COACHING TO UNTIE THE KNOTS OF YOUR CLIENTS’ COGNITIVE FALLACIES

Some cognitions that you have and that your coaching client have are 100 percent pure fallacy. We call these the cognitive fallacies. They are wrong-headed ways of thinking and yet they are so common. They are common because we run to them and develop them to convince ourselves and others, to persuade ourselves and others, to win an argument, to sell our products, and to manipulate to get our way. In the very way that we grow up in our culture, we learn these crooked ways of trying to get our own sweet way. And sometimes they work ... with some people ... for some period of time. Then they backfire.

What role do the cognitive fallacies play in coaching? How do they fit into your coaching practice? Most often, they comprise the false thinking that ties your clients into knots— knots that lock them into limiting beliefs and decisions, knots that work as barriers to learning and creativity, knots that create internal conflicts, and knots that create convoluted relational problems. So, as a Meta-Coach, you need to be able to identify the knots created by the cognitive fallacies and then know how to address the specific fallacies.