Where are you heading?

Some coaches have reported back that while working in groups some people don’t seem to get the metaphor of a journey. I guess its not going to suit everyone’s issues. However, I think it might be useful to qualify any group by asking up front something along the lines of “Who has a project or a plan where they have a goal they want to achieve, somewhere they want to get to?” Also check to see who hasn’t and you might want to ask them what their issue is and maybe promp them by saying “Is there soemthing you’d like to be different about the situation or yourself?” You can point them towards some description of their desired state being somewhere different to where they are now. Otherwise, what’s the issue?

There is the situation where someone doesn’t have an issue as such in which case you can enhance what is already working for them. If there is nothing they want to change then leave them alone.

Once you have a general agreement that there are goals for each member of the group then you can introduce the idea of the destinations and journey. This does eliminate, or at least highlight the people who will not connect – cos they don’t have a destination in mind. That may also be the issue. They just don’t have a destination or direction. 

Lifeways Coaching Cards for sale on eBay

After a considerable absence from our favourite online marketplace Lifeways Coaching Cards are now back on sale on eBay. Just click on http://www.ebay.co.uk and search for NLP Life Coaching Cards. There is one of the videos from YouTube posted in the listing and you can download a preview copy of the downloadbale manual by checking out my AboutMe page.

Public Information Films

I found these on YouTube and thought they were worth posting -

Lifeways Coaching in Jamacia

Recently recieved an email from Chris Cummins who had been using Lifeways Coaching Cards in the Carribean where they “went down a storm.” He also sent a picture of someone using the cards which I can post once I have permission. It would be great to hear about anyone else using the cards in exotic or unusual locations. In fact I may put together a competition with a prize for the best picture sent in.  Details to follow…

Concepts as Junctions?

In Serious Creativity Edward de Bono makes another use of a roadmap metaphor to explain one of his ideas. In the chapter on Concepts he has a diagram showing various roads leading to different resorts and a junstion where they branch off from the main route.

He writes “You drive to the resort as quickly as you can. You go straight through the road junction without really noticing it as you follow the direct signs to your chosen destination. For some reason you are dissatisfied when you get there – perhaps the place is too crowded. You would consider driving back to the junction and then choosing some other route outof that junction to a different resort.

Concepts are very like road junctions. We pull back to the junction to find another way forward.”

Hmm. I like they way de Bono uses diagrams of little roads in his books and I have mentioned him before in another post, but this one just doesn’t work for me.

To my mind a concept would be the area covered by your map, not a junction within it. Sure, junctions indicate choice points but not every decision can be represented as a junction. Here we are choosing to find a map that covers a different or bigger area. This started me thinking about how to describe Lateral Thinking in terms of the map analogy. One of the ways de Bono describes the concept of Lateral thinking is “You can’t dig a hole in a new place by digging the same hole deeper.” So in map terms I guess that would be “You can’t find out about somewhere else by getting a more detailed map of where you are now.”

Some people have very detailed maps of where they want to be, and where they are now, except they are not on the same map. How would you go about getting your destination, and route to it from where you are now on the same map? What scale would it need to be?

Life Coaching in The Independent

This week The Independent is publishing a series of booklets called The Change Your Life series. I have just listened to the audio CD that comes with the first part. This starts with The Wheel of Life and features best-selling authors reading extracts from books, presenting live and from interviews. They share tips and techiniques on the follwing areas -

Finances. Sir Anthony Jay reads extracts from The Rules of Wealth around determining your attitude to risk and learning the art of negotiating.

Career. In an extract from Living Your Dreams blind explorer Miles Hilton-Barber talks about the lessons that he has learned after losing his sight. They include the plan principle, the importance of having fun and being happy in your work.

Romantic Realtions. Richard Templar reads extract from his book The Rules of Life regarding loving relationships.

Friends and Family. The book The Rules of Life is described as ”providing a roadmap of a hundred rules for a happier and successful life.” With you as the centre of your own universe Richard Templar describes the rules for treating those around you.

Confidence. Michael Heppell author of How to be Brilliant speaking live describes the concept of Circles of Concern and Circles of Influence.

