Morpheus Coaching

The NLP work of Robert Dilts has, and continues to be a major influence in my life. I will soon be studying under him as I complete my NLP Master Practitioner qualification and am looking forward to the experience on a number of levels. The thing I have taken on most of all is the concept of Neurological Levels,; readers of my blog will have seen previous postings on the subject.

There are six levels: Environment, Behaviours, Capability, Beliefs and Values, Identity, and Beyond Identity (life purpose, spirituality etc)

Dilts asserts, and my experience strongly concurs, that you cannot solve a problem at the same neurological level as the problem itself.

I had a coachee who despite having sufficient knowledge and skill to make an effective presentation was unable to do so on each of a large number of attempts. He attempted to resolve this by attending (my) presentation skills course; this was his third such course. Again, despite the refresher training and practice sessions within the course he was unable to convert this into an effective performance and was strongly believing that he couldn’t present.

What was happening was that he was attempting to solve a problem that was at the capability level by increasing his capability. This strategy was failing him and there was a knock-on effect in failure at the behaviour level which he in turn encoded as he – his identity – being a failure.

 Our coaching relationship was centred around changing his behaviour, strengthening his belief in his ability and success in getting information across and from then onwards his capability started to show through in his behaviour.

One final obstacle to get over was that he became comfortable enough to present to people of a level equal or junior to him, not his peers or those senior; this time it was the environment and his beliefs that were obscuring his perception, yet he still insisted he didn’t have the capability!

I really rate this concept and use it more and more as my ability grows.