Coaching with NLP For Dummies®

Chapter 6

Getting Greater Clarity

In This Chapter

• Uncovering blind spots
• Discovering mental maps – and how to read them
• Posing powerful questions
• Developing your listening skills

When your clients arrive for coaching, they bring with them ideas, beliefs and experiences of the world that shape their perceptions of what's possible for them. You too arrive with your own ideas, beliefs and experiences of the world that shape your perception of what is possible for them. Coaching aims to cut through perceptions that limit a person's ability to achieve her full potential.

According to NLP, everyone creates mental maps of the world – that is, people make their own interpretations of how the world operates, and each person has a different map. However, in NLP the map is not the territory. These mental maps, like a map of your local town, are only constructs; they're not the real thing. Indeed, any map – geographical or mental – is an abstraction that leaves out the richness of detail.

People often come to coaching when life feels confusing or overwhelming in some way. Typically, the question they seek to answer centres on: ‘How can life (or an aspect of it) be better for me?’ Coaching tackles clients' blind spots, things that they aren't aware they don't know. Their assumptions come under the spotlight so they can choose to create new and better maps. Clients question whether what ...