Introducing Some Different Life Coaching Models

This information was written by David Bonham-Carter, a life coach specialising in patterns of change, stress and anxiety management. Further information is available on:
Life Coach David Bonham-Carter's Life Coaching website

If you are looking for a life coach, deciding what kind of coach is going to be best for you can be a bit bewildering. Life coaches use a range of different theoretical approaches as well as bringing their own individual style to their work. This short article is intended to introduce you to three different life coaching approaches, so that you can get an idea of which you feel might be most helpful for you and your particular situation. When you approach a coach you can then ask them if they use any or all of the models below - or if not, what other models do they use and can they explain how they work to you.

1. The GROW Model of Coaching - Performance Coaching

The GROW model of coaching is frequently taught to trainee coaches at an early stage and provides a useful practical framework for helping people to clarify personal goals, explore options and act on them. It was perhaps most famously set out by John Whitmore in his book "Coaching for Performance" published in 1992. The initials of the acronym GROW stand for:

G oal Setting
R eality checking
O ptions
W hat is to be done, When, by Whom and the Will to do it.

As can be perhaps be guessed from these acronyms, a life coach using the GROW model is likely to start by asking you to set goals both for what you want to get out of the coaching sessions as a whole and for individual sessions. Most coaches will encourage you to set goals which are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Agreed, Realistic and Time-framed). The idea is that this will help you to focus your thoughts and also will enable you to measure whether you achieve what you aim for.

In the "Reality checking" section of the coaching sessions the life coach will assist you to try to assess objectively where you currently are in relation to your goals and how you feel about your current situation. This process of exploration may actually help you to clarify your goals better, as you begin to understand more deeply what is driving you and what your sources of dissatisfaction are.

In the Options stage of the coaching, the idea is not immediately to find a solution, but simply to generate as many possible alternative courses of action as possible. This kind of brainstorming coaching approach is similar in some ways to the person centred approach to counselling advocated by Gerard Egan in the 1970s in his book "The Skilled Helper".

Once you have generated a number of possible options the next stage will be for you to decide which one or ones you want to try out to help you towards your goals. In this final stage you are moving from discussion to decision and action. The coach will aim to assist you in clarifying for yourself:

- What you are going to do
- When you are going to do it - Whether it is likely to help you meet your goals (If not then you may change the intended action)
- What difficulties you might encounter and how you might deal with them
- Who you are going to tell about what you are doing (if anyone) and what support you may try to get to help you in your actions.

Overall the GROW Model provides a helpful practical framework to assist you in setting goals and moving towards them.

2. NLP: Neuro-linguistic Programming

Neuro-linguistic programming is a model which was developed in the 1970s by Richard Bandler and John Grinder at the University of California. They were interested in finding out the features that enable certain successful people to achieve excellence in what they do, in order to produce a system for modelling and duplicating those features. The ideas and techniques that inform NLP consequently came to focus on recreating highly positive states of mind (one of the phrases used for this is "peak states") so that people can have the mindset to maximise their potential. This focus on creating positive mental states is perhaps one of the reasons a number of practitioners of NLP are also interested in or use hypnotism in their work. Perhaps the most well known of these practitioners in the UK is the hypnotist Paul McKenna who has also written a number of well known self help books.

It is not possible in a short article to cover all the aspects of neuro-linguistic programming and different practitioners are likely to focus on different aspects of it. The model may appeal to people who are looking for a whole philosophy around which to focus their efforts to create a positive future, as it has a number of grounding rules or presuppositions which inform the techniques used. Some of those presuppositions include the following NLP metaphors or phrases:

- "The map is not the territory" meaning that your representation of 'reality' and your thoughts are a subjective interpretation.
- "There's no such thing as failure only feedback" - following on from which an NLP practitioner is likely to encourage you to see whatever you might have experienced in the past or might experience in the future as something to learn from
- "We have the resources within us to achieve what we want" - this gives a flavour of the kind of positive thinking which NLP promotes. The potential downside may be that if you do not achieve the goals you set then you may feel in some sense a failure. In line with the previous supposition, if that happens to you then you might remind yourself that not achieving the goals in the time frame you want is not in fact a failure but a source of useful feedback which you can use to help you decide on your next actions....

One of the aspects of NLP which practitioners may encourage you to follow is to visualise and enter into the imaginative experience of being in the future position and mental state that you want to be in, the idea being that the more imaginatively real that positive future becomes for you then the more motivation and commitment you will be able to generate towards doing what you have to in order to achieve it.

