Provocative Coaching E-Book

Jaap Hollander

• Herausgeber: Crown House Publishing
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 379

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

A fresh wind is blowing through the worlds of coaching and psychotherapy! Provocative coaching: a unique new cocktail of humour, warmth and psychological provocation. Coaches and therapists everywhere are throwing off the shackles of humming and nodding! Not only can provocative coaching be highly effective - especially with the so called 'impossible' clients - but it liberates professionals as well as their clients!

Leseprobe

Acknowledgements

Jaap Hollander would like to thank: Dr Anneke Meijer for supporting him in countless ways; Dr Graham Dawes for meticulously editing this book; Frank Farrelly, MSW, for founding Provocative Therapy and teaching him all kinds of things; Dr Jeffrey Wijnberg for being his best friend and developing many provocative interventions together with him; Phil Jeremiah IV, MHSW, for being such a great provocative colleague; Tomek and Ewa Kowalik for hosting the workshop this book is based on; and Dr Lucas Derks for his suggestions to improve the introduction.

Contents

Title PageAcknowledgementsIntroduction1. He told him what he was really thinking2. The provocative starter kit3. I’m really surprised I did all thisBibliographyAbout the authorCopyright

Introduction

Making things better by making them worse

This is a book about Provocative Coaching and Provocative Therapy: challenging people in order to help them. It explains in detail how to do Provocative Coaching and the psychological mechanisms through which the provocative style works. Maybe you are a coach or a therapist? Could this be a useful new instrument for your toolbox? It would be great to chuckle when you are thinking back over your sessions, wouldn’t it? Humour is an important aspect of Provocative Coaching. Also, you may currently have some clients who don’t improve, no matter how hard you try. With Provocative Coaching you might be able to help them too. Some of them at least. Or maybe you are just an interested layperson who wants to learn about people. You might be a teacher or a manager or a consultant. Never mind, you are welcome to participate. At minimum you are in for a few good laughs. About halfway through Chapter 2, there is the following conversation:

Coach(touching client’s shoulder): So, tell me, what’s the problem?

Client: I have become a total monomaniac … I do one thing only. Well, maybe a few other little things, but mostly I do only one thing.

Coach: And we all know what that is, don’t we?

Client(chuckling): You do?

Coach: Yes, but I don’t want to embarrass you with sexual disclosures.

Client(laughing): But the thing is, I have become so good at being a monomaniac, that I can’t do anything else any more. Let me give you an example. I used to be involved in playing classical flute music a lot. But that has totally fallen out of my life …

Coach: Your flute has fallen off! (Laughter from the group, client slaps coach’s knee)

Client: Yeah, you could say that! What you are suggesting, that might be quite true!

Coach: Okay, so you are focusing on one thing only, and all the other things disappear. And what is that one single thing?

Client: Yeah, well, that’s my work … my working life … a lot of different kinds of work, that’s true, so there is some variation …

Coach: Sure, within this monomania (with his hand gestures coach is indicating a small space of about one cubic decimetre), within this tiny space there is some variation … Okay, but why is that a problem? Isn’t it just a matter of enjoying your work? Doing what you like doing most? What’s wrong with that? Forget about all these stupid little things like art, or personal development, or sex, or relationships, or the future of mankind and what have you … Work, that’s what counts! I understand. So why is that a problem? You are focusing on what you are most suited for – work.

Client: No, no, no, you’ve got to see, no … that is one of the things with being a monomaniac, you’re focused so much on one thing … that is the reason why you enjoy that most, and that is precisely the problem! And then …

Coach(interrupting him): But doesn’t that make life a lot simpler?

Client: Yes, no, no, sure (sarcastically), that’s true, it’s very simple. When people come to me with plans that do not relate to my work, you know, I just say no, no, no, I don’t have time for that!

Coach:Right! Good for you! So when people say they want to visit you, you go no, no, no, no!(Coach is making broad defensive movements with his arms)Don’t visit me! I have work to do! Go away. Don’t waste my time!

Client: Yeah … just about.

Coach: But I still don’t see what the problem is. You’re doing what you enjoy doing. You’re doing what feels good to you. Your life is simple. So what’s the problem?

Client: Yeah, no, no … well … yeah, I’m doing my thing …

Coach: And isn’t that what everybody wants? To do their thing?

Client(shading his eyes with his hand, turning inside): No … dammit, the problem is … Okay, so I’m sitting behind my desk, and I’m thinking: I’m going to post a note at the musical conservatory to find a flute student as a musical partner … And then I do write the note, but I never put it up on the board. Because I know the only way to play the flute well is to do it in a monomaniac way, and spend lots and lots of time on it.

