new perspectives and strategies that allow them to notice opportunities so they can take concrete steps to move forward. This enables their conscious minds to access creative ideas that are outside their current awareness.
Covered in this chapter
• An engaging ‘hands-on’ process that is client-led
• How to use the physical environment to represent challenges and identify new strategies and actions
• The power of pre-framing to create full engagement from clients
• Dissociating from a challenge to get new viewpoints and solutions
• How to create a completely safe space for clients where there is no fear of failure
INTRODUCTION
Military war games started as games not dissimilar to chess in fifth-century Ancient Greece, and then later in Northern India. These evolved into battlefield simulations during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and later into highly sophisticated military and economic war games across a range of organisations, industries and countries.
Conducting war games in the Napoleonic era, for instance, was a way of determining the best means to prevail given the known circumstances about an enemy location, and then look at possible options and strategies for fighting a battle. It introduced realism into the decision-making process so that when it was time to engage, the strategy which had the greatest chances of success had already been theoretically tried and tested, and could be implemented with confidence. The Physical Metaphor Technique (PMT) is a development of this tool in the context of coaching.
The purpose of the PMT is to facilitate a client to move from a challenge they have, through the use of this visual hands-on approach, to creating different scenarios and strategies, until they reach their outcome.
The PMT is designed to help your client identify new ideas, approaches, strategies and options to seemingly entrenched challenges. This can be achieved by using any immediate space in the environment around a client as a metaphor, and landscape, for the challenges, resources and potential solutions. In this way, it acts as a natural bridge to the client’s creative unconscious resources and solutions, and bypasses the sometimes more rigid limited thinking of the conscious mind. It is a powerful technique that assists the analytical part of the mind to work with much more freedom, whilst at the same time creating opportunities for clients to gain creative insights spontaneously from deeper levels of consciousness. This begins the journey within.
BENEFITS OF THE PHYSICAL METAPHOR TECHNIQUE IN COACHING
The PMT provides a safe space for clients to externalise the challenge, or situation, as a physically represented metaphor. This naturally dissociates the client from the challenge and any emotions attached, so they can witness what is happening more clearly. From this ‘third position,’ or alternative perspective, the client is able to look at the situation, unencumbered by past judgements and emotions. This allows fresh perspectives to come to mind and is more conducive to developing and testing a range of strategies and solutions with a sense of freedom.
Some of the challenges, and more complex areas, this particular intervention can help clients with are:
• Creating new winning strategies to beat the competition
• Identifying new streams of business or products within a highly competitive market
• Scoping out the opportunities and gaps in the market from different perspectives
• Building a successful strategy for the acquisition of another business / company
• Identifying different approaches for shifting the culture / organisational structure to achieve a significant edge over the competition
• Reviewing 360-degree feedback received from selected stakeholders across the organisation and working on the new behaviours required to meet their success criteria in selected areas.
PRE-FRAMING AND THE 7 STEP PROCESS
Pre-framing
‘Framing’ here refers to creating the context, and setting a strong intention: a lens or lenses through which the activities can be experienced. Establishing frames ahead of a coaching session (pre-framing) enables the coach to avoid common misunderstandings so the client interprets what is happening in a specific way, or set of ways. Setting clear frames (of reference) upfront can also make a new activity more clear, purposeful and enjoyable. It is, therefore, a powerful way to help the client to become more motivated and focused on the task in hand.
Pre-frames serve important functions. They:
• Establish rapport
• Create a sense of safety
• Establish credibility for the exercise
• Amplify motivation
• Create agreement to participate.
Gaining agreement from the client, before you start this technique, is essential. This primes your client to be thinking, ‘This could really help me and is worthy of my time and energy.’ They will also want to know that this is a technique they can experiment with in any way they wish, with any challenge they have. There are no right or wrong moves, only different strategies and options.
As you begin, offer some frames of reference upfront (pre-frames) that you feel match your client’s needs, and gain agreement. (Note: examples of words spoken by the coach are in italics for ease of reference.)
Examples of effective pre-frames and follow-up questions include:
Exploration frame
• Today, we are going to focus on you exploring and generating a range of strategies and solutions to your challenge. There will be a variety of these, and there are no right or wrong ones. Your role is to explore these and identify the most appropriate ones to achieve your outcome. OK?
Control frame
• Some people get stuck and don’t realise when their thinking is ‘inside the box.’ Today we are literally going to go ‘outside the box.’ You will be in control every step of the way, and I will just be checking in to make sure you are happy with each step of the process. How does that sound?
Scientist frame
• This process stops the cycle of stressful thinking by moving everything to the ‘outside.’ It stops the challenge in the way it currently is, and allows you scope to experiment with new ways of moving forward. How does having new ways to approach things sound?
Risk-free frame
• If you could explore this challenge in a totally different way that made it easier to identify challenge points and test out new strategies and solutions with zero risks, would that be something you are interested in exploring?
Flexibility frame
• Everything that you try can be changed at any time. You are in total control and all your ideas can be modified or ruled out as you wish. Like a child playing with Lego, you get to create, build and change things in any way you want.
Confidentiality
