THE LANGUAGE FREEZE

Having now covered all of the meta-model distinctions, I invite you to step back to think about language itself and what you are doing when you use the Meta-Model. There you are in your coaching room with a client who wants to improve some facet of his life. He sits in your coaching chair and what he mostly has, as a way to communicate to you, are his words. You ask him questions about what he wants, why something is important, how he thinks about it, etc. He answers the questions by giving you a picture of his life, what’s going on and what he wants to make happen.

To this exchange of words, your client then adds some color by his tone, tempo, gestures, movements, breathing, etc., yet most of what he says portrays life in a linear and static way. That’s how language works. When we use language, we mostly provide a series of snapshots of life. It difficult to describe an ever-moving, ever-changing, ever-in-flux reality with static words. Reality is dynamic and systemic, words are not. That makes it difficult to use words to accurately reflect reality. This is the language freeze.