Health and Well-Being. An 20-minute interview with Steve McDermot author of How to be a Complete and Utter Failure in Life, Work and Everything. Steve talks about a simple 3-part formula for creating success, which includes where to look for resources and motivation. How to deal with stress by changing your focus.

Getting Caught up in Traffic

One of the rules that is often instilled in clients is that they must know which direction they are heading. I will make a distinction between direction and destination at this point, as I think you can add that they must know where they are going in relation to their destination.

If you don’t have a direction you are heading, other people will choose it for you. You can end up getting caught up in the traffic of everyday life and end up anywhere. Which may not necessarily be a bad thing, but since we are talking about life coaching then some purpose, or direction, is fundamental for the process to be effective.

Facilitating an Away Day

I have just had some feedback from Howard Rose about using the Metaphors for Coaching map to work with a group of people on a forward planning issue. Here is what he had to say -

Using Lifeways for facilitating an Away Day on future planning in the voluntary sector

The Lifeways cards concept was used to facilitate one of the sessions on an Away Day for a voluntary sector organisation focusing on the preparation of their three year forward plan. The session was built around the custom card provided by Tim Kenning and shown below. This approach was adopted in preference to the original idea of giving each table of six people a set of the Lifeways cards – that was felt to be potentially too time-consuming within the constraints of the day and more difficult to manage with the number of participants involved.

24 participants attended the Away Day – a mix of staff and committee members – divided between four tables. At the start of the session participants were given a brief introduction to metaphor and some examples of the use of the journey metaphor. They were then introduced to the idea of thinking about the forward planning exercise for their organisation in terms of a journey. Each table was given a Lifeways custom card (as above) and an A3 size ‘story board’ summary sheet. They were then invited to create a story for this journey. One group decided to use a sheet of flip chart paper to record its story in the format shown. Each group fed back on its story and further time was then taken to talk about common elements and themes. The time allocated to this session was 45 minutes for groups to create their stories and 45 minutes for feedback and discussion of common areas.

At the end of the day participants were asked to complete evaluation sheets on the various sessions. The ‘Roadmap’ session, as with the other sessions, was evaluated on two criteria – ‘interest’ and ‘usefulness’ – using a scale of 1-6 where 1 represented ‘least’ and 6 represented ‘most’. For this session the average rating on interest was 4.7 (78% rating) and on usefulness 4.4 (74%). Of all 24 participants, 92% rated this session 4 or above on interest and 83% rated it 4 or above on usefulness. Of the few individual comments provided one person said “metaphor didn’t work for me” and another that “metaphor did not easily fit” their organisation. Yet another commented that they “didn’t find symbols entirely useful” and felt that they spent too much time deciding on which symbols applied to their organisation. Participants making positive comments found the session a “particularly useful exercise”, “very useful”, a “very productive way to help people understand processes” (that from a life coach!), an “enjoyable, fun task”, and one which produced a “good team table effort”. In conclusion, it worked for this kind of application. Whilst there may be scope to introduce the metaphor idea more effectively (always scope to improve), perhaps also have to accept that some people just won’t get the metaphor.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

Here is a sign that will be part of the updated set of Trainers Cards. The idea of decision points in NLP has been influenced by how they were represented in computer programming. Decision points are drawn as diamonds, with one entry point and three exits, so this idea got taken over into NLP. If you have two options thats really a dilema, but with three then that is the beginning of having of true choice. So here is a sign to help get across the nature of decision points.  You can keep doing what you are doing, going straight ahead but you are presented with situation where you can decide to do something else, or soemthing is about to take you off track. You can also take the time to get more information by going around again. I believe it is illegal to circle a roundabout more than 3 times, so beware the Procrastination Police if you are getting dizzy.

Road Works for Your Desk

A few posts ago I mentioned that I had seen a little box called The Mini Desk Construction Site. I have now got the box and looked at what it contains. I thought it might provide some interesting additions to coaching with the cards. As yet I’m not that inspired, but here is a photo of what you get. The blue folded paper is a plan of an office and associated works.