Coach: So, in a moment of acute insanity, you let go of this wonderful state of total work obsession. But, lucky for you, you returned to your senses just in time! Common sense won, and you forgot these crazy plans like having a hobby and everything. And isn’t that beautiful? That you have a healthy common sense that protects you from crazy actions like that?

Client(staring into space): You know, the strange thing is, when you say it, it sounds crazy (making a lunatic gesture with his hand). But that’s exactly the kind of reasoning that I do myself, these days!

Coach: And think about the money!

Client: What?

Coach: What kind of work do you do?

Client: I do therapy and I write books.

Coach: Okay, so all these hours you could be writing books or could be seeing clients … You could be making money!

Client: Yeah, exactly, that’s what I’m thinking too … I’m not crazy! It’s a total waste of time!

Coach: You have to be really careful with this, you know. You start with one hobby, but then one thing leads to another. And pretty soon another hobby is added, and another one and another one. And before you know it, you are doing hobbies all the time and you can hardly get any work done any more. At first it’s only playing the flute, but then you go: ‘I want to take up sailing, because that’s what I used to do too. And I should go to the pub more often, and play cards, because that’s what I used to do. And going out to see movies, and going to the theatre, and to restaurants, and theatre festivals, and cross-country trips.’ Before you know it, you are totally absorbed with all these stupid hobbies, and even if you would like to do some work, it’s impossible. Your hobbies have taken over your life like a virus or a fungus or whatever and they have completely destroyed your productivity! You can’t work any more because you have to play the flute, you have to go to the club, you have to go sail your boat … And what is that going to do for your wife and for your children?

Client: What do you mean?

Coach: Your children are depending on you. They are thinking: dad is going to work his ass off for at least another thirty years. And then we will get a great inheritance. He will leave us lots of money! And while you are getting more and more addicted to those horrible hobbies, your children will think: our inheritance is going down the drain! Dammit, there goes another 1,000 euros! Your children are crying when you are playing the flute! (With horror in his voice) ‘My God, he is playing the flute with my money!’ (Client is collapsing with laughter, he can’t speak)

(Coach continues accusingly, pointing with his finger, still enacting the children) ‘And there he is, my own father, throwing away my money with that stupid flute of his! Pissing away my money!’ They see their apartments shrinking, their vacation houses going up in smoke … And how are they going to respond? ‘Hi, son, are you coming home this weekend?’ ‘Well, dad, have you been playing the flute a lot, lately?’ You know what I mean. Your children need you to work more, not less. They are counting on you. So I absolutely advise against any hobbies!

Client: But I will find a way!

What is going on here?

This may seem like quite an unusual way of behaving for a professional coach or therapist. This coach is certainly not exhibiting the customary professional distance. He does not even seem to understand that he should not impose his personal opinions on the client. And why doesn’t he accept the problem the client expresses? If the client experiences something as a problem, then by definition it is a problem, isn’t it? Who could ever know better what the problem is than the client themselves? And what about the golden rule that the client ought to speak at least twice as much as the coach? In this conversation the coach was talking more than the client. There were even a few moments where the coach interrupted the client, also something coaches and therapists are usually taught not to do.

Welcome to Wrocław

Our story starts in Wrocław (pronounced: vroch-whav), a city in the southwest of Poland. There was disastrous fighting in Wrocław during the Second World War, which left much of the city in ruins. Today it has been restored and snow is melting on the sidewalks and the windowsills. Picture a slightly derelict engineering school in a cobblestone street. It has yellowish walls and a section of glass bricks, many of them cracked. In the hallway an old woman in a headscarf takes your coat and gives you a worn copper token. You enter a conference room where about forty coaches and therapists are gathered, chatting quietly amongst themselves.1 Packed tightly in the small room, they have come from all over Poland to learn about Provocative Coaching. A psychologist from Holland, Jaap Hollander, will be teaching a three-day seminar. There is an atmosphere of curiosity and expectation.

Provocative Coaching offers new possibilities

Why are these people attending this seminar? Provocative Coaching offers possibilities that are not found in any ‘traditional’ type of coaching or therapy. Yet, even though it differs greatly from the usual approaches, it harnesses forces that most people will intuitively recognize as powerful. To illustrate this, I would like to invite you to think back to a certain moment in your life history. Specifically, a moment when you had a strong wish to do something, and someone – someone who was important to you – said something like: ‘That will be too difficult for you’. Or maybe this person said: ‘You are too old for that’ or ‘You are too young’. Or they might have used that curious, North-American expression: ‘It just isn’t you!’ Can you remember a moment like that? You had a strong wish to do something and someone important said you couldn’t do it. What was your psychological response? What did you think and feel? Most likely, you were thinking something like: ‘You think I cannot do that? We will see about that! I will show you what I can do!’ And that response resulted in an even greater determination on your part. Provocative work utilizes this type of response.

