The 7C's of Coaching. NLP as good as any psychological modