Is your client stuck in a language trap? by Roy Marriott

Do your clients ever say things like, “I can't give that talk because I don't have enough self-confidence,” or “I can't get started on that task because I lack the motivation”?

If so, they might be caught in a language trap. Let's explore how to recognize these traps and how to help your clients escape them.

What is the trap?

Compare these two statements:

• "I can't give that talk because I don't have enough self-confidence."

• "I can't make an omelette because I don't have any eggs."

The difference? You can easily buy some eggs, but you can't pick up self-confidence at the local supermarket!

How many eggs you have is a tangible, physical state of the world, quite easily and accurately measured.

Constructs

But what about “self-confidence”? According to a 2021 British Psychological Society article (https://explore.bps.org.uk/content/bpsicpr/16/1/67), “little is known about how self-confidence is measured”. They found 15 papers that met their inclusion criteria, which had “15 different measures of self-confidence”!

In psychology self-confidence, motivation, resilience etc are known as “constructs” - they are ideas that we construct, to help describe our state of mind (another construct).

Constructs can be helpful - they can give some clues to how we're feeling, and in that way help people empathise with each other. They can also be useful in managing an organisation. For example, if your employees collectively score low on an engagement survey, you can predict that many of them are likely to leave,

and take suitable action.

How Constructs construct Traps

But constructs are much less useful at the individual level, and they can definitely lead into traps.

For example, if someone believes they have low self-confidence, and that people with low self-confidence can't give talks, then it follows that they can’t give the talk. The believing is holding them back, they’re in the trap!

So the trap looks like this:

1. Take an experience or observation, such as being afraid of speaking in public

2. Abstract it into a construct, such as “low self-confidence”

3. Believe that the construct causative power, e.g. “people with low self-confidence can’t speak in public”, and apply that to themselves: “I can’t speak in public because I have low self-confidence”

How to help them escape the trap?

Here are some ways you can help such a client out of this trap (drawn from the “Solution Focused” approach):

Deconstruct the Construct

Reverse the process, retrieve the actual experience and observation that led to the construct. You might ask, “So you'd like to have more self-confidence, is that right?” and if they say yes, ask questions like:

• How would you know you had more self-confidence?

• Who else would notice that you had more self-confidence? What would alert them to your increasing self-confidence?

• What would be the first tiny, everyday sign that your self-confidence was improving?

What’s Wanted?

Another approach is to start with what they actually want. You might ask, “so you'd like to give the talk?” and see how they respond. If they do want to give the talk, you might ask them what they want to get from this coaching session - for example they might want ways to feel ready to give the talk. Then, of course, you simply coach them on what they want.

What Difference?

Thirdly, we could take a trip into ‘suppose land,’ asking them a question such as, “suppose you could give this talk, and it went as well as you dare hope, what difference would that make?”

As you explore their answers to this question, it may reveal what they really want. Perhaps it's to advance their career. Perhaps it's to sleep better at night when they have a challenge the following day. Whatever it is, you can offer them the possibility of coaching on that.

If you'd like to talk more about the subtleties of coaching, such as the traps your coaching clients may be stuck in, why not come to one of our free meet up and exchange sessions?

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