Provocative Coaching is related to ‘paradoxical intention’ and ‘reverse psychology’. The coach encourages the client to do their problem more rather than less. This is expressed concisely in the provocative adage: ‘Do some more of that, think some more of that, feel some more of that!’ The classical approaches to coaching and therapy convey messages like: ‘I believe in your potential’ and ‘You have a wealth of inner resources’. The provocative coach, however, verbally belittles the client as a person and expresses doubts about the propriety and the feasibility of their goals. And yet it is important to distinguish Provocative Coaching from simple, straightforward confrontation. In Provocative Coaching, these challenges are presented to the client with humour and warmth. Provocative Coaching is a psychological cocktail, consisting of cognitive assault mixed with a substantial quantity of emotional support and a generous dash of laughter. The creation and maintenance of this three-part mixture requires training and practice, hence the seminar reproduced in this book. Once mastered, Provocative Coaching can be surprisingly fast and effective. And, not unimportantly, it can be quite an enjoyable experience for the coach or the therapist. Preliminary research shows that coaches and therapists experience more happiness in their daily lives when they do provocative work. Does this mean that we should abandon our conventional methods? Certainly not. Provocative Coaching is an effective new option, not a replacement for the traditional approaches.

1 The text in this book is taken in most part from the seminar in Wrocław. To this, some demonstrations and questions have been added from other trainings which Jaap Hollander taught in Russia and in his home country Holland. In many places the text has been condensed, expanded or edited for clarity and thoroughness. The resulting text is presented as a single workshop because this format is – in the opinion of the author – livelier and easier to read than a formal text.

Chapter 1

He told him what he was really thinking

From provocative intuition to provocative technique

Jaap: Not everybody is here yet, but it is past 10 o’clock, so what do you say, shall we get started?

Audience: Yes!

Jaap: These days, who knows when people will arrive …

Audience: They’ve had their chance.

Jaap: Right! And we will welcome them when they arrive. It is a great honour to be here in Poland to teach you Provocative Coaching. For the next three days we’ll be working quite intensively. My goal is to help you as best I can to understand Provocative Coaching and to integrate the provocative style into your coaching work.

About twenty-five years ago I met with a colleague who had just come back from the United States. He gave me a couple of audio cassettes. For our younger colleagues, audio cassettes are rectangular plastic boxes that contain a thin ribbon of magnetic tape. We used to put them in what was called a ‘cassette recorder’ and then you could play them like an MP3 file! (Audience laughs) And my colleague said: ‘You have to listen to this! This is something totally new. They call it ProvocativeTherapy.’ Oh? We’d never heard of that before. So we listened to the tape and we were flabbergasted. We were both, Anneke and I – oh, I haven’t introduced Anneke to you yet. Sorry … I forgot. This is Anneke, my beloved wife and co-director of our training institute in Holland (Anneke smiles and waves).

So we listened to the tape, and both being clinical psychologists – and living in the 1980s – we were used to being extremely friendly, positive and supportive towards our clients: ‘You are okay, you are valuable, you are worthwhile, you can achieve your goals, I understand how you feel, I feel what you see’ and so on. Well, these are still useful messages if you want to help someone change. The world would be a better place if people sent out those kinds of messages more often. These days in NLP we call it ‘sponsoring’. It used to be called ‘unconditional positive regard’ in Rogerian psychotherapy: ‘I accept you as you are and I see your potential’.

Anyway, we listened to the tape and this Provocative Therapy was indeed completely different. They were telling the client things like: ‘There’s no way you can achieve this, you’re stupid, you’ll never amount to anything’. Just the opposite of what we were used to. And, the strangest thing, the results were great. Clients changed. How was that possible? We were immediately intrigued. So eventually we invited Frank Farrelly, who is the person who thought up this whole approach, the originator of Provocative Therapy, to come to Holland and teach. This was twenty-three, twenty-four years ago. I remember Frank was teaching for us when our son Florian was born, and he’s twenty-three now. So for the next ten years we had Frank over every year and we were going: ‘This is great! I wish I could do this …’ We did some of it, of course; it wasn’t as if we never tried it out. But it was difficult to spontaneously reproduce what Frank did. Of course there was a structure underneath his work, but that structure was not explicit. That had to do with Frank’s teaching style and with the way he was taught himself. He taught purely by example – ‘teaching by osmosis’ he calls it. He gave demonstrations and we watched in awe. And then he would explain what he had done. And that was it, as far as the didactics were concerned.

