What is the goal of coaching?

Thinking creatively, Part 3
Reza Hossein Borr

I defined the goal of coaching as triggering thinking creatively to generate alternatives. I described triggering and thinking from the point of view of coaching when a life coach or an executive coach intends to help another person.

Since the other people come to you when they cannot find the solutions themselves, it is your responsibility as a coach to trigger in them a process of thinking creatively to find a solution. You are not supposed to provide them with a solution although you may suggest solutions and ways of getting out of block using the examples of other people. Examples of other people are usually called story telling and I have written several articles about how to tell a story effectively to create change. Since the intention is to find solutions, the main source of finding a solution is creativity. Those people, who are more creative and know the art of thinking creatively and have the experience and knowledge of creating new ideas and you solutions, can easily and quickly generate dozens of different ideas and process them to find out which one can be the best solutions and alternatives to the present stumbling block.

Remember that there must be a very specific stumbling block that you have to do generate an alternative that can serve your interests better than the present one. Thinking creatively can be easy for those whose left sphere of brain has been more active and more difficult for those whose right sphere of brain is less active. People are usually classified as having a more proactive left brain or right brain. The people with more active right brain have more capacity for creativity; however, they need the necessary training for learning the art of creating solutions. Organising the work of brain and shaping the ideas that it produces is a major task that has to be mastered by everybody in order to stop the random wanderings of the brain which will not bring any tangible idea or product.

NLP offers the coaches with an amazing strategy for becoming creative. The wandering in the open air and looking up at the right side can bring hundreds of new ideas. You can walk leisurely in a park or anywhere else for the purpose of creating ideas. Here your purpose and outcome must be very clear. You must walk to create new solutions. Before beginning to walk, you set an outcome and guide your brain for producing solutions and ideas. Once the goal is set, walk with your head up, looking towards right side without endangering yourself of falling down. Keep a pen and paper and write different ideas that may come to your mind. The looking up and down will change your state and allow radon ideas to come to your mind. This procedure is for when you have already identified the problem and seek a solution. If there is no the possibility of walking in open air then seat or stand in the comfort of your home or office, looking up and at the right in a very relaxed manner and allowing comfortable sensations to move in your body and allow your brain to generate intended outcomes.

When you are dealing face-to-face with other people, off course, you can not walk in a park but you still have the choice of looking up towards the right side to trigger the action in that part of your brain that generates new ideas. This must be done very delicately without disturbing other people.

When you repeat this technique regularly you will be in a position to produce and generate hundreds of solutions and apply them before the problem happens. My philosophy has been always something like that: find the solutions and apply them before the problem happens and if the problems happen, find solutions not only to resolve the problem now but prevents the future problems from happening.

Reza Hossein Borr is an NLP Master Trainer and a leadership consultant and the creator of 150 CDs and 14 Change management models. He is also the author of Manual Success, Manual of Coaching and Mentoring, Motivational Stories that Can Change Your Life, and a New Vision for the Islamic World. He can be contacted by email: sarawani@aol.com www.rezaaa.com