Your Essential NLP Coaching Model for Real Changes

Coaching Models gives you a clear and practical way to help someone move from where they are now to where they want to be. It focuses on clarifying the outcome, understanding the current situation, identifying resources, testing actions and learning from feedback. It’s simple, structured and designed to create real, lasting change.

NLP Coaching Models

Note: Please read this page in conjunction with our NLP Presuppositions and Other Useful Principles,

Where to start?

• Set a direction (or directions) that helps us and others. A great starting point is to go for 1) financial freedom, 2) excellent health, 3) meaningful work, 5) great relationships, and 6) Continuous learning.
• Mindset and principles.
• We should invest our time and energy, and focus wisely each day. Set three outcomes (small steps forward) every day and every week.
• Embrace the current reality and active learning. Actively seek feedback and Feed-forward. Take part in activities such as 1) Daily questions, 2) After-action reviews, 3) Journaling, 4) Meditation, 5) Setting and monitoring the suitable KPIS
• Explore what leads to our individual happiness and fulfilment,

Almost all success models start with a direction and purpose. Two principles are: 1) Do they motivate us to take the right action daily? 2) Will we be happy (choose your word ) when we get there? In some measurement systems, two crucial elements are connecting with our senses (and not getting lost in our mental maps) and asking for feedback and feed-forward.

A further essential question is how we invest our time, energy, and focus daily. Small daily steps in the right direction can build vast amounts of compound interest over time. Mistakes are vital to helping us learn.

It’s also worth remembering that our genes, upbringing, and environment hugely influence us. The space between these is where our spirit, soul, identity, and purpose are forged. This may start small, but may lead to genuine mastery.

What else is essential? Internally – beliefs, state, values and health; externally – our stakeholders, community and environment; what links the two – action, skills and capabilities.

Two additional resources, Marshall Goldsmith’s The Earned Life (feedback and feed-forward what’s essential for long-term success) and Brad Blanton’s Radical Honesty (mental maps and not buying into our own bullshit), and our favourite NLP book, Richard Bandler’s The Ultimate Introduction to NLP. 

Where to start? (What leads to happiness and fulfilment?)

1. Take responsibility for our experiences and lead our journey. (It’s empowering to take responsibility for both the impact we have on others and the impact others have on us),
2. Develop a sense of control (see daily routines), develop an empowering set of values (see values), and a community to which we can contribute and be supported in return.
3. Understand the concept of mental maps. We create much of our own experience. (Remember, we all have blind spots, cognitive blocks, lifetraps and egos)
4. Respect (but not necessarily agree with) our own and others’ maps
5. Connect to our dreams and desires. We can turn this into our purpose (something for us and something bigger than us, direction, and milestones
6. Connect to our sensory experience, what we see, feel, hear, smell, and taste.
7. Connect, lead and ride our emotional states. Functional emotional states include curiosity, playfulness, courage, discipline, openness/honesty and appreciation.
8. Take action (Some will put this as no. 1 – everything is theoretical until we test it on the outside world)
9. Develop our belief system. For example, most successful business people believe 1) they were successful, 2) they are successful, and 3) they choose success. and 4) they will be successful
10. Understand our values, value criteria and our value hierarchy
11. Develop a plan that takes us from our direction and purpose to how we use our time, energy and focus daily to measure progress and continually seek ideas for improvement. Feed-forward, daily questions, journaling, modelling and after-action reviews can be really useful.
12. Develop a series of daily routines to keep us on track. This may include exercise, meditation, drinking water, daily questions or journaling, and sleep hygiene.
13. Remember to look after yourself and enjoy the journey.

Mental maps: Understanding the concept of mental maps. How we perceive the world is simply that, how we perceive it – it’s not the world itself. And the universe doesn’t really care how we perceive it; it will always do what it wants. One of our first responsibilities is to explore our maps and continually improve their accuracy. We’ll start to get much better results when we do. Our second responsibility is to respect and understand others’ maps and realise they have as much right to their maps as we do to ours. That doesn’t mean that we have to agree with them; growth often comes from exploring the difference.