But at some point we said: ‘Hey, we are NLP trainers, modelling is our expertise. So let’s model Frank Farrelly.’ In NLP, modelling means making exceptional human skills learnable. You start by identifying the behaviours, the thought processes, the beliefs and the emotional states of somebody who can do something really well. The next step is to put these processes into practice, to see if you can get the same results. If that works, you translate them into techniques that other people can learn. Basically, modelling is a way to make skills transferable. So we were thinking: ‘Let’s model Frank’, and we did this for many years. We developed a coherent system of skills, behaviours and beliefs that can help you learn to do Provocative Coaching much more easily. I phrase that carefully when I say: ‘You can learn it more easily’. I did not say you can learn it without any effort at all. It still takes a good amount of work and experience to get it right.

But now that we have these explicit provocative techniques, you can take a jump-start. It’s a bit like learning to navigate in a new city. If you live in that city for a long time, you will eventually be able to find your way around. That’s like ‘learning by osmosis’, purely by example. But if you have a good map of the streets and a good diagram of the subway, it’s a lot easier. And a friendly guide, of course, which is where I come in … (Audience laughs) … So that’s the idea for these next three days, to actively learn Provocative Coaching using the structures we found in the work of Frank Farrelly and taking some next steps from there.

Okay, we’ll start out with some intervision. Normally, when you are learning something, you first take the course and then you do intervision. But we’ll turn things around today. We will start with the intervision.

Interpreter: What do you mean by intervision?

Jaap: That’s when colleagues sit together and they discuss their clients.

Audience: Supervision.

Jaap: Well, ah … yes and no. Supervision is when I’m the expert and I am teaching you. Intervision is more like discussing work on an equal basis, between colleagues. Dutch people are sticklers for equality. We have a lot of green rhetoric, in spiral dynamics terms. So here is your first intervision case.

I usually know exactly what to do, but with you I haven’t got a clue

Jaap: The client is a manager, a woman, and I’m reviewing her case with you because she had such a nice, classic provocative response. So imagine she calls you to make an appointment. You ask her what she would like to work on. She says her problem is that she feels very, very insecure. Which is actually quite a feat for most managers – the simple admission that they feel insecure. So you are lucky today, the client comes in partly cured already. So her exact statement is: ‘I want to understand why I feel so insecure. I had a bad experience with my last team; at one point they actually took a vote and they voted me out. I was their manager, and they voted me out. They didn’t want to work with me any more. And next month I will get a new team, so I want to know why I feel so insecure. If I understand it, I can do something about it before this new job starts.’ So you might say: ‘Well, isn’t it obvious why you feel insecure? Your own team voted you out. What could make a manager more insecure than that?’ That would be a logical response. But ‘No, no, no, no,’ she says, ‘there must be some deeper reason.’

Okay, this is your new client. What would you do normally? I mean as a coach, what you would do with a client like this? (Audience is silent) You are very thoughtful, you don’t jump to conclusions … (Audience remains silent) All right, most of you seem to be saying: ‘I don’t have a clue.’ It’s quite courageous of you to admit that! (Audience laughs) But that doesn’t count as normal therapy, you know. If you said that to the client, that would be a provocative intervention. You could say: ‘Usually, with any other client, I know exactly what to do. But with you … gee, I haven’t got a clue! With you, I’m drawing a blank.’ You’re doing pretty well as provocative coaches … (Audience laughs)

But let’s talk about normal therapy, normal coaching. What would you do? This is not a rhetorical question, people, what would you do?

Mateusz: First establish the contract, the psychological contract with this woman – that I’m going to ask her questions.

Jaap: So you want to ask her questions. And she says: ‘Sure, no problem. I’ll be happy to answer any questions.’ Of course she would. She has an urgent problem and she needs help. And then? What would your next move be?

Mateusz: Tell me what your goal is.

Jaap: Yes, very good. An NLP coach at work! So she goes: ‘My goal is to understand why I feel so insecure, didn’t I already tell you?’

Mateusz: To feel more secure.

Jaap: ‘Sure, eventually I want to feel more secure.’ But if a person wants to feel more secure, they first have to understand why they are insecure, right?

Mateusz: I disagree.

Jaap: You disagree. Well, actually, I disagree too … But that’s how she sees it. But I understand what you mean. Hey, things got worse without you understanding, so why can’t they get better without you understanding? It’s a respectable viewpoint, but it’s so different from hers, you will have a lot of explaining to do. But you’re ready to do that, right? You probably explained this many times to many clients. Okay, somebody else? Other interventions?

