“I Know You Don’t Know…”

A pattern which connects Can’t to Can and Continue & Begin Core Questions is the tendency of coachees to respond to initial questions with a classic linguistic forward defensive of “I don’t know”. This manifests itself in communication like this:

“What are you pleased with?”
“Dunno”
Or,
“What would have to happen to make that happen?”
“Dunno”

This initial position is often the outcome of habitual thinking patterns. As the Continue & Begin Fast Coach encourages the coachee to build a Yes Set of Continue To’s or to identify a strategy to get things moving in Can’t to Can, the coachee will commonly establish a negative response mind set as her default setting.

This repeated limitation on productive thinking creates a habit pattern which presents itself in restrictions of possibility. It’s easier for the coachee to accept their staus quo – after all, they are familiar with it! Coachees may ‘wish’ for change, to have some altered reality, and yet for many people their desire to have something (altered reality) greatly exceeds their desire to do something about it. Laziness is common.

When confronted with a ‘Dunno Responder’ a helpful language pattern to unlock potential is to acknowledge the initial Dunno response and then ask them to imagine or pretend a more resourceful state in which to operate. By accessing the ‘pretend’ resourceful state coachees discover a parallel world of possibility.

“I know you don’t know, but (inverse use of But Monster) if you did know, what would say you were pleased with/would have to happen?”

“I know you don’t know” is safe and unthreatening because it’s not asking for real action, just an imaginary resourceful state where positivity becomes more readily accessible. By initiating positive celebration (Continue To’s) or acknowledging possibility (Can’t to Can) we create the stimulus we need to get the Yes Sets going.

So, as a Continue & Begin Fast Coach how are you going to use this new language pattern? What’s that you say? You don’t know! Ok, well I know you don’t know, but if you did know, how would you say you could use it?”