WORLD-CLASS COACHING & SELF-ACTUALIZATION PREMISES

Do you have more potential to be unleashed? I bet you do, I bet that everyone you know also has more potential to be unleashed? So, let’s start from that idea.

Suppose we begin from the proposition that all men (and women) are created with a higher nature, a self-actualizing need, that drives them to be all that they can be. If we start with this premise which lies at the heart of Self-Actualizing Psychology, namely, that there is within human beings an inner nature to actualize their highest values and visions so that they produce their best performances, what then follows? If we assume that people everywhere are created with a whole host of potentials within and which clamor to be developed, that all people are made for truth, authenticity, responsibility, and love— then what will be the consequences of this in homes, businesses, organizations, and governments?

If we start from the proposition that human beings are far more than advanced animals, that they have an inexplicable higher nature, that they are motivated by higher level needs that drive them to think about others and to want to give back— then how do we activate these higher qualities in people and bring them out?

How do we enable people to step up to their full potentials? How do we identify and develop what’s higher in people? How do we actualize the best in people and make it real in everyday life?

If the Self-Actualization Psychology tells the untold story of human nature—if there’s good in all people, and the potential for both greatness and transformation, what does this demand of us if we are to find a way to tap into this bright side of our nature?

In Neuro-Semantics, these questions have guided us in how we design our trainings and govern the way we coach and consult. By making our larger frame-of-reference is Self-Actualization Psychology, our primary focus shifts to identifying, developing, and unleashing that which is highest and best in human nature. As we traveled this path we discovered something surprising, namely, that NLP arose from this very focus. We discovered that the people originally modeled by Bandler, Grinder, and Pucelik were the second generation of leaders in the first Human Potential Movement. We discovered that the NLP Presuppositions originally came from Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers and Rollo May and many others of the founders of the psychology of Self-Actualization as the premises of that new psychology.

All of this explains the most distinctive factor that sets apart the Meta-Coaching System. Now it is true that most of the field of Coaching claim to be something other than psychotherapy and

something other than Consulting and Training. Most in the field of Coaching also claim to be based on some form of humanistic, positive, and/or strength-based psychology, none that we know have fully articulated the relationship between Self-Actualization Psychology and Coaching as we have.

When you sign up for the Meta-Coaching System, and especially when you attend Coaching Mastery which is Module III and leads to the ACMC credentials (Associate Certified Meta- Coach), you will experience a coaching based entirely upon Self-Actualization Psychology. As a result, you will learn skills that you can learn nowhere else—how to identify and unleash human potentials.

The most striking conclusion that results from starting from Self-Actualization is the premise that your clients do not need your advice, fixing, or solutions. That’s not what they need and it is not what you do. When you begin from the proposition that your coaching clients are not broken and that they have the internal resources for unleashing all of their potentials— then you coach in a very different way.

How? First you connect with them by listening and supporting so that you create the space whereby they can begin to hear themselves, hear their inner voice. This kind of indepth and intense listening is not natural and no one does it intuitively. You have to learn to do that!

When you learn that quality of listening in the training, you begin learning that your clients are trying to express but cannot. You begin hearing in their stories what’s really blocking them and what really solves those problems. As a professional communicator you realize that more often than not people get lost and confused by a series of pseudo-problems. Sometimes symptoms of the problem. Sometimes misunderstandings. Through intense, indepth listening and probing, you hear the real problems. You see and hear the Matrix in code.

Then, by mirroring-back and facilitating through awareness questions, you enable the person to hear him or herself. Doing is incredibly transformative. And because you imposed nothing, there’s no resistance. You’ve listened–supported in a way that is so unique that they start awakening to their own inner potentials, creativity, authenticity, and responsibility. And when that happens, lives change in incredible ways.

That’s also when you hear something else— the person’s solutions. On the surface, it seems so strange, so paradoxical. Yet just as people don’t seem to be able to discern the real problem, they also don’t see to consciously know the real solution. This occurs even while they are trying different solutions and believing that they finally have the solution. But in the end, no. Yet if only they could hear themselves— really hear themselves— which is what you do. When you do– and present it back to them and help them see how it is the solution, a solution that they have known and yet not known, not realized, not articulated.