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Blog entries by Robbie Steinhouse
One of the parts of the Advanced Coaching training day I especially enjoy is covering a powerful, yet rapid process to help people discover their life purpose. Working as a coach, I have always found it remarkable how such a short yet powerful exercise can have such a dramatic ...
Eric Berne published his book Games People Play the year I was born – 1961. In his book, he tried to clearly define the different types of games that we are prone to playing with each other. This brief video covers the first one he identified: Why Don’t You..? ...
Understanding Archetypes – The Key to Success and Balance. This blog will discuss how innate human energies or archetypes can give an answer to one of life’s most important questions: “What is the secret of finding emotional balance in life?” A Deeper Understanding. For me, the answer to this ...
People behave differently under stress – some are forceful, some withdraw and others try to distract themselves. The idea of ‘boundaries’ has become increasingly used in popular psychology as a way of addressing stressful situations but it can be simplistic, with the message being that all you need to ...
Arguably learning to understand (and manage) your own state is one of the most helpful tools in personal development.You were in such a state, what a state you are in! What a fantastic state of mind. What is State? The OED defines state as “The particular condition that someone ...
Have you ever listened in suprise as someone aggressively tells you they are kind, considerate and approachable? Oftentimes the story that people believe about themselves is not what you as a coach (or friend, colleague, manager etc) will experience The essence of coaching is helping a client move out ...
I try and avoid focusing on negative topics, but this week I want to discuss NLP ‘s reputation – both good and bad. A metaphor I use is one of martial arts. Founders of martial arts schools are often held in a certain reverence by their students. Sadly, some teachers ...
Anxiety is one of the most common problems in modern life – not just worrying about some particular thing, but a general sense of worry that won’t go away. What can you do if you experience it? Here are some suggestions… Acceptance Accept how you feel. Anxiety can ramp ...
This week’s blog is about a life-changing process that I created, called Rescripting. The basic idea behind it is that successful people often have the following belief: “You can be happy and a loser, or you can be successful and stressed; you can’t have happiness and success.” The idea ...
In my previous blog, I talked about what coaching is and how, at a general level, it works. Now I want to be more specific, and look at the relationship between coaching and NLP, an area I have worked in for many years. I believe very strongly that both ...
Coaching is a way of helping people deal with issues that are concerning them . It is also a way of developing people’s skills and abilities, and of boosting performance. It is done in a spirit of curiously and non-judgement and creates a safe supportive environment where people can ...
In the first part of this post, I talked about the ‘lower’ end of the NLP Logical Levels, the light that this concept throws on the question of confidence, and how NLP can help. Now I want to move ‘up’ the levels, to more abstract ones. Remember that the ...
I talked in the last blog about confidence and mindfulness. In the next two blogs, I’d like to go back to my roots in NLP and look at the subject through one of the most powerful conceptual tools in the NLP armoury, the Logical Levels. These were created by Robert Dilts, ...
At first glance, mindfulness and confidence seem to be very different states. Mindfulness is thoughtful, measured and inward-looking, while confidence is breezy, spontaneous and outgoing. How can the former assist the latter? Removing Barriers to confidence One way mindfulness helps is by removing our barriers to confidence. Lack of confidence is ...
NLP can be used everyday in practical situations; at work creating rapport with clients, in personal development by creating healthy relationships, in sales by getting a better understanding of customers issues and showing confidence. There are so many areas of life that can benefit with NLP, Robbie has outlined ...
I watched the big TV election debate that was held last Wednesday with my NLP/ coaching hat on rather than as a voter deciding where to put my cross on June 8. It was an interesting experience. What did I learn? Theresa May and Nicola Sturgeon got that one wrong – ...
I’m not trying to say that you too, could have the charisma of Bill Clinton if you come on our three day NLP course. But I do find it interesting how successful people use, or have used, the skills we teach and reckon that we can all learn from them. Actually, ...
What does this mean? One of the central presuppositions of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) is that ‘the map is not the territory’. The territory is out there, we have the maps in our heads – our internal subjective experience. The maps are all subtly (or not so subtly) different, ...
NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) is a set of tools for personal development, based on a study of how we access, store and express ‘information’. Much of the accessing is done via ‘filters’ that can distort reality, and the same is true for storage: what lessons do we learn and ...
