It’s something that comes up in every one of our NLP Practitioner Programmes – probably because the people who gravitate to NLP and to our programmes have self selected by being there. It’s central to NLP and it’s especially noticeable in the marketing of NLP programmes and NLP coaching services with phases along the lines:
Learn how to fix a person’s phobia in minutes
We can change your life
I will solve your problems
Etc.
Yes it’s the usually well-intentioned and quite understandable urge to want to solve other people problems. And, strangely enough, it’s something that we work very hard to discourage in the Pegasus NLP courses!
But why discourage it? Surely if we have these wonderful NLP insights and techniques we should be going around using them to help people and to take away their problems…?
Well, for three (out of many) reasons:
Solving your problems for you is dis-empowering
If I solve your problem you don’t learn, develop or grow. You’re just a passive consumer. Let’s say I’m your manager or team leader. You encounter a problem with a project and come to me for guidance. Because I have more experience than you I immediately spot the problem and tell you how to put it right.
I haven’t helped you – I’ve begun conditioning you to become more dependent on me to do your thinking for you. It’s the same if I’m a coach, counsellor or parent. If I jump in and solve their problems the other person doesn’t develop the skills to do it for themselves.
Solving your problems for you undermines your autonomy
If I solve your problems for you your respect for me grows. I’m seen by you as the great, wonderful, and skilful manager or facilitator or coach. And, if I’m not careful this adulation will go to my head and I’ll actually believe I’m doing a good job even though, in reality, I’m making you dependent on me.
And as your respect for me increases your respect for your own ability – plus your confidence and self belief – will likely be diminishing.
Solving other’s problems isn’t good for me, either
Manager: If I’m a manager or team leader acting in this manner I don’t just miss out on empowering and developing my people – I ensure I become indispensible to them. In the short terms my ego is stroked by their praise for my wisdom. In the longer term I’ve become too important to the organisation to be promoted or moved to a more challenging position – because the team couldn’t cope without me..
Coach: As a coach or counsellor, if I just solve their problems rather than coach people in how to solve their own problems independent of me they need to keep coming back to me forever. Which may seem good for business. And it probably is, in the short term. But sooner or later they’ll discover someone who works in a more empowering way, they will then tell others of their experience with me and, in the longer term, my reputation suffers
Parent: Most parents soon realise that unless they coach their children in how to fend for themselves and find their own solutions they’ll still have dependent ‘children’ decades later – preventing them getting on with their own lives as mature adults and making them perpetual parents with perpetual ‘children’.