The next step is establishing and connecting with our dreams; exploring and clarifying our direction, vision, purpose, values, and principles may be a major part of discovering our dreams and turning them into reality.

Another key skill is managing our emotional state. When we can be comfortable and confident in where we are, wherever it is, and appreciate the validity of others’ views. We’re in a very powerful position. When we can add a touch of curiosity, ambition, courage, discipline and openness, we’re in a great position to start and/or continue our journey.

A great way to learn and grow is by setting a direction/outcomes, taking action and reviewing the result. Whether we get what we want isn’t important, it’s simply information – what’s important is that we learn from it, so over time, we get more of what we want.

We’re now set up to enjoy our adventure and life journey,

Before we start, here are some things to reflect on. Pick what works for you!

Top 5 Regrets Of The Dying

(A useful reminder, taken from Bronnie Ware’s book of the same name)

• I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
• I wish I didn’t work so hard.
• I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
• I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends
• I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Models

(We all need coaches, mentors, consultants, accountability partners, etc., because we all have egos and cognitive biases, which will otherwise hinder our progress.)

THE BASICS!

To achieve anything, we need to:

• Know what we want
• Have a plan
• Know how to complete the steps on the plan
• Be motivated
• Take action
• (Review and improve what we’re doing)

In coaching, we need to be aware of the roles of:

• The coach
• The client
• The environment

Two wild cards

• Luck
• Who we are!

DUFF (Our preferred Success System)

• direction, vision, purpose, values, principles  you want to go in (works typically much better than goals)
• use of: time, energy, and attention daily (probably the most important resources we have). Building daily habits and routines.
• Feedback (asking about our performance in the past) and feedforward (asking for suggestions on how to improve in the future).
• follow up (follow-up turns the framework into a system)

Reflections on What Leads to Happiness and Fulfilment

Useful when setting our life direction/end goals: 1) Meaning and purpose 2) Financial, time, and geographical freedom 3) Physical, emotional, and spiritual health 4) Great relationships 5) Work direction (these may be a subset of 1) and/or 2).

Remember to translate direction and purpose into a daily routine. We need a version of goals (Massively Transformative Purpose (MTP), High Hard Goals (HHG’s), Clear Goals (CG’s) – small, daily achievable goals.) and a way to prioritize (3 key 12-month goals, 3 key quarter goals, 3 key week goals, 3 key daily goals).

Another approach we use is learning to cultivate curiosity, amplify it into passion, transform the results into purpose, and then further amplify it with autonomy and mastery.

(Kotler, Steven. The Art of Impossible (p. 29). Harper Wave. Kindle Edition.)

Starting a Coaching Business (Michael’s Current version)

• Ask and answer good questions
• Plan and take action
• Build great relationships
• Continually learn through feedback and feedforward

GROW+

• goals, what you want to achieve
• current reality, where specifically you are now about what you want to achieve
• options, several real options that you could take to move you towards your goal
• way forward, what’s the next small step to move you forward, and
• follow up, follow up turns the framework into a system.

NLP Coaching Model

• beginning frame. How do we set the scene for any interaction?
• state. Our mental/physical condition at that moment.
• outcome. What our client wants to achieve.
• rapport. The quality of communication between our client and us.
• current Situation. What our client is already doing to achieve their outcome and/or to stop them from achieving it.
• technique or task. Actions to achieve an outcome.
• future pace. Mentally rehearsing actions to achieve an outcome.
• end Frame. What do we say at the end of the interaction to support our clients in achieving their outcomes?
• review. Continually improving what we do.

Items 3, 5, 6 and 7 are similar to GROW

Items 1, 2, 4 and 8 increase the effectiveness of the model

DVMOAR (How to achieve almost anything) 

• discovery, investigation, and clarification of what we want,
• vision, purpose, and culture, what will what we won’t look like (plus other senses) when we’ve really achieved it, and what do we and others get from achieving it? Who (what sort of people) do we want to work with to achieve it?
• management (plan), what resources do we need? How will we get them? How will we use them? How do we become effective and efficient?
• output,  we sometimes need a test, fail fast and improve stage to confirm the best action to take. How do we stop procrastinating?
• action,  what action (s) will we take? How will that move us forward?
• review, how and when do we measure how we’re doing? How will we change what we’re doing? How will we know when we’ve achieved our vision? We may then repeat the steps.

Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Coaching (MGSCC)

• discovery, coachability check, leadership assessment, stakeholder input, psychometric (if appropriate), and the leader to choose a maximum of 2 behaviours to improve. Select time frame – normally 6 or 12 months; estimate the benefits and implications of not improving.
• Involve key stakeholders, initial key stakeholder brief,  share improvement areas with key stakeholders, ask each stakeholder for feedback and feedforward one a month in a time efficient process, write down their suggestions with thanks, but do not comment,
• develop a monthly action plan, brief the coach on feedback and feedforward, agree on a simple action plan for the month, rehearse with the coach as necessary, repeat monthly,
• conduct a mini-survey every 3-6 months, complete a confidential mini-survey,  complete after action assessment,
• the final mini-survey, complete final mini-survey and final after-action review celebrate success and thank those involved.

(If the coach contracts on the ‘Pay on Results’ basis, the coach only gets paid if the final confidential mini survey confirms that the leader’s stakeholders have noticed a real improvement in the leader’s capabilities in the areas designated at the programme’s start.)

Marshall Goldsmith (adapted), qualities to be coached (And in many instances to learn):

• Ambition
• Courage
• Discipline
• Honesty

Marshall Goldsmith (adapted). Questions to achieve your direction/milestone

• What do you need to start? (Or have you started but need to do more of it?)
• What do you need to keep doing? (It’s working – keep going)
• What do you commit to? (You know it’s essential, but you’re simply not doing it). This is where it gets interesting!
• What are you going to stop doing? (So you have the time, energy, and focus to do the first three.)

Richard Wiseman’s (scientifically verified) view on what encourages luck

• take action
• always be clear about your direction/what you’re working towards
• always know what you want to achieve
• listen to your gut and intuition
• always take the learning from what appears to be bad luck (it may not be), and let go of the emotion (if not functional)

Ray Dalio’s 5-step process to achieve success

• know your goals/direction
• identify and don’t tolerate your problems
• (we will get big problems when we set an exciting direction – rejoice rather than panic) diagnose your problems to get to the route causes
• design a plan to get around them
• Implement your plan

+ Pain +reflection = progress

+ Don’t let your ego and blind spots get in your way

(and repeat)

See Ray Dalio Successful Principles Video (30 minutes)

Michael’s five keys of leadership

1. Shared Vision and Direction: Creating a clear, inspiring vision that resonates with all stakeholders.
2. High-Performance Culture: Cultivating a company culture prioritises meaning, performance, continual learning, and honesty.
3. Building Your Machine: Establishing efficient processes, assembling the right team, and equipping them with the necessary tools and resources to execute the vision.
4. Effective Communication: Establish clear, honest, and effective communication channels within and with external stakeholders.
5. Continuous Improvement: Regularly review and improve all aspects of the leadership framework to ensure ongoing success.

Who is the Most Powerful Person – From the value of others

• The more powerful person is the one who moves less
• The more powerful a person is, the less committed they are.
• The more powerful person is the one who has more options.
• The more powerful person is the one more willing to sacrifice.
• The more powerful person is the one more willing to transgress.
• The more powerful person is the one who is more tolerant of emotion.
• The more powerful person is the less visible one.
• The more powerful person is the more flexible one.
• The more powerful person is the one who is more knowledgeable about the other.
• The more powerful person is the one who is a better communicator.

Nietzsche/Steven Kotler (The Art of Impossible)

• Find a passion and purpose
• Fortify passion with grit and goals
• Amplify the results with learning and creativity
• Use flow turbo-boost the whole process

Steven Kotler (The Art of Impossible)

• Curiosity, Passion, Purpose
• Autonomy and Mastery
• Massively Transformative Purposes (MTPS), High-Hard Goals (HHTS), and Clear Goals (CGS) are small, daily achievable goals.

