It's not logical but it works

In Western civilisation, with our scientific approach to life, we focus on reason, logic, facts and understanding.  This focus is essential and helpful.  However I often feel that in doing so we miss some of the key ingredients of the process of finding solutions to problems; the need to understand can get in the way of success.

Spock:  I'm unhappy to find I am
happy, its not logical!

Gaining insight is important, and it is useful if it helps your client decide on a new course of action that works better for them.  However, sometimes insight does not help.  Knowing you are an alcoholic is a step forwards, but is not enough to stop the drinking.

Talking through decision making with a group of clients the other day, it was clear that, while all used rational and logical analysis before making a big decision, two key ingredients were missing:

• Whether they feel motivated or still have inner conflict, and 
• Any information about what would actually happen.

While little decisions can be easy, big decisions appeared to require what we call a "leap of faith" and no one in the room really understood what made this happen, or why it happened.  Not having that information did not stop the movement though, or prevent the success or failure of the decision to act.

A lot of clients come in with decisions to be made, and a lot can be done to help by adding rational analysis, to speed up this review.   That can be enough to help.  However it is not always enough, and this suggests to me that all the rationality is doing is helping an inner intuition towards or away from acting.

For many the logic is of little help.  They will present in a confusing mix of information - some emotion, some fact.   

I find it useful to access their intuitive response, and although it is interesting, I find it rarely useful to understand it.  What is useful is that something has shifted and a change takes place; allowing this to remain a mystery lets you get on with the task in hand on not waste time.

A client asked for help to stop smoking.   Using visualisation, she was able to "see an image" of the the two parts of her, one that wanted to smoke, and one that wanted her to stop.   She was then able to "speak to each part" and listen to the response.  During this imagination and light hypnotic work, the images shifted and she began to feel differently.  She responded with emotion to the work she was doing.  She heard the positive intention of the smoker: to feel more alive!  She heard the positive intention of the non-smoker: to live longer!

So feeling alive and living longer where the motivations in conflict, and this intuition work brought them out.

What happened next defies logic.  In the 30 minutes following this work, the tale of how she had started smoking simply poured out of her.  We completed the session using affirmations - layering a series of positive emotions that made her feel fully alive on a pressure point (using the anchoring techniques in NLP).  She left with a trigger for feeling fully alive, enriched with positive memories, that she could use instead of a cigarette.

Neither of us knew what was going to happen during this session.  All we knew was that part of her was motivated enough to say that she wanted help.  I have not told the full story to protect its privacy, but she did not consciously know that the story she was going to "tell" was strongly linked to smoking.  The intuition work - using dynamic pictures, imagination and self-talk, accessed the resources she needed to make the change she wanted.

No amount of saying "smoking will damage your health", while clearly rational, was of any help at all!

Hey! Our relationship isn't a "thing"

"Our relationship just isn't working, I think we need to break up"

Sounds bleak, eh.  This is a sentence I hear a lot from coaching clients.  It can be about colleagues, family or friends.  Such statements often come with very strong emotion, and are presented as absolutes - as one way out only statements.  And yet this is being said to the coach, not to the other party.  It may therefore be being presented for review, and not be as absolute as it sounds.

As coaches, our role is to help clients.  Specifically it is our role to help them look at their choices and help increase the range and quality of the options they have.  So we need a way into such rigidly placed barriers and this post considers a few:

• Nominalisation
• Complex words, and 
• Literal and inferential style contrasts

Nominalisation

This refers to the natural process of making concepts.  For example, words like faith or religion, words like science or research, even words like universe or garden all refer to concepts.  The process is natural and useful in language to take a series of ideas and put a word around them to create a reference point and short cut we can all share.

One of the short-comings of this is that it is often used to describe activities and in so doing to make them a noun rather than a process or verb.  For example, "a partnership" sounds like a thing.  It will even (in business) have a legal document that looks like a thing.  Clearly it is not a thing, you can't touch it or wheel it around in a barrow!  It is a process, a network, a group of people working together for some common goals and in accordance with some shared reference points for decisions.

Where nominalisation can become a problem is that it suggests something that is fixed.  Our "relationship" can be seen as a "thing" that is "not working".  It has somehow become externalised and fixed in its nature.  Things seem fixed.  Fixed means unchangeable.  Seeing things in this way can reduce your sense freedom of action, and practically restrict the choices you make.

What can the coach do?  Just check in on the client's language.  Remind them that a relationship refers to the way they are relating, and that of course, as a verb, this describes a series of open choices.  They can change their choices about how to relate in a near infinite variety of creative ways that may help.

Complex Words

Well there are a few juicy ones in the preceding section: relationship, partnership, colleague, love, science, religion, agreement.

What do they mean? Yep, you're right.  They mean different things to different people depending on a heap of unknowns - context, experience, state of mind etc etc.

Complex words are forms of nominalisation, and for the sake of argument may be taken to refer to higher level concept collections.  Science, for example.  I am not sure it is a misuse of the word to say something like "What has science to tell us about this?" but I am also not sure it really means anything - its felicity is to allow virtually any meaning which pays us all in to the conversation.

It is useful to say "let's start a partnership", "let's start a company", "I would like you to become a director", "let's get married", "you're a great partner", "I love you!"  

All of these generalise the intention and allow the parties to agree.  However the words are not specific.  Partnership for you means working 1800 hours at £300 per hour on client work.  Partnership for me means managing the business and no client work.  Love for you means flowers and candlelit dinners, love for me means sharing all the chores.  

Complex words hide the specifics, they are great for agreement at high level, but difficulties will reside in the detail.  Beware!

As coaches, it is always to helpful to draw to the surface the specifics.  When a client says "Our relationship is just not working" you help them draw out the detail.  "How are you relating?  What is it that you want - specifically?  What does your partner want, specifically?  Do you  know?  Have you checked?  Tell me about the last time you were unhappy about something specific?"

Of course this can work the other way up.

For example, if a particular choice has caused a row, you can often find that the higher intention was shared.  If the higher level intention is the same (e.g. protecting our firm) we can at least see that we our values seem to be the same and respect each other at this level.  It is just the specific choice we need to discuss.

What to suggest to clients?  Well there is no substitute for talking the issues through and turning over the specifics. Often doing that with a third party present (coach, colleague, counsellor) can help keep the confusion level down.  It is only fear and courage that prevent conversation and a bit of help on how this can work, or better ways to approach it, can often overcome the worry that a conversation will develop into the same old row.

Literal or inferential styles
Complex words!  As a final thought for you, it can be worth thinking through this common style difference.   For example if I say "I am thirsty" the literal mind responds "He is thirsty!"  The inferential goes a step further and infers intention - "He wants me to make him a cup of tea!"  Do I?  Are you sure?
If you find yourself becoming irritated about apparent intentions, it is just worth checking if you are inferring these or if they are real.

As I head off for that cuppa I'll leave you to think just how easy it is to get into misunderstandings over some of these fundamental word confusions.   Even my cup of tea is really a process, and the marketing man in me wants you to think about whether what I am about to get out of the experience is the same as you would?  If not - it must be tough for a cuppa to be a noun, eh?   Thinking of the whole process of "tea" from start to finish (thinking about tea, to the washed-up cup) I wonder which part you enjoy the most.   I hope that is creatively confusing for you all.

Nick