Our Master Practitioner course begins on 1st March. Judith Lowe will be teaching part of the module on modelling, and will also run two optional one day modelling workshops, which will be free for attendees. This will be a great chance to work in small groups with one of ...
New Year is traditionally a time for resolutions. It is also traditional that these don’t last very long. But we shouldn’t short-change ourselves like this. If you made a lunch date with someone, would you show up? Of course. Yet when we make commitments to ourselves, we are often ...
Much of the material we work with as coaches ends up being about human relationships – at work, of course, but also at home. Drama-triangle Dysfunctional relationships eat away at clients’ time and energy.
Belief Change Techniques - Learn how our beliefs held over years often turn out to be wrong. As such, they make our world a smaller place. They are a kind of internal prison that we carry round with us, a self-imposed yoke, a limitation.
Students of NLP will be familiar with Robert Dilts’ ‘Logical Levels’ (also known as the Neurological Levels). I have found this incredibly useful in all sorts of ways – it’s one of those concepts that seems to shed light on almost everything.
Mindfulness can deliver more inner-peace. It is predicated on a slightly bizarre paradox: are we able to notice ourselves thinking, or is that just another kind of thinking?
With our NLPU Certified Master Practitioner (featuring Judith Delozier) starting in six months, This blog will explore some of the topics we will cover, Including Dilt's famous Hero’s Journey coaching process
Our Dilts/Delozier NLP University certified Master Practitioner starts in London next March. It’s still a while away, but the course is so full of good stuff that I’ll be sharing some material from it from time to time in these blogs. I’m also working on my leadership book at ...
The subject of leadership has fascinated me for years. This is partly, of course, because I found myself having to practice it, without any formal training. Once I started my own business I was, whether I wanted it or not, in charge of something, and when I started employing ...
On Nicky Campbell & Clare McDonnell’s Radio 5 Live show on 21 June, I coached Nick, a listener, though his decision-making process. Going back to good decisions I did not focus on content: we didn’t actually talk about the EU at all. What I did was take Nick back ...
That essence of coaching is helping a client move out of a ‘story’ where they may feel angry or victimized. The coach needs to acknowledge the story, yet encourage the client into a space where they become curious of repeated patterns of thoughts and behaviours which make the ‘story’ ...
In this video, Robbie Steinhouse tells how negative beliefs and values are born. The excerpt, taken from day 2 of How to Coach with NLP (next course in London on 15-17 June), shows how a person, as a child, can misinterpret a comment from their parents and turn that into a ...
Ekman (who is best known for his work on facial expressions, a topic I shall blog on more in the future) makes the important distinction between our natural emotional responses (happiness, sadness, anger, disgust etc.) and when our reaction seems as if it has ‘triggered’ something from our past.
Judy was one of the original group who worked with Richard Bandler, John Grinder and Gregory Bateson when she was a student at the University of California Santa Cruz campus, where NLP was created.
There are still a small number of tickets available, so if you’re looking to learn NLP, improve your coaching skills at work, or understand more about improving your own personal situation, I’d love to see you there.
It is useful for people to learn what their strengths are. But it can become all too easy to see people who are different to you as somehow lacking in something rather than offering invaluable,complementary qualities in a collective endeavour.
Having written two books on decision making, I often wonder why this subject gets so little interest. Good decisions are the key to a successful life. So is the avoidance of bad ones, which can destroy lives – stories of which go back far into history: Napoleon’s decision to ...
The Grant Study, a ‘longitudinal’ study (following people over a long period of their lives) carried out at Harvard Medical School, concluded that ‘warmth of relationships throughout life’ is the most powerful force on ‘life satisfaction’.
A classic example is “I could never do that.” As coaches we learn to challenge these, for example by asking, “What would actually happen if you did?”
Three good robust questions about Mindfulness leap to mind. First, what is it? Second, what can it do for me? And third, is it a fad that will soon pass?
In this blog, I want to look at coach training from these three positions, and see what insight this provides.
I use the combination of NLP and TA when I find that a client has had a ‘life-defining moment’ in their childhood.
Dysfunctional relationships eat away at clients’ time and energy. As an executive coach, I find that clients often use the 80 / 20 rule for managing their most challenging staff.
For those who haven’t followed it, the series features John Connor, a child raised by a mother who had the benefit of foresight and prepared him for a coming post-apocalyptic world order, where he would lead and survive, where others would perish.