Manson, Mark. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

Some examples of good, healthy values are honesty, innovation, vulnerability, standing up for oneself and others, self-respect, curiosity, charity, humility, and creativity.

You’ll notice that good, healthy values are achieved internally. Something like creativity or humility can be experienced right now. You have to orient your mind in a certain way to experience it. These values are immediate and controllable and engage you with the world as it is rather than how you wish it were.

Some examples of wrong, unhealthy values: are dominance through manipulation or violence, indiscriminate fucking, feeling good all the time, always being the centre of attention, not being alone, being liked by everybody,

Wrong values are generally reliant on external events—flying in a private jet, being told you’re right all the time, owning a house in the Bahamas, eating a cannoli while getting blown by three strippers. Bad values, sometimes fun or pleasurable, lie outside your control and require social support.

Values are about prioritization. Everybody would love a good cannoli or a house in the Bahamas. The question is your priorities. What values do you prioritize above everything else, influencing your decision-making more than anything else?

Manson, Mark. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (Mark Manson Collection) (p. 87). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

From Clear Leadership: Sustaining genuine partnership at work by Gervase Bushe

How to communicate our experience (so others can understand our maps better):

• Observation
• Feeling
• Thinking
• Wants

Key skills to do this include: self-awareness, descriptiveness, curiosity and appreciation,

From The School of Life: Eight Rules of Life

ACCEPT IMPERFECTION: We are inherently flawed and broken beings. Perfection is beyond us.

SHARE VULNERABILITY: Recognising that we are each weak, mad, and mistaken should inspire compassion for ourselves and generosity towards others.

KNOW YOUR INSANITY: We cannot be entirely sane, but it is an essential requirement of maturity that we understand how we are insane.

ACCEPT YOUR IDIOCY: Do not run away from the thought that you may be an idiot as if this were a rare and dreadful insight. Accept the certainty with good grace in full daylight. 

YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH: The alternative to perfection isn’t failure; it’s making peace with the idea that we are each ‘good enough’. 

OVERCOME ROMANTICISM: ‘The one’ is a cruel invention. No one is ever wholly ‘right’ nor indeed wholly wrong. 

DESPAIR CHEERFULLY: We are under undue and unfair pressure to smile. But almost nothing will go entirely well: we can expect frustration, misunderstanding, misfortune and rebuffs. 

TRANSCEND YOURSELF: We are not at the centre of anything, thankfully. We are minuscule bundles of evanescent matter on a tiny corner of a boundless universe. 

A final point: some of this may sound convincing. But that isn’t enough. We know – in theory – about all of it. And yet in practice, any such ideas have a notoriously weak ability to motivate our actual behaviour and emotions. Our knowledge is both embedded within us and yet is ineffective for us. 

For this reason, we need to go back over things. Once a day, certainly once a week. A good ‘school’ shouldn’t tell us only things we’ve never heard before; it would be deeply interested in rehearsing all that is theoretically known yet practically forgotten.

Life Stages

This is adapted from Mark Manson

• Mimicking and learning
• Exploring, often outside our comfort zones, and learning
• Prioritising what’s important to us (which may, in turn, include focusing on others),
• Building a Legacy, being useful

Milton Erickson’s (GPT4o made up?) version

• Stage of Innocence and Exploration (Infancy to Early Childhood)
• Stage of Learning and Identity Formation (Childhood to Adolescence)
• Stage of Autonomy and Intimacy (Young Adulthood)
• Stage of Mastery and Contribution (Middle Adulthood)
• Stage of Reflection and Legacy (Late Adulthood)
• Stage of Integration and Adaptation (End of Life)

(Life stages provide two interesting challenges – How we do our best within each stage and transform between them when this often requires a different mindset and overall approach to life. What worked in one life stage may not work in another.)

And a final question, 

How much time and energy do we spend developing a vision and clarifying and connecting with current reality?

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