David Seah has a hilarious post over at his blog, ‘Thinking Negative’ that’s giving me some ideas on how to write my future posts:
“No no no, that’s not how it works.” the ghost said impatiently. “If you’d had any real talent, it would have manifested itself—at the latest—by your 21st birthday. Too bad you didn’t do more work in high school and college…that might have made up for your dearth of talent, and you could have gone to a really good grad school. Then you might have had a shot. But no…I want to find my passion…” The ghost minced around in a circle, hands waving in mock panic. “I need to know my purpose in life! I’m a maverick! I’m a lone wolf!”
Funny! And there’s a reason David starts to feel better after being ribbed by his Ghost of Talentlessness. Intentionally or not, he used a technique often employed in coaching. You take a limiting statement by the client and take it to its extreme logical limit;
Client: Aw shucks, I’ll never meet anyone I like.
Coach: Wow, you’re going to hate every single person you meet until you die?
instead of meeting the belief at its limiting level, you stretch it logically until it becomes so ridiculous its logic fails (for the NLPers, ‘threshold blowout’), and the belief gets weakened or even thrashed, with good humour too!
Before you go ‘Whee! Another useful tip to play with’, what do you need first to use this with your friends, family, clients, or tall, beautiful strangers? That’s right, rapport.
Only someone who trusts that you’re being ludicrous to help them feel better and not to belittle or insult them will let you get away with this. Remember, it’s only a joke when someone else also finds it funny!
What is this animal called rapport exactly? That’s another topic in itself, and there are some common misunderstandings about it that I’ll write about in my next post.
P.S. Interested to find out more about the unconscious structure of creating effective threshold blowouts using humour and rapport? Short of being coached by us, the book Provocative Therapy is where I first learnt what it was I was doing without knowing about it, and how to do it even more elegantly.
December 14th, 2005 at 2:21 am
Thanks Alvin! Glad you liked the post…it was something different I was trying. It’s cool to know that this is an actual technique in life coaching. I was just in a bad mood and I’ve learned in the past that sometimes the way out of it is to really run with it and see what happens.
The thought that came afterwards was, “hey, this is like the ridiculus! spell in Harry Potter IV”
December 14th, 2005 at 2:22 am
Ah… the provocative approach. We run into danger here if we fail to impress upon the reader of the importance of a few things:
The paramount RAPPORT, the use of HUMOUR, being very FLEXIBLE, giving CLOSURE and rounding up LEARNING.
Farelly and Brandsma (if I remember the authors’ names correctly)is an interesting read for me because of the stance that I sometimes take in coaching.
I’ll like to add that provocative doesn’t necessary means to anger or ridicule. Just like a challenge doesn’t have to be in-your-face, provocative approach requires the practitioner to get the subject to level limitations out by hopping into another frame of behaviour to “realistically defend” himself. In realising that the shift has expanded perspective due to a Threshold Blowout or Forced Realignment or Paradoxical Cushioning or Treating Nonsense with Nonsense (need to give more examples?), the knock-on effect will be that the subject will more often than not find his limiting belief or behaviour pervasive in other areas of his life and start to shift in more than one aspect of it.
It’s important that when you work with someone with this approach, remember to focus on the behaviour and not resort to name-calling especially if you are not trained to give a person the closure she needs.
More on the Provocative Approach to Coaching soon.
December 14th, 2005 at 11:15 am
Hi Dave!
Haha yes it is just like the ridiculus spell in Harry Potter. I always thought it was a nice idea, to counter horrors through positivity metaphorically.
Not to blow my own horn but someone else’s, but Pete is excellent at the Provocative Approach to Coaching, and I agree with every point he makes in his comment.
Actually Pete, I have to confess…I wrote this post partly to provoke you to write more about your unique methods of provoking ;P Looking forward to your thoughts!