Often clients come to a coaching session with quite simple, technical ‘presenting’ issues. They want to be more effective managers, to influence senior people or to delegate more effectively.
Two Masters of the Art Our slogan at NLP school is The Art of Change, and I want to write this week about my experience of being coached by two absolute masters of this art. It ties in with our Generative Coaching course, which starts this Saturday, 31st October ...
We are brought up with a belief that the way to succeed at work is to become a specialist. The world’s leading expert on x can always command an audience. We are told that people who know a little about lots of things are dabblers, of limited use to ...
Before I start, I will admit feeling slightly uncomfortable about making this distinction at all. Standard coaching, asking simple questions at the right moment, can make a huge impact on clients. However, sometimes a client is stuck and I believe it is important for the coach to have a ...
Yet their own past experience tells them that if something has created chaos in their lives, it has not been some huge threat they have been worrying about for ages, but something unexpected. As my father used to say, “Always expect something from the left field”. Planning for worst-case ...
Coaching, psychology and philosophy Philosophy has for thousands of years, asked questions. Who are we? What makes us ‘tick’? What, if anything, can be done about the more painful aspects of human nature, and what is our purpose? Early answers to the big questions All cultures seem to have ...
Before we drown in acronyms… NLP and TA will be familiar to regular visitors to this blog (if this is your first visit, they are two powerful personal development tools, Neuro-Linguistic Programming and Transactional Analysis: stay with us, and you’ll learn much more about them). The ICF is the ...
1. Who are you? Robert and Stephen were both around at the birth of NLP as students at University of California Santa Cruz in the mid 70s. Robert went on to help systemize NLP with Richard Bandler and John Grinder, co- writing books which introduced many of the key ...
Modelling is a core NLP technique, whereby you look at people you wish to emulate and ask in precise and often very detailed ways how they do what they do. I was a participant on the course when it was first run in London eleven years ago, then presented ...
In a world where it seems to take people years to achieve mastery in any of these, even to be good enough at them all seems a very tall order. It is, of course – who says leadership is easy? – but the job can be made a lot ...
This week I shall look at the skills behind these tasks in more detail. The capability sets of leadership My model began life in the business world. If you find the tasks a bit ‘business-y’ on first appearance, please bear with me. I have subsequently found that they actually ...
The four leadership qualities Today I want to look at the four qualities along the top, qualities that leaders need to bring to their work in each of the four areas: Thinking Sensing (energy) Feeling Vision Thinking is the world of the intellect, rational and dispassionate. Sensing is perhaps ...
The Leadership Matrix We worked with a model I have developed myself, called the Leadership Matrix (see below). Of course, I ‘stood on the shoulders of giants’ to create it. The idea of archetypes and archetypal energies has deep roots; in ancient Greek philosophy, in storytelling traditions around the ...
“I must start using ‘I’” When they spotted this, they were invited to rephrase the sentence using ‘I’. The effect could be quite startling. There was a sense of newly admitting to the view or the feeling, which they seemed to have dodged by using other forms. The forms ...
It is of particular use with international teams who meet infrequently and may have different cultures and approaches. How is team coaching in business done best? My preferred approach takes the following form: 1. The coach meets with the team leader and identifies the required outcomes and the main issues ...
However, it is also well known that people who repress their feelings totally can begin to behave bizarrely: this is often seen (and tolerated) in the pub or in social encounters outside the office. From the coach’s perspective, when a client has been over-stressed for some considerable time, there ...
It’s certainly worth exploring for such an issue. The great coaching question “If you solved that, what would you get that is even more important than that?” can produce huge insights. But it’s wisest to carry out this search in a cautious, philosophical manner. You may find an answer; ...
The model is particularly useful in testing whether a client has unwittingly trapped themselves in destructive thought patterns. How the Meta Model helps anxiety Clients are often extremely anxious, as if some major disaster is hurtling towards them. The Meta Model is often a great way to reveal the ...
Transactional analysis drivers One useful aspect of this material is TA’s concept of ‘drivers’. These are very powerful, deeply ingrained subconscious motivations that are picked up in early childhood. TA theorists believe there are five of these: ‘Hurry Up’ ‘Please People’ ‘Be Strong’ ‘Be Different’ ‘Be Perfect’ The problem ...
