FAST COACHING: The Complete Guide to NEW CODE Continue & Begin

Why Old/Classic Code Continue & Begin Fast Coaching is impoverished

A primary measure of impact must be the implementation of committed actions over a sustained period, until the actions have become ‘habit-ual’ for the individual coachee or group of coachees. Too often, follow-up enquiries on Continue & Begin implementation reveal that coachees, whether individually or collectively as part of an organisation or client group, have either:

1. Partially or completely failed to implement their avowed ‘action intent’
2. Have applied energy in implementation of actions for a limited period of time before reverting to previously embedded behaviours and practices
3. Behaved in a manner suggesting token application

In essence, the Zalucki rallying cry of “Commitment is doing the thing you said you would do, long after the mood you have said it in has left you”, has not been lived up to.

So what are the reasons for these limiting factors?

Limited recognition of surface structure restrictions

Experience as a therapist and counsellor has heightened my competence in recognising and questioning a coachee’s surface structure utterances. I intuitively use questioning techniques during the fast coaching process to explore the coachee’s deep structure vocabulary options and thereby gain a closer understanding of true meaning, experience or hallucination in the coachee’s mind.

In Continue & Begin training days and conference events I may (dependent on audience) include a brief explanation of surface structure, deep structure and meaning, experience, hallucination.

To date, this has not be an explicitly described component in Old Code.

Limited knowledge sharing of basic principles of Transformational Grammar

As above, understanding of restrictions in meaning accuracy caused by deletion, distortion and generalisation in communication are implicit in my personal coaching style and delivery of Continue & Begin training days and conference events.

Recognition of these restrictions in communication accuracy and what to do about them in the form of clarifying questions, is not part of Old/Classic Code Continue & Begin.

Limited recognition or application of the Emotional Driver&copy as leverage for action

Implicit in the effectiveness of Continue & Begin and in its subset Can’t to Can Belief Busting is the importance of emotional leverage as a motivator for personal change.

New Code highlights the essential requirement to tie back action plan commitments to the coachee’s Emotional Driver. A skilled Continue & Begin coach will ensure the coachee reflects on his/her internal motivator for implementing and making habit-ual the changes identified and committed to in the action plan.

Limited encouragement for Future Orientation in Time

Humans are purposeful or ‘teleological’ in nature, that is, we operate most effectively when we have a clearly defined goal or ambition we wish to achieve. Alfred Adler the psychologist knew about this and described in his work moving from inferiority to completeness. When we consider a future time and place when we have achieved our objective(s) we can hallucinate our experience at that imaginary time, thereby releasing the ‘state’ feelings we associate with that future existence which we currently aspire towards.

Imagination is a powerful and influential motivator for personal action.

This is a pragmatic approach already in use in therapeutic contexts. Hypnotherapists use a method known as Pseudo-Orientation in Time to help patients access an imaginary future existence, beneficial to the client’s well-being.

New Code asks the coachee to imagine a future state and the emotions accessible at that future time. By these means we are able to mobilise the coachee’s resources and get on the path to successful implementation.

Limited emphasis on implementation strategies for Begin To behaviours

Old/Classic Code simply identified what the coachee would Begin To do. There was no mention of a strategy for making it happen. This left some coachees with a vague aspiration which had little if any precision in how it would be achieved. As a result, too many value-adding Begin To ambitions fall by the wayside as individuals struggle with implementation.

New Code asks the coachee to think through how she will make the Begin To happen, using a well proven question known as a Modal Operator of Possibility, a question form already used by Continue & Begin practitioners in the Can’t to Can Belief Busting model.

Impoverishment through ‘Echo Questions’

Although the simplicity of the Old Code model aids replication by practitioners, this creates a tendency to repeat certain questions parrot fashion, in the form of an echo.

Specifically, “What else ( were you pleased with)?” is an important question teasing out a Yes Set of celebratory successes. A strength of Continue & Begin is the ‘mandatory self-celebration’, so effective in preparing the ground in readiness for Begin To aspirations.

Limitations come when the practitioner uses this core question repeatedly, with an exact replication, time and again. “What else? What else? What else? What else? What else?”; it can be interrogatory and perceived as demanding, even aggressive.

It was always my intention to provide for a degree of flexibility of language within the Core Questions to avoid this ‘machine gun’ interrogation. This was not made explicit in Old/Classic Code. Some coaches did not/do not have adequate choice in their vocabulary to achieve this flexibility and as a result stick rigidly with the same pattern.

New Code offers increased elasticity of language within a familiar pattern of Continue & Begin questions. Prompts are offered for practitioners to select from, enabling more variety and options for the coach. Questions are from the same family of enquiry to the Old Code format, yet offer more elegance and a natural style of conversation, without the need for ‘echo’ language.

Review

With these limiting factors in mind, let us now explore some fundamental principles of Old/Classic Code and the expanded horizons offered by a New Code approach.

This Article is Extract from

FAST COACHING
The Complete Guide to NEW CODE Continue & Begin
Drake-Knight, N.
Pollinger, 2016, ISBN 978-1-905665-78-5
Available May 2016

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nick@ndk-group.com

Buy the book! Available May 2016

FAST COACHING
The Complete Guide to NEW CODE Continue & Begin
Drake-Knight, N.
Pollinger, 2016, ISBN 978-1-905665-78-5
www.continueandbegin.com