Krystyna: Personally, I would start by talking about situations in which she feels insecure and what her way of thinking is exactly, her way of behaving. I would gather some personal background, like previous situations where she felt insecure.

Jaap: So you would analyse the structure of her experience. Very good, the level of NLP is excellent here!

The case of the oak-soaked mother’s milk

Jaap: So let’s skip forward to what I did with her. I told her: ‘It’s very good that you want to understand this! And I think I can explain to you why you are so insecure. Where were you born?’ She was born in a Dutch town called Oisterwijk. And Oisterwijk is famous in Holland for its heavy, old-fashioned oak furniture. Oisterwijk is our national symbol for heavy oak furniture. If you ask thirty Dutch people: ‘What comes up when I say Oisterwijk?’, they’ll all go: ‘Oak furniture!’ So I tell her: ‘Aha! Oisterwijk! Now I understand. It all falls into place now! Because do you know what happens with this oak furniture in Oisterwijk? They prepare that oak wood with a certain chemical. It’s a very old process, they have been doing it for at least a hundred years. What is it called in English? Lye, that’s it, lye. You know what that is? It bleaches the oak wood. They use an awful lot of lye in Oisterwijk. And this chemical, this lye, will sink into the earth and it gets mixed in with the groundwater. The fact that it’s an old-fashioned chemical doesn’t mean that it’s not dangerous, you know … An expectant Oisterwijk mother opens the water tap and she drinks the water in all her innocence. Poor woman! Poor baby! Because that chemical now gets from the tap water into her breast milk and the baby drinks her milk and that baby becomes very, very insecure. Because if there is anything that can make a baby insecure it’s this Oisterwijk lye. Nothing can make a person insecure like Oisterwijk lye. So now you understand.’ (Audience laughs)

Well, this is quite an intelligent woman, so her response is: ‘Oh, okay, I understand, I shouldn’t look for reasons. I’d better focus on changing things, right?’ So I say: ‘No, no, no! It’s good to look for reasons, because oak furniture is not the only thing that they make in Oisterwijk, right? What else do they make there? What do you think happens when they make cheese, for instance? There are different chemicals in that. Do you have fearful, insecure dreams? Those can be caused by cheese-making chemicals, you know, especially the chemicals they use for Oisterwijk cheese. There’s nothing like Oisterwijk cheese-making chemicals to give a person bad dreams.’ She says: ‘No, thank you, I don’t have bad dreams and I don’t believe in chemicals, and I’m going to change this.’

I’ll tell you why I’m the right person!

Jaap: So I say: ‘Okay, okay, you may want to change, but what does grandpa think about that?’ You see, she was married to a husband who was about fifteen years older than her. It was really interesting to notice how, emotionally, she didn’t respond to this issue at all. I systematically called him ‘grandpa’, but she wouldn’t bat an eye. I mean, it didn’t disturb her at all. We call this ‘fishing and baking’ in Provocative Therapy: you touch upon several different themes and you watch which fish will bite. And when a fish bites, you take your time to bake it. Frank Farrelly calls it ‘running up a flag to see if the client salutes it’. But the grandpa fish didn’t bite at all. She just said: ‘No, no, grandpa agrees with me, he thinks I can change this.’

So I say: ‘Okay, so you want to change. That is a beautiful dream! Who doesn’t have dreams like that? Take me, for instance. I have a colleague who has a huge place, it’s an old bakery actually. He took out the ovens and he converted that bakery into his own personal garage. And it’s full of beautiful classical cars.’ And I start giving a list of all the cars he has. There’s a Daimler Double Six and my favourite type of Jaguar. And there is a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost. And a Bedford from the Second World War, the one with the wooden parts, do you know that type? I say: ‘And I want that too. I want to have a garage like that too and a great collection of classic cars. But then I think, gee, there are so many things I need to do to get that! I need to find a place, I need to buy it, I need to convert it, I need to find the cars, I need to buy the cars, I need to study the cars, I need to restore the cars and I need to maintain the cars … I’m getting exhausted just thinking about it! We all want things, but we have to accept that some things are just simply impossible. Have you ever thought about a career as a janitor, now that your management career is over?’ She says: ‘No, no, no, it’s possible! I can do it!’ I say: ‘Okay, maybe it’s possible for some people, but are you the right person? Actually, you know, I have some doubts …’ Now she gets excited.

