experience differently. The client’s ‘map’ of the world is always the starting point. Steve Payne, Coach, Master NLP Trainer, Founder of The Academy of Coaching and Training, International Executive Coach, Keynote Speaker, Co-author of My 31 Practices. taoct.uk steve.payne@taoct.uk

HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT WE KNOW? NLP offers a simple yet powerful model of our Epistemology, that is, an understanding of how we know what we know. It explains how we create our maps (interpretations) of our world and experiences through our unique filters (the 5 senses) and that gives us clues as to where we might be making things more complex than necessary, thus creating barriers to success. NLP also offers processes to ethically change our filters, to be able to really see things differently, gain a fresh perspective thus creating greater choice and freedom and changing our maps. Imagine the power of being able to think differently about something that was holding you back or had always caused you angst. If you change your map and way of thinking, you change your behaviour as a result

HOW DOES IT ADD VALUE TO THE WORK OF COACHES? • Develop greater awareness. ‘Awareness is the mother of all skill sets’. Sometimes all a client needs is greater awareness. When we become

aware of something, we tend to selfcorrect. For example, if you become aware you are unintentionally shouting in a public place, you will automatically lower your voice. NLP has many tools to deepen awareness. • Understand what is most important to them. This is essential for good decision-making. • Align thoughts, words and action. Alignment and congruence are essential for success. • Gain a 360-degree perspective on challenges they face. This creates options and can change limiting beliefs. • See things from other people’s perspectives, creating stronger understanding; essential for conflict resolution, negotiation, managing others and building relationships. • Re-discover or connect with the source of their motivation to create action. • Change limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs, essential for faster progress. • Understand how language impacts behaviour and how behaviour impacts language. This makes a client more solution-focused and avoids ‘negative’ thinking. It changes focus from ‘why can’t I’? to ‘how can I’? • Overcome debilitating self-doubt and ‘imposter syndrome’ to clear the space for growth. • Exercise choice over their mindset and state. State being how we are in any given moment. Anxious, nervous, worried, confident, focused, excited, solution-focused. • All performance is state-related. When a client can manage their own state, they will see better results. ENHANCING COACHING I’ve spent 30-years working in the field of communication and change, as a professional actor, entrepreneur, author, coach and motivational keynote speaker. As well as designing and running Association for Coaching accredited training courses, I sit on the Training and Accreditation Panel for the Association for NLP (ANLP) which offers numerous opportunities to witness the immense benefits of NLP in people’s lives. Over many years, I have not found anything as powerful as NLP that brings together such an effective set of communication skills and processes for powerful and rapid change. The Association for Coaching Accredited Certificate in Coach Training (ACCT) course is unique as it includes an ANLP accredited NLP Diploma certification as part of it. Find out more here. ‘Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change’ - Wayne Dyer ‘What I am aware of I can control, what I am unaware of controls me’ - Sir John Whitmore