It’s a subject I’m fascinated by – I’ve written two books on the subject – as the reality is much more complex than most ‘experts’ claim. The decision maker is perpetually having to strike a balance between decisiveness and subtlety. Channelling the Scarlet Pimpernel The best metaphor I can ...
In this blog I will outline some practical benefits of mindfulness for coaches and those using a coaching approach at work (with staff, clients etc). What is mindfulness? Let’s start with a definition of mindfulness. It is the practice of being aware of one’s experience in the present moment. ...
Talented people don’t just perform roles; they identify with them: “I am a manager, a leader, an accountant, a designer”. Jobs as identity Their skill, once mastered, stops being simply a competency but transcends to a higher level, that of identity. At this level, the person’s very sense of worth ...
Is being liked an essential part of coaching? No. While this is a natural desire, one of the key principles of becoming an effective coach or manager is letting go of this need. This does not mean the reverse: that one wishes to be dislike – simply that professional ...
Robert is the creator of many processes at the heart of modern NLP, such as the Logical Levels, Hero’s Journey and the Belief Change Cycle. He now runs and leads the teaching at NLP University in Santa Cruz. Stephen worked closely with Milton Erickson, the father of modern hypnotherapy, and ...
A history of happiness Happiness has been a topic of debate since the early philosophers. Aristotle For Aristotle, writing over 2,300 years ago, it was eudaimonia, often translated as flourishing. It meant doing what you do best, doing what your natural talents and nclinations led you towards. Seligman Philosophers ...
I found that many professionals wanted to learn NLP and coaching, but were unable to because of CPD rules. Our accreditation will now open the door to them. This represents a substantial widening of the scope of what is available to professionals. Previously they had to focus on highly ...
I have now finally put these all together – along with more general tools for time/life management – into a course called the Proactive Happiness Process. I will be running it in Central London from 25 February to 1 March. The course is designed to provide a change workshop that ...
“The learning never stop Last week I spent some time with one of the people behind NLP, Stephen Gilligan, a man who worked closely with one of the great founders of the subject, Milton Erickson. You always learn when working with people like this. The reason for our ...
One aspect that particularly concerns people is having to make a decision under pressure, especially when someone is pushing them to say ‘yes’ and to do so right now! It often feels easiest to give in. Doing so is, of course, a decision in itself, though it might not feel ...
We have had: Social workers Police, probation and prison officers People who work with children Drug and alcohol dependency counsellors Delegates from charities working with stroke victims and autistic people Many of these individuals arrive at the courses quite sceptical. They want new, useful tools, but they’ve tried a ...
NLP has a range of techniques to help us find out, and to boost what we find. How to regain self confidence The simplest of these is anchoring, a core NLP practice to summon up resourceful states. It’s based on our simple mammalian ability to link stimuli and responses ...
Modern management is largely about winning people round to your point of view. The old ‘command and control’ model taught on managers training courses is on the wane. An understanding of NLP for project managers will make you a 21st-century leader like Jose Mourinho – a good influencer as ...
CBT has been proven to deliver results, but I believe NLP offers both a tool that is just as good as CBT and a range of other ways of combating anxiety. NLP and anxiety The NLP ‘Metamodel’, the insight that started the whole discipline, is very similar to CBT. ...
But here’s my story. I started out on a journey of personal discovery after finding myself stressed by running a business. This led to my studying NLP. As part of the training, I was given the opportunity to coach people and to be coached myself. It was only after ...
Hypnosis is a part of modern life In my view we spend much of our time in a light state of hypnotic trance, anyway. Some of these are pleasurable, for example when listening to a favourite piece of music or staring out of the window in a moving vehicle. ...
Robert Dilts’ Logical Levels Essentially, these levels are a tool for ‘targeting’ interventions, to help people understand where to make changes to fix a problem. Where is it best addressed? Is it just your environment? A habit you’ve picked up? A life-skill you need to learn? An unhelpful belief ...
To start with, it makes a clear statement that you take the business of developing yourself seriously. It sends out the message that you are a thoughtful person, keen to become better in both your personal and professional life. Many people in HR have studied NLP, and they will ...
