You know those moments when a client does something really annoying and you have to bite your tongue to stop yourself doing something unprofessional? Well wouldn't you like to do something much, much more satisfying than firing you patience anchor?
I notice a tendency in the helping professions for people to get quite earnest. Helpers are drawn to help because of their compassion, their capacity for empathy - those qualities are vital for good listeners.
At the same time they cary with them the capacity for a kind of earnestness and heaviness and, in extreme cases, a martyrdness.
At the end of the 1980's I was once asked to leave a seal sanctuary in Scotland where I was working as a volunteer. I think the main reason reason was because I refused be sucked into the general atmosphere of worthy suffering. During the short time I was there I remained well fed, rosy cheeked and cheerful. I hadn't discovered NLP yet so I didn't realise the importance of pacing. Of course the long hair, beard and tendency to wave a wooden Taiji alongside the road in a conservative area, may also have had something to do with their decision to let me go. That is another story and its not like I caused any car accidents or anything!
Recently I met a man who teaches a very different way of listening and working with people than the earnest and sincere and genuine and empathetic and concerned and respectful and.... way. His name is Frank Farrelly and in the early 1970's he wrote a book called Provocative Therapy. Richard Bandler spent a few days with him after the conception of NLP. Bandler still uses many of Frank's mannerisms, ways of delivery and stories. Frank is not news to NLP, but he has been and still is a rich resource of skill for us. He deserves plenty of acknowledgement for that.
Frank works by teasing his clients, relentlessly. From the moment he meets them - often before they open their mouths', until he leaves them. He is extremely skilled, highly effective, ridiculously funny and not very earnest at all.
Frank was a student of Carl Rogers, founder of Client Centred Therapy, who has had a great influence on therapy. However rude and offensive Frank is to the people he interviews - you also have a sense that everything he does is also connected to deep sense of compassion for the client, not to mention the client's family, friends and workmates. He has a wonderful balance of strength, humour and caring.
I promised something practical, not just the ramblings of a new Farrelly fan. Frank's work has a lot of parrallels to NLP and Milton Erickson's work. One of them is that it's useful to be flexible - more flexible than the client. If you as a coach are stuck behaving in an earnest and respectful way - while your client is not - then your client has the upper hand in flexibilty and may well begin to control the interaction. So being able to outrageously tease someone is a pretty useful way widen flexibility. Its also fun!
If I was to condense a Provocative Therapy session to a 7 step technique, easy to pick up for NLPers, then I would do it this way:
1. Get in state - up beat, up time, intuitive. You're not there to help the client, the client is perfectly capable of helping themselves. You're just there to tease them until they do.
2. Get into strong non-verbal rapport with the client.
3. Exaggerate the clients issues. Mimic / caricature their voice tone, posture and delivery. Take their map of the world and distort it in ridiculous ways. Give them plenty of reasons not to change. Play with the positive intentions of unwanted behaviours and give them ridiculous solutions to the problems. Be bizarre, ambiguous, confusing.
4. Notice where the client get's uncomfortable - and go there.
5. Notice what irritates you about the client - and dig into that too.
6. Maintain the rapport.
7. Debrief - and stay ready to tease.
This doesn't do anything like justice to Frank's skill and richness, but it does give a foot in the door for people who want to have fun and create change through teasing.
Most of us do something like this with friends, and siblings already. Add in attention to rapport, the idea of positive intention, an awareness of meta model patterns, the use of Milton Model confusion, and you have some amped up teasing that can really change lives for the better.
So are you ready to have some fun with your clients?
