UNPACKING THE DEPTH

If you start from the idea that hidden inside of your client’s statement are much deeper references, then you will more likely to slow the coaching conversation down and do more exploration and more quality exploration. Would you be interested in this? As far as I can tell, most coaches go far, far too fast in their coaching. They need to slow down. The client also goes far too fast. For that reason both of them miss things— critical things.

One of the sources of this idea is Transformational Grammar. Chomsky’s formatting of T.G. was that into surface statements and the deep structure. The “transformations” of grammar occur from one level to the next. He used this to describe how the deep structure of experiential meaning is transferred into the statements that we make— which amount to a surface statement. To get behind it, to get inside it, to get deeper inside is to probe into the experiential meaning. In Neuro-Semantics we call this the framing structure and picture it as “meta” to the surface level statements.