Here are some of the criticisms of NLP – and what I’d say in reply: “NLP is a ‘pseudo science’” NLP is sometimes accused of being a ‘pseudo-science’. However, most humanistic approaches to psychology can be, and are, criticized in the same way. But so what? The study of ...
Using Robert Dilts’ model of the Logical Levels, we can look at smoking and the various ways it exerts a hold on the psyche. The levels are: Spirit Identity Beliefs & Values Capability Behaviour Environment At one level, the smoking habit is just that – a habit, a set ...
What light can NLP shed on this? Perhaps the most important light is that of context. Anxiety is a state; we have other states we can choose to be in. This is not to say that we ‘should’ never be anxious: sometimes that’s a helpful response to a situation. ...
One set of ways, of course, has nothing to do with the classroom, but is all about building the general self-esteem we all need to do our jobs better. More specifically, NLP training for teachers also allows us to prepare for individual tasks. When I lecture, I always take ...
With NLP being all about mental programming, it’s not surprising that many golfers turn to the discipline for techniques to improve their performance. In this brief blog I will cover three useful ones that can help you raise your game. #1 – Positive visualisation The first is positive visualization ...
The qualification was started in the 1970s, and is now offered by a wide range of schools. NLP and ‘Kung Fu’ I use a ‘Kung Fu’ metaphor to illustrate this range. Kung Fu was founded by a handful of Masters, who then went to different villages and taught variations ...
But things don’t work that way… The trouble is, things don’t always work out that way. Life has a habit of sticking a spanner in the works, or you wake up one morning and realize you didn’t want that goal at all, but something totally different, or… after a ...
The notion is tied up with deceit, manipulation, seizing control from innocent people and abusing the power. Up to a point, this reputation is deserved. Not because of the old movies – or those grim stage shows where innocent people are made to do embarrassing things – but because ...
Maybe some delegates are dealing with tough personal issues – troubled relationships, difficulties at work, loss of energy or self-belief. Over the year that it takes them to reach Practitioner status, most will make amazing leaps forward – it’s a real joy to see this happen, and one of ...
A quick look at the real world tells us something different. Organisations – and fields of expertise – are pyramid-shaped, with a tiny top and big base. If everyone at the base is trying to get to the top, it ain’t gonna happen, however hard we all try and ...
Naturally, I’m sorry this has come about – though this reputation is in a way a backhanded compliment to NLP, as it does show how well the techniques work. But how fair is it? To begin, it’s worth taking a look at the NLP techniques. Establishing rapport The best-known NLP ...
I feel very sad when I read a fact like this and think of all the suffering and wasted potential that lie behind it. I’d love to be able to say that NLP could be the key to getting over depression. I’d love to charge in on its mighty ...
At NLP School, we run a range of seminars, workshops and events based on NLP, the ‘art of modelling excellence.’ NLP Taster Day Are you curious about NLP? Our NLP Taster Day in Central London is created for people who like a no nonsense approach. Over the course of a working ...
What is NLP? NLP stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming. Our brain and nervous system are programmed by the language we learnt as children. Many of our responses are unconscious or programmed, and NLP can help us to understand which programmes are positive and which are holding us back. Also, ...
But NLP is just one facet (albeit an important one) of a larger movement: life coaching. Let’s take a look at what life coaching is. What is life coaching? Life coaching is an approach that aims to help a client with their problems. One of its key central principles ...
I wanted to combine the idea of ego states (Parent, Adult and Child) from Transactional Analysis into my practitioner course, but was concerned that it wasn’t NLP – the idea of ‘parts’ and that ‘NLP is a model not a theory’ seemed to contradict these more concrete concepts. We ...
There are twelve archetypes in her model, based on the work of Jung: Innocent Orphan Warrior Caregiver Seeker Destroyer Lover Creator Ruler Magician Sage Fool The idea of the model is that human development needs us to pass through all of these stages. The ultimate goal is for each ...
On relationships he explained a model he uses based on four qualities: lifestyle, sexuality, spirituality and psychodynamics. This is a broader explanation than the popular Imago method which focuses primarily on psychodynamics: i.e. we fall in love with someone who has both the positive qualities and negative qualities of ...
People often react badly to criticism and the reasons can be complex, according to therapist Dr Harville Hendrix. 1. The criticism might be true 2. The criticism might actually apply to person doing the criticising 3. The criticism might be a secret wish that they would like to be ...
