COLLABORATING FOR GREAT IMPACT

Having just completed Module III of Meta-Coaching in Sweden (Coaching Mastery) for the second year in a row, I thought it might be very useful to celebrate and honor the collaborators in Sweden who made this possible. There’s not enough collaboration occurring in the field of NLP and so few role models. So I offer to you the following as some Role Models for Collaboration. May there be many more to follow in their steps!

In 2006 Sara Lee was living in Sydney Australia and took Modules II and II and became a Certified Meta-Coach, then she moved to Sweden. And in Stockholm she was the one and only Meta-Coach in that major city. She didn’t like that. (There were 2 other Meta-Coaches in Sweden but they lived elsewhere— one is Mats Lundberg— who was part of the Team Leaders this year and last year!)

So Sara began talking up Meta-Coaching and lo and behold, in 2008 she influenced Niklas Daver and Helene Nordgren to travel to Colorado — both NLP Trainers— and become Meta-Coaches. And now there were 3. And in Colorado the three of them caught a vision— or created it— or co-invented it: “Why not bring Meta-Coach Training to Sweden.” And so a dream was born and in 2009 they pulled it off — so that now there were 23 Meta-Coaches in Sweden. Then this year, they joined with Carina Juserius (who became a Meta-Coach in 2009) and the 4 of them collaborated to create the module III of Meta-Coaching again this year.

The Coaching Boot Camp of Coaching Mastery is really too much for a single person or even company (although people are doing it). But collaboratively— joining forces and dividing up the work, the influence, the investment, etc., makes it much more doable. So with our four collaborators — we had 2 other Swedes on the Team of Team Leaders who did the benchmarking— Patrik Fordell and Mats Lundberg. And to that we then had a group of Meta- Coaches from last year who revisited— Garik Paltsev, Monica Mohlin, Henrik Schalén.

In this training — as almost always— we had an international group. So we not only had people from Sweden, but from Norway, Holland, Germany, Japan, Canada, USA, France, Kenya, Schweiz (which I think is Switzerland!), and England. This provides the opportunity to work with people from many different backgrounds and cultures which requires that you develop greater flexibility in your approach.

Now in Sweden, we were in the very best meta-room ever— we used the sixth floor of an old building in downtown Stockholm for the coaching sessions and then we went up to the seventh

floor for the large group presentations. This large floor was entirely open and from it — you had a 360 degree view of Stockholm, the River that we were at, and the surrounding city.

A very special treat this time was that Helene talked to the sponsor of Robert Dilts who was in town doing a training and so we entertained Robert Dilts as one of our Expert Coaches. The evening we did that, another 70 people joined us making a very full room. I interviewed Robert or perhaps I should say I gave the “go” signal and Robert took off with stories about NLP and Coaching and his focus in the field of Coaching on presence. The interview was recorded and will eventually be posted on you-tube or made available in some format.

In terms of coaching, knowing what to do, and how to cope when you don’t know what to do, Robert told the story of “The Miracle over the Hudson.” This “miracle” was the story of the US Airways Airbus A320 that took off from LaGuardia airport and struck a flock of birds during the takeoff and which then took out both engines. At that moment, what did "Sully" Sullenberger, the pilot do? Was there a page in the flight manual, “What to do with bird knock out an engine at 3,000 feet?” No. Sullenberger later said that he had practiced for 42 years. Now it was time to trust himself and operate from calmness. “Were you scared?” “Terrified.”

Our second expert coach was Lene Fjellheim from Norway, who was added as a member of the Neuro-Semantic Leadership Team in 2009. Lene runs a highly successfully NLP training center in Norway, has been a Meta-Coach since 2005, she reached PCMC level in January 2010, and is the organizer for Coaching Mastery in February 2011 in Norway. Lene’s strengths is in her group and team coaching, her infectious optimism and persistence, and her business smarts for running a business– and guess what, she too has a business that’s comprised of collaborative partners.

What we need in the field of NLP and Neuro-Semantics is much more collaboration and the creation of collaborative partnerships. So what stops us? Individualism— the need to do things my way, the need for me to get the credit, the need to promote my business and company and approach. Fear of confrontation— the inability to work through differences and conflicts and create a collaborative solution, the fear of being open and forthright, the fear of bringing things up when they are small and manageable. Inadequate communication skills— the inability to be specific about details, to set a mutual vision and use it for keeping the inspiration high, the inability or unwillingness to actively listen and support.

Here’s to the great role model of Collaboration by the Organizers of the Sweden experience of Meta-Coaching!