One particular technique used by NLP practitioners is what is called "anchoring". "Resource anchoring", for instance, involves being able to put yourself into a particular state of mind just when you need it - something we would all love to do. Say you are nervous about attending a particular meeting, then through the resource anchoring technique the NLP practitioner will seek to help you to develop associations between the experience of the positive state you want to create and chosen "anchors". Anchors are essentially specific sensory experiences of different kinds that you choose, e.g. you might use a phrase such as "confident" (whether saying it out loud or to yourself) or you might touch two fingers together as a "kinaesthetic" anchor. The NLP practitioner will encourage you to develop an association between your chosen anchor and the positive state or experience by practising activating the anchor, e.g. saying the chosen word or touching the two fingers together, and then recreating in your mind the positive state several times. The idea is then that when you get into the situation you are nervous about, such as attending the meeting, you activate the anchor and if your mind has been sufficiently "programmed" this will trigger you automatically to feel in the positive state you want.

From personal experience I can report that NLP can be a very powerful set of techniques to bring positive results.

3. Cognitive Behavioural Coaching

Cognitive behavioural coaching is a model which is particularly effective in helping people who are experiencing stress, anxiety or negative thoughts. In counselling circles the model is sometimes called "Cognitive Behavioural Therapy" or "CBT" and it is commonly recommended as a successful method for helping people suffering from depression or other low mental states.

The cognitive part of this method relates to your thoughts and feelings (your cognitions). The method rests on the view that the thoughts that are going through your head are likely to influence your actions and feelings. It helps you to look at options for you to begin to change your thought patterns if they are causing you problems and also at ways of behaving which will help you to think and feel more constructively.

If you find yourself commonly thinking self critical thoughts or judging yourself (or others) in extreme ways it may well be that you would benefit from cognitive behavioural coaching.

Cognitive behavioural coaching is helpful in helping you to identify if there are particular patterns of thinking that you allow to imbalance your perceptions and create negative feelings. For example you might come to realise that you have a tendency to:

- Mind Reading - e.g. imagining that other people are thinking negative thoughts about you when there is little objective evidence to support that
- Fortune Telling - i.e. imagining gloomy things happening which are not necessarily going to happen. In some cases your anxieties about them may increase the likelihood of them happening as when, for example, you worry about your partner having an affair and allow this to influence your behaviour towards your partner in such a way that they feel attacked or controlled and seek to break free
- All or Nothing Thinking - seeing everything in extreme terms when in fact there may be some positive and some negative aspects or consequences to the situation.

A coach trained in cognitive behavioural techniques will help you to identify these thought patterns and find ways of substituting more realistic and constructive ways of thinking.

One technique that you can use to counter negative thoughts is to make a note of what is going through your mind and then create a balancing statement. Thus for example you might note the following thought and then create a balancing statement such as that listed:

Negative Thought

I arrived 10 minutes late. I am hopeless. I can never get to work on time.

Balancing Statement

On this occasion I arrived 10 minutes late. Punctuality is not my strong point but I am going to work on it to try to improve, by practical measures such as setting my alarm clock 10 minutes earlier in the morning.

In the example given, the balancing statement does not seek to pretend that there is no difficulty or that you are perfect - after all, who is - but it seeks to help you put things in perspective and come up with positive realistic actions to try out to improve your situation.

Negative self critical thoughts quite often contain words such as "never" or "should" which are either extreme or else moralistic in their self condemnation. Balancing statements aim to moderate these elements in a realistic way to help you achieved a more balanced approach to yourself, to others and to life.

One technique that you can use if you do find yourself frequently being self critical is to draw up a list of 'affirmations' - a list of your positive qualities and experiences - and read it through on a daily basis or at times when you are feeling low, to remind yourself of the positive aspects that you may tend to forget. If you are unable to think of positive qualities immediately then you can ask trusted friends what they like about you or think are your positive qualities or achievements and use these as a starting point. This technique can be helpful if you are experiencing low self esteem.

Cognitive behavioural coaching is a practical and very useful model for helping you change your mindset and view situations in a constructive way.

Conclusion

The above models are just three examples of the theoretical frameworks that underpin the work of different life coaches. There are many others which you may find coaches using depending on your particular situation and their professional background - Motivational Interviewing, for example, is a powerful approach for helping people to break out of negative cycles of behaviour or addictions, which can be used to help people make positive changes in their drinking, smoking, eating or other habits.

I hope that you have found the above introductory information useful and of assistance in clarifying for you what sort of coaching approach might be of most benefit to you.