I would like to run this by anyone who is interested.

As far as I have been able to determine, the ICF (International Coach Federation) employs one simple devise to attract interest.

This is a demonstration of the power of 'coaching'.

Usually, a muhaha Master Coach will ask for a 'volunteer' from the audience. The volunteer presents a life or work issue. Within a matter of minutes, very few, the coach through VERY POWERFUL questions, enables the victim to identify the core issue, devise a solution, and commit to SUCCESS, SUCCESS, SUCCESS.

In early days, I thought this was just a sort of campy way of helping people understand a bit about what may go on in a coaching conversation. But, this technique has never really evolved.

Thinking back, I now wonder if these conversations were not rehearsed, and that the volunteers were plants. I think they were ;-).

(It is probably possible to find one of these demos on Youtube.)

My sense is that this technique conveys that the 'coach' is a powerful healer, a magician of sorts.

Given the amount of work that is involved for real coaching participants in the real world to achieve real and measurable change, the ICF demos are more like revival tent, faith healer stuff, with rounds of applause as the executive is HEALED, praise the lord.

If a coach asks a series of seemingly trivial questions or a series of "stupid" questions to which an audience member -- or all of you answer Yes, Yes, Yes a series of questions to which most people answer "Yes" ---

Errrr ....I suggest reading a little bit about a trance induction method call Yes Set.

If the coach tells weird stories full of incongruities and grammatical violations, or violations of word usage -- get out of there.

No one so incompetent in use of the English language gets hired to be a coach.

If the person speaks good English in ordinary social situations and shifts to using grammatical violations and strange stories -- run away, grab your computer fire up your search engine.

yes set "trance induction" Google search.

[www.google.com]


The Handshake Induction.

If someone shakes your hand and does something weird like running a finger over your palm or some other variation on the handshake and YOU FEEL SHOCKED OR WEIRDED OUT --BEWARE, run like hell and Google Handshake Induction.

Here is how we identified this method as used covertly.

Go here and move to the beginning of the discussion and then read downwards.

I described what I thought was a physical boundary violation in the form of an inappropriate handshake.

[forum.culteducation.com]

Further down on the page, The Anticult "ecxclaimed" Holy Mackerel! and identified covert use of a powerful trance induction method - the Handshake Induction.

[forum.culteducation.com]

Here The Anticult analyses a teaching story and shows how covert trance induction is written right into it.

Quote

whenever you hear someone like Katie constantly telling little weird "Stories", that is generally this brand of hypnotic symbolic persuasion. For those who have been exposed to the technical literature, it just LEAPS out instantly. Its totally blatant.

No different than for someone who knows a little about music, Mozart and Bach can be distinguished in a few seconds, but for a non-musical person...all classical music sounds the same...

the way Katie contructs those sentences shown above, betrays exactly what she is doing. Even though some of the Stories are strange and ambiguous, the sentence construction of double-binds, false-choices, embedded commands, and leading questions is hard evidence. That is being done very technically by the book, and at a very high level of skill,

Full text here:

[forum.culteducation.com]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2018 09:58PM by corboy.

(Anecdote)

People writing ads for a well known utterly infamous cult have used this type of questionnaire. I have seen ads online where you are asked a series of questions to which the vast majority of us usually think "Yes".

I would then Google the telephone number it would take me right citations pointing to that horrible organization.

corboy, thanks for all of this...

For these little evangelist tent healer/coach events, it is more like some random volunteer bounds out of the audience and describes with relative clarity a very actionable personal or professional quandary. The guru coach asks appropriate questions and leads the 'volunteer' to an appropriate 'solution'. Cheers and applause, probably designed-in, too.

Doesn't happen that way in the real world, people are complex, their organizations are complex...sharing information requires a level of trust...

and, even if it does happen that way, knowing what you need to do, and doing what you know you need to do are very different propositions.


You said:

If the coach tells weird stories full of incongruities and grammatical violations, or violations of word usage -- get out of there.

No one so incompetent in use of the English language gets hired to be a coach.

If the person speaks good English in ordinary social situations and shifts to using grammatical violations and strange stories -- run away, grab your computer fire up your search engine.

THIS I HAVE SEEN. I can't speak to grammatical violations, but weird stories, YES, YES, YES, and repeatedly.

Ok, I worked in legal services for 10 years, have most of a law degree from top ten school, was told I could probably pass most U.S. State bar exams. Why I didn't complete law school, or go that route is another story, but I can tell you that I have spent my career surrounded by professional people who are careful in their speech, lawyers, and later psychologists and management science geeks.

And, even when presenting across culture as they do in Asia, these folk are very mindful of their speech. Their speech reflects thought processes, knowledge bases associated with their disciplines.

I can report that I observed the MOST FAMOUS EXECUTIVE COACH on planet earth tell wackadoodle stories for a good 20 minutes as part of a keynote address at a China coaching event. Audience was full of very senior leaders, HR professional, all quite fluent in English, or wearing headphones.

It went something like: "coaching is like church, and we should all go to church, whatever church you like, your Christian church, your Buddhist church -- say, I am a Buddhist, did you know that? Yeh, yeh, yeh, been a Buddhist for years, I love the Buddha...did I tell you that?" On and on and on...

Later in this show came the PRESIDENT OF THE ICF, an INDUSTRIAL PSYCHOLOGIST, who told us: "Coaching is great, everyone should become a coach, my mother is a coach, my sister is a coach, my aunt is a coach, even my cat is a coach!!!"

This line so stunned me that I mentioned it to other coaches, and learned that this party had apparently told this "story" in multiple locations...

Professionals in any field DO NOT SPEAK LIKE THIS.

Oh yeh, thought of another one...

BIG COACHING GUN (PSYCHOLOGIST, WELL PUBLISHED, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE ASTD) -- who delivers turgid presentations on the ROI of coaching, and leavens these with NUTSO stories of her dog, "Coco".

Like the audience is in big data land, ruminating meaningfully, and up pops a a slide about "Coco", and some insane story about "Coco"...

Truly, I welcome speakers sharing personal anecdotes, but these usually have something to do with the content of the presentation.

The last time I saw this esteemed scholar, she leavened yet another training session with a tale of "Coco's death at age 19!!!"..."the most traumatic event" in this scholar's life, and owing to which, she was "committing herself to creating a better world!!!"

I am an animal lover, but WHAT IS THE THING WITH DOG AND CAT STORIES???

THEYwalk among us.

bakkagirl

These "story tellers" are charlatans.

You nailed it.

Prayer position during business coaching?!

In prayer position, we open our boundaries, acknowledge our vulnerability
and suspend our critical thinking(!!)

It is no exaggeration to say that neurologically we strip ourselves naked
to meet our Higher Power when we assume prayer position.

We are thus far more vulnerable to trance induction in such a posture.

Do we disrobe in front of any random stranger? Nope.

Use of stories in trance induction.

Here are a couple of searches of the CEI message board.

These give lists of published posts by The Anticult describing use
of stories in covert trance induction.

[forum.culteducation.com]

A different set of search terms giving different search results.

[forum.culteducation.com]

This was a coach training session, though the parties in the room were business coaches.

No instruction to assume prayer position from the trainer, but just imagine a circle of people who looked like they were 'saying grace' before supper, hands locked, elbows on the table. They just DID this.

Thanks for the story telling links. I would like to know more about this practice, so I can spot and avoid it.

This party did do a sort of guided imagery exercise that made no sense to me in terms of the training. This involved participants using a small box of items, a cloth, trinkets, small figures to model a relationship dynamic we wished to change. This was a good way to get people talking about personal things.

I think absolutely none of this belongs in coach training courses.

corboy, have been thinking about your ascription of "charlatanism" to the parties described.

I had thought for a longtime that the field of coaching was immature, that practitioners existed on a spectrum from the shoddy, or not very well trained to bona fides experts, pioneers in the field. I expected the experts to act a leaders and guardians, in a sense, if only to protect the integrity of the field and their skin in the game.

This I have not seen.

As I said before, professional disciplines usually codify over time, and buyers also become more discerning.

This I have not seen.

Clarity around practice definitions has been fuzzed, and if I may quote one of the story tellers, "Coaching has come to mean many things to many people."

Have other fields, professions "come to mean many things to many people"?

Do you ask your dentist, "What does dentistry mean to you?"

The charlatans who vet coaches typically begin with, "Tell me about your coaching journey." It is very specific, and I think, 'coded' language.

Again, would you ask your lawyer, "Tell me about your legal journey"?

If you are attempting to professionalize a field, you do not use language like that, IMHO.

b