Her face gets red and she talks in a high tone of voice. ‘Am I the right person? I’ll tell you why I’m the right person!’ And this is what I call a classic provocative response. For at least ten minutes she explains to me with great passion why she is the right person. She describes her ideals. She describes her fight for the underprivileged. She describes her history. It’s a great speech. So when she is finally finished, she looks at me and I say: ‘How about ending our session here for today?’ She says: ‘Yes, that’s a good idea.’

After that she only came back once more, just to explain that she wasn’t feeling insecure any more and that she was doing well with her new team. It was a one session miracle cure. Actually, I’ve had quite a few miracle cures with Provocative Coaching. This was also a nice example of a protest reaction. When Frank Farrelly started out with Provocative Therapy, he first thought of calling it ‘Protest Therapy’. This particular session really fits that name. Actually it can go both ways: protest or acceptance. When I said: ‘I’m not sure that you are the right kind of person for this job,’ she could have agreed: ‘Yeah, maybe I’m not, maybe I should get out of management, into some other kind of work’ – that would have been okay too. Protest or acceptance, both can be valuable responses.

The case of the internet floozy

Jaap: Let’s move on to our next intervision case. This one is very recent, about three weeks ago. Our first client had a business problem, or at least the business context was important in her problem. Your next client has a more personal problem. Actually, I believe that all business problems are personal too, when you peel off the business layer, but this one is officially personal. It’s about a love relationship. So here is another client calling for an appointment. It’s a man and he says: ‘My problem is that I’m very jealous.’ Your new client is in his mid-fifties, he’s about my age. His wife has died after a long illness and now, two years after she died, he has found a new girlfriend. She is about the same age and somehow he has become very jealous. At least that’s what his new girlfriend says. But he agrees. So this girlfriend tells him: ‘You should go and talk to this coach I have heard about. ‘That’s you!’ He is very good in NLP, he might be able to cure that horrible jealousy of yours.’ So what do you do with this client?

Stefania: I would first ask him what he expects in a relationship.

Jaap: Okay, he can tell you that. He’s a clever man and also he has no problem talking about his feelings. So he would mention intimacy and fun and laughing together. But the problem is that his jealousy threatens the intimacy, and it definitely makes it impossible to have fun together at times. So now you know that. Then what would you do next?

Stefania: I would ask if he has had this problem before.

Jaap: No, with his wife he never had this problem. That was a different kind of relationship. Who’s next?

Jakub: I would try and get some of the jealousy response right there in the office.

Jaap: You mean that you would first start a sexual relationship with him and then make him jealous?

Jakub(laughing): No, no, I mean get him into imagining a jealousy situation and then see how he is thinking …

Jaap: Another classical NLP move! Very good. What you would discover is that he is talking to himself a lot. Saying things like: ‘Why the hell does she have to flirt with everybody like that?’ And then would you try and have him say different things to himself?

Jakub: Yes.

Jaap: Okay, that could work, although it would probably take a lot of training and a lot of practice. I didn’t go that way, but I can see the possibilities. So what did I do? I asked him: ‘She says you are too jealous and she sent you to me, but what does she do that makes you jealous?’ ‘Well,’ he says, ‘when we sit in a restaurant she’s looking around all the time and when she sees another man she catches his eye and starts flirting with him … At least that’s how I see it.’ I say: ‘What? You are in a restaurant, you are buying her dinner, and that … you know, that horny bitch sits there flirting with every man in the damn place, and riding her crotch up against the table leg (Jaap makes movements with his own crotch as if rubbing against a table leg and his tongue comes out of his mouth) like a dog in heat … and then you are being accused of being jealous? You are the one that’s supposed to change? Are you serious? This is the craziest thing I’ve heard in months … well at least in weeks (audience laughs). Where on earth did you find this woman?’ ‘On the internet,’ he says. ‘On the internet! My God, need I say more? Some internet slut got her claws into you … Do you know what kind of women these are, on the internet? Do you realize what’s out there? I saw a television programme about that.’ He says: ‘No, no, she is pretty nice actually, she is the director of a school, and she is very clever, but she feels insecure. That’s why she’s flirting so much.’ ‘My God, I’m shocked,’ I say. ‘This woman is teaching kids? Jesus, do the parents know?’ ‘No, no,’ he says, ‘she’s a great teacher. It’s just that she feels insecure.’ ‘Oh come on!’ I say, ‘That’s not insecurity! This woman is a whore as far as I can tell. And I haven’t even heard everything yet.’

