How to Coach Yourself and Others Popular Models for Coaching | Page 155

For example:
John is a successful executive to an important financial
company. However, he lacks confidence in his typing ability due
to situations that have occurred in the past. For example, when
he was in high school he completed a typing course in which he
failed. In his first job as an administrative assistant he was
always in trouble for taking too long to complete projects and he
thought this was due to his typing “inability”. Now that he has
his own administrative assistant he gets him to type everything
for him but is finding that other tasks are not completed due to
this problem.
John’s dominant story of not being able to type has been
reinforced by past incidences of being told he can’t type and
failing a typing course. He now reinforces this issue by getting
someone else to do the typing for him. Although John’s story is
quite basic, you can see how this dominant story affects his
present and will also keep affecting his future.
Externalising Language
Externalising language is used in coaching to separate the
problem from the person. For example, a person may say “I am a
sad person”. This implies that the person has a sad quality or
characteristic of sadness rather than it just being something that
affects the person from time to time.
Coaches working from a narrative perspective are attuned to
the language they use to represent an issue or problem in their
coachees’ lives. They assume that the issue or problem is
“having an effect on the person” rather than the issue or
problem being an intrinsic part of who the person is.
Rather than saying “you are lacking in motivation”, a coach
working from a narrative perspective may ask “when did
motivation leave you?” OR rather than say, “you are stressed”
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