Coaching with NLP For Dummies®

What Resources Have You Got that Can Support You?

NLP coaches assume that their clients are resourceful and adopt the presupposition: ‘You have all the resources you need to achieve your desired outcome.’ This belief empowers clients at times when they're struggling and thinking that the answer is out there, or that somebody else can tell them what to do. In fact, they already know what to do, deep down within themselves; they've just forgotten it in the moment.

Like interference, resources come from different places:

• Internal resources include personal beliefs, memories, values and energy.
• External resources include people, sponsors and mentors, possessions and money.

In NLP coaching, you draw on someone's previous experiences, often called personal history, to find internal and external resources that support the client in moving forward. The SCORE model, which I cover in Chapter 5, is an effective tool to identify resources.

When coaching clients through situations that test their confidence, I invite them to access times in completely different contexts when they were confident. I once coached a young woman whose pre-wedding nerves threatened to spoil the build up to her wedding. She was concerned about the behaviour of the young bridesmaids who were likely to become distracted in the excitement of the occasion. She also wanted to make a speech at the top table in a relaxed ...