He starts protesting more and more and at the same time he’s looking at me as if he is saying: ‘I know exactly what you are trying to do, Hollander!’ So we go on like this for a while, me accusing her of all kinds of terrible things and him defending her. And when he is leaving, he asks me: ‘My girlfriend sent me here, so when I get back she’s going to ask me what you said … What should I tell her?’ I guess it was quite obvious to him that telling her what I actually told him wouldn’t go down very well … (Audience laughs) So I say: ‘Why don’t you tell her: “This is so emotional for me, I just cannot put it into words … it’s too emotional.” And if she insists, you tell her: “Now you are trying to make a cognitive, rational thing out of this, but for me it’s very emotional.” That will definitely shut her up.’

She can’t be as bad as that crazy coach claims she is

Jaap: So a couple weeks later, he comes back. He sits down and he says: ‘I’m not jealous any more.’ ‘Why not? How can you not be jealous with a whore… excuse me, with a woman like that?’ He says, quite confidently: ‘Well, my reasoning is like this: if the relationship is strong enough, it will be able to carry this burden. And if it’s not, okay, then it’s not. But then it’s okay to end the relationship, because if it’s not a good relationship anyway, then why should we stay together?’ Well, I couldn’t argue with that, could I? This was pretty solid reasoning. To put it in NLP terms, he found a good reframe. ‘And my girlfriend,’ he says, ‘is veryhappy with the therapy.’ ‘I think I know how this happened,’ I said. ‘You were thinking: all these crazy things that Jaap says – she can’t possibly be as bad as that!’ He agreed. That was exactly what he had been thinking. She can’t be as bad as that crazy Hollander claims she is! She isn’t a whore! She’s a schoolteacher, for Christ sake! And here we are getting back to that remark about the jealous self-talk that Jakub was making earlier. As soon as he started hearing the jealous thoughts in his head again, he was also hearing my ridiculous overstatements. He couldn’t take his own jealous self-talk seriously any more. And, systemically speaking, this made his girlfriend less insecure and less prone to flirting with other men. And so on and so forth.

The four aces of eclectic therapy

Jaap: So these are two provocative success stories. Two sessions that I truly enjoyed. And yet, some qualifying remarks are in order. First of all, not all my provocative cases are as quick and successful as these two. It usually takes longer. You probably suspected as much, but I would like you to know that I realize that. I don’t want to sell you this method as a new kind of snake oil. It’s a wonderful and amazing gift to be able to do Provocative Coaching, but it’s not a cure-for-all. I don’t do provocative work with all my clients. I basically have four main approaches I use. NLP is my basis. And of course within NLP there are many different models and techniques. I will usually try NLP first, unless I already have some indication that something else is needed. A second method I use a lot is symbol work – the official term is ‘symbolic modelling’. It is a way to explore the client’s spontaneous metaphors. In a sense it is the opposite of Provocative Coaching. The coach is extremely unobtrusive and creates an environment where the client can be totally free to develop their own symbols. Then I also still do quite a bit of hypnosis. That was the method I first started out with. Well, actually I started out with cognitive behaviour therapy, but I don’t do much of that any more. When I feel it’s better to approach the unconscious mind directly, for instance because the client doesn’t seem to have much conscious control over his own behaviour, then I use hypnosis. In a sense, communicating with the unconscious is always part of coaching and therapy. Often in Provocative Coaching too, especially when you are saying the most provocative things, there seems to be a part of the person saying: ‘See, that’s what I’ve been telling him all along!’

With those four aces in my deck – NLP, symbol work, hypnosis and Provocative Coaching – I can pretty much play most games. At least I feel I’m pretty flexible. I have some ideas on when to use what, but I won’t go into that now. I like this combination, but of course most coaches develop their own eclectic combination. We live in eclectic times, coaching wise. I haven’t met a coach or a therapist in years who used only one single method, at least no experienced ones. In that sense each individual coach and therapist is much more unique, certainly on a technical level, than they were twenty years ago. So I don’t do Provocative Coaching with all my clients. What I recommend is to start out with a classical, supportive approach and then, if that doesn’t work, graduate to provocative. Unless, of course, you like the provocative style so much that you simply don’t want to work in any other mode any more. Some of our most enthusiastic students are like that, but that’s a different matter.

We are gratitude addicts

Jaap: When you do provocative work, always remember that you can get a delayed response. In this workshop you will start working with the provocative style. But please be prepared for the fact that the client may not immediately be very happy with your work. Give it some time. For some helping professionals that is easier said than done. Because a lot of us are gratitude addicts – we are little Jesuses and Marys. We just love grateful clients that go: ‘Oh, this was wonderful! This was so unique! Because you, my coach are so special! I’m fine now. I was sick but now I’m healed! My problems are gone, thanks to you. Oh, mine eyes have seen the glory and the beauty of the Coach! Thank you, thank you!’ Most of us are suckers for immediate results. And you don’t always get those in Provocative Therapy. Sometimes the client is confused or even a bit irritated. Or sometimes more than a bit irritated. He doesn’t really understand what is happening. Last week, a client told me at the end of the session: ‘Okay, I’ll see you next week, now shut up.’ He had an unfriendly look on his face (audience laughs). The effects often start working in their brain slowly, over the days and the weeks. Let me give you an example.

I did a demonstration in a group like this with a freelance financial consultant who couldn’t get any new projects any more. And in the session he describes some of his consulting projects and I explain to him provocatively why he can’t get any work. After this demonstration some people in the group come up to me and tell me that I have been too tough on him. But he doesn’t think so. He says: ‘No, no, I think Jaap was doing his best, but I didn’t really feel that provoked or anything.’ So I ask him: ‘Please send me two e-mails: one to describe how you feel about this tonight, and then one in about a week.’ The next morning I receive an e-mail and it says: ‘I woke up at 4 o’clock in the morning and I had this vivid vision. I saw your fat, red head in the sky, insulting me, and I got very angry. And my wife woke up too, and she asked me: “What is wrong with you?” “Well, this trainer today … he said some really bad things about me and it’s crazy and it just is not true.” ’ And he starts explaining to his wife why what I said isn’t true. And his wife says: ‘I haven’t heard you speak this enthusiastically about your work in years’ (audience laughs). Of course not every client has a wife like this. (Audience laughs) So what I’m saying is: remember the delayed response. If you don’t get your gratitude shot immediately, simply wait and very often it will come later. I’m telling you this in advance. If I told you afterwards, you might think I’m covering up for my ineptitude.

He told the client what he was really thinking

Jaap: What is Provocative Coaching? Where does it come from? It was developed by Frank Farrelly, who is still teaching today, 77 years old. How did Frank discover this? Frank started out as a Rogerian psychotherapist. You know what Rogerian psychotherapy is, right? (Audience: a few are nodding, a few looked puzzled) It’s also called ‘client centred therapy’ which sounds a bit redundant in this day and age. But when Carl Rogers developed it in the 1960s, I guess a lot of therapists still thought they were the centre of therapy, explaining to the client why they, the client, had problems and what they ought to do.

In Rogerian therapy, the therapist relates to the client with what they call ‘unconditional positive regard’: ‘I’m seeing you in a positive light, without any conditions: no matter what you say or do, you are okay to me.’ The theory is, of course, that in the past too many conditions have been imposed on approval. You had to be a good girl or a good boy, or else your mummy and daddy wouldn’t love you. But not the Rogerian therapist: he loves you no matter what. In a professional way, of course, but none the less. And then he simply reflects the content back to you, the client. When you say: ‘I’m furious!’, the therapist will say: ‘Yes, I can see that you are very angry.’ Rogerian therapy is often used as a caricature of therapy: all powerless nodding and humming. But, actually, it can be very powerful.

So one day Frank was doing his Rogerian therapy and he got frustrated. And then the historical moment arrived when he starting saying what he really thought. In a humorous way, with some of that Irish humour that he was brought up with in the ancestral Farrelly home. And he discovered, to his own surprise, that it worked. It was one of those accidental discoveries, like penicillin or Post-it notes. He wasn’t looking for it, it just happened. But to his credit, Frank recognized its potential. For the next forty years he developed it into a therapy. Like I said before, at first he was thinking of calling it ‘Protest Therapy’, which tells you something about the essence of Provocative Therapy. But eventually he decided on Provocative Therapy.

Coaching is therapy and therapy is coaching

Jaap: We call it Provocative Coaching rather than Provocative Therapy. That was mostly a marketing decision, since coaching and therapy are basically the same thing. In the last few years there has been a lot of discussion about the difference between coaching and therapy. The difference seems to lie mostly in the content. Coaching is when you help someone change a problem that is work oriented, that has to do with working tasks, commercial targets, organizational structures, relationships on the job and so on. And therapy is when the content is personal: problems with intimate relationships, children, spouses, parents, non-business goals, lifestyle and so on. And then there is counselling. The way I’ve heard it defined, counselling is when the conversation takes place outside a clinical setting and the explicit goal is the well-being of the client. But these distinctions tend to evaporate in daily practice, because usually your work-related goals and problems are really closely related to your personal problems. If you get angry every time your boss acts in an authoritarian way, how great is the chance that you do not have a problem with your father? Or if you get easily discouraged in team meetings, it’s pretty likely that you get just as easily demoralized when your wife and children disagree with you. On the other hand, Freud has already said that work and love are the cornerstones of our humanity.1