• Home
  • Blog
  • Striving for goals or steering clear of problems?

Striving for goals or steering clear of problems?

April 10, 2016
 
Tim Hallbom

“Meta Programs are subconscious mental-emotional filters that determine what you attend to, what you sort for, and what you respond to in life. These patterns identify how you process information and what motivates you to act.”Coaching In the Workplace, Tim Hallbom and Nick LeForce

Our Intention with this blog is to give you some experience with each of the different Meta Programs that MindSonar™ measures, and how you can learn to easily integrate them in any setting, whether it be personal or professional. Each week you will learn all of the different Meta Programs in depth.

The first Meta Program we will explore is about what motivates someone to take action.
Motivational Direction
Towards vs. Away From:

How do you motivate others for success? Knowing how to motivate people to actualize a goal can often be a struggle unless different strategies to motivate different people can be utilized. The two patterns in this category involve whether a person moves toward their goals or away from their problems.

Roger Bailey, a pioneer in working with Meta Programs, states that in the context of work 40% of people are motivated towards a goal, 20% are equally toward & away from, and 40% of people are motivated away from the problem. Toward people stay focused on their goals, as well as, being good at managing their priorities. They are most often excited and already motivated, but may have challenges recognizing what they need to avoid and possible problems that could arise. The questions that can be especially useful for toward people: What possible downsides could I predict with this goal? What could go wrong? A little bit of a devil’s advocate position can be very helpful.

On the other hand, those who are motivated away from their problems excel at problem solving, and picking up what might be wrong. They may need help focusing on the goal and prioritizing, and may often be perceived as cynical pessimists.  Helpful questions for an away from thinker will help them focus on the larger goal and how to sort for what is most important, such as:  What does X behavior have to do with what I want to accomplish? What is the big picture for this project?

Example: Tim Hallbom had a client who was a successful business consultant who did big corporate change processes. He came to him with a challenging issue that he wanted to change. He made quite a lot of money when he would do a consulting job and he could live off of the profit for a while without having to do any other jobs. As soon as his bank account got to a certain low amount he would start feeling anxious and worrying about having enough money and that would motivate him to go and cultivate another job. He wanted to be motivated in a different way, not having to get to the anxious stage before he felt motivated to create more business for himself. Using his MindSonar profile Tim was able to coach him very specifically on how to integrate a more toward strategy.

Next week we will be looking at the Meta Program, internal vs. external decision strategy.

To find out more about MindSonar in the USA, go to: www.nlpca/mindsonar-meta-programs-nlp-Meta Programs.html

About the author 

Tim Hallbom

Director of NLPCA -- NLP and Coaching Institute of California

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked

  1. Tim, I’d love to chat with you about doing a 1 hour NLP call for our Accomplishment Coaching Affiliates. We offer a Strategic Partnership whereby you get access to our 300+ affiliates and we get to value of your time and you get to offer product or service to our affiliates as an introductory to your work if you choose. Afterwhich you keep the contact list and can continue offerings and contact as a result of providing the introductory call.

    If you are intersted in what’s possible by connecting with us, call me 206-601-2057 (West Coast Time)

  2. Hi Nick & Tim it was just yesterday I was coaching a weight loss client using the RAS model for changing her rituals. Mindsonar sounds awesome. I want to know more about how to integrate it. and my motivation is away from England, toward Salt Lake City or California! Thanks for this.

  3. Hi Anita –
    It is great to hear from you. We’d love to see you again! Please look over the MindSonar site. It is a really awesome Meta-Program profiler and gives you immediate information about a client that would otherwise take many sessions to gather. We have a tele seminar download on our web site: http://www.nlpca.com/mindsonar-meta-programs-nlp-metaprograms.html that Jaap, the developer, and I did together last year. Carla from our office can answer all your questions. Kris and I are out for a month training overseas.
    Warm Regards,
    Tim

{"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}