Congruent Coaching - The Meeting of Minds

Are you taking positive action in pursuit of your continuing success? I’m sure that your acute and highly sensitive awareness has brought the current global need for coaching support sharply into your consciousness. You really don’t have to look far from your position to identify those in need of help. Now is the perfect time for us to be incredibly useful and to support the worldwide population who are struggling to maintain healthy mental states. NLP coaching can provide that much needed assistance, in a highly congruent manner.

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Coaching is the ideal approach for keeping you on the road towards your goals, maintaining your focus on your destination, even though a seemingly insurmountable obstacle has been dropped directly into your planned path. NLP Coach Practitioners can provide the diversionary and much easier route towards the same destination. NLP Coaching avoids the road works and the bumpy paths that shake you up and cause you to become unresourceful with lower-level daily functioning.

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I’d like to present to you the concept of congruent coaching. Thinking of new and interesting theories will keep your own mind fresh and focussed on your key outcomes.

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As excellent NLP Coach Practitioners, Our NLP graduates know that it is important that the coaching approaches we offer provide a strong and completely congruent fit with the flexibility levels of our clients. Everyone responds to change differently and have varying definitions of what change actually means for them. As a quick reminder, to gather information and ensure congruence in our approach to the client we have our UCHANGE™ Model of Coaching, a model unique to Quest for Success Ltd NLP Practitioner Trainings and NLP Values and Meta Programmes as taught at our Enhanced NLP Master Coach Practitioner Certification Trainings. We should also consider the span of variety present in our client’s system. How open or closed is their neurology to change?

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It is your role as a highly effective Coach to be able to recognise how great a level of neuro-plasticity is present in the client at the time of coaching. How flexible are they when it comes to change and how easily, or not, do they shift their thinking when their environmental conditions change? We should also consider how much flexibility is required to meet the solution finding requirements of the problems inherent in new life-conditions. So, can your client flex their thinking enough to change their attitudes and behaviours to create their success when life conditions change, just as they have right now?

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If a client is rigid in their thinking, you will know because they will be unsuccessfully attempting to solve new problems posed by their environment with the old solutions that belong firmly in the old environment.

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To help us to assess where the client’s neurology is positioned in terms of change, we can refer to the Spiral Dynamics® Change Readiness Index. Again, we consider this model in some detail during our Enhanced NLP Master Coach Practitioner Certification Training.

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Let’s unpack the theory a little, bearing in mind that the Spiral Dynamics® theory which circles around Levels of Human Existence is far more involved and at a much higher level of overall complexity.

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The world surrounding you is occupied by a variety of pressures and demands which apply themselves consistently to your neurology and you operate in a particular slice of the world. To cope with the world around you, you go through states of change. These state changes are transitory and you move through them in cycles throughout your life.

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A client may appear before you at any position of their experience of change and to coach them with total congruence, it really helps to know how they are responding to change at the time.

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The Alpha State – Chris Cowan said of Alpha, “People tend to reach an ‘it will do’ spot in life. It’s adequate. It may not be perfect and it will do. Until their conditions get profoundly different so that it won’t ‘do’ any more, then they will change.” Alpha represents equilibrium. The client experiences stability and balance and is in sync with the world. They are functioning effectively and have the ability to cope with their life conditions. They will have had this level of stability for some time, which isn’t necessarily a measure of happiness or contentment. Stability can be quite frustrating when it has outstayed its welcome. Alpha can also look like complacency.

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The Beta State – Here we have uncertainty, a quiet questioning and a realisation that what used to work isn’t working anymore. The balance of life is beginning to shift and your client is working harder for less. In the Beta state it is common for your client to be unable to language their problem adequately. It’s clear that conflict is just below the surface. You client will be doing what we call a ‘regressive search’.  They know something is wrong for reasons unknown and they search for the solutions used to address past problems and do more of the same with negative results. There is a disconnect between the problems and the means of coping leading to cognitive disfunctioning, a nostalgic call to bring something back that worked in the past. (Hmmm, Brexit anyone? Pre-Covid!!)

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The Gamma State – the full-blown chaos of change, the crisis point. The old way is collapsing or has already collapsed. The client has a desire to escape the chaos and they have barriers so great that they are stuck and trapped.  This state will look like stress, depression, frustration, anxiety, anger or a great sadness. The client knows what is wrong and are unable to climb out of it on their own. The good news is that the neurology is re-wiring and the new self is coming on-board, wakening to the next level of thinking.

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The Delta State – The Eureka moment! A surge of energy is experienced as the past no longer controls the future. It feels like a breath-taking ride on the crest of a wave, building up speed for lift off. Delta is the breakthrough position and incorporates rapid change, new, visible options and the awakening of a new level of thinking.

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The New Alpha – Chris Cowan said of New Alpha, “Only when conditions outside and thinking and coping systems inside change together will a permanent shift be likely.” New Alpha is about the client entering into a new, stable state and resisting going back to how things were. The new normal is established and accepted creating a new equilibrium.

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I hope you have enjoyed our whistle stop tour through the cycles of change. Can you visualise where you are right now in terms of your reaction to changing life conditions? What about your coaching clients, where are they? Without this level of knowledge about the client, it is difficult to coach them with complete congruence. Learn more when you attend our Enhanced NLP Coach Practitioner Training and NLP Master Coach Practitioner Certification Training. Let’s coach with real congruence and make a difference.

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