Coaching with NLP For Dummies®

Chapter 10

Shedding Light on Patterns

In This Chapter

• Identifying what makes you tick
• Listening for the vocal messages
• Breaking through blockages
• Making change last longer

Have you noticed how easily you connect with some clients while you struggle to connect with others? A client's language patterns can play a major role in forming connections.

NLP offers insights into the structure of language for clues into how people think and how these thought patterns in turn affect behaviour. The structure of language is the way your clients use language rather than the content of what they're saying.

This chapter helps you become aware of how listening for patterns of communication in your clients' spoken words enhances your skills as a coach. In addition, you find out how to more closely examine the unspoken messages conveyed by the individual characteristics of a voice.

Of course, communication is two-way. The way that you use language and your voice has an effect on your clients just as much as what you notice about theirs. As you read this chapter, ask yourself what lessons you can apply to your own communication style.

Patterns of thinking and behaviour stay entrenched when we work to keep them in place. These entrenched ways of thinking and acting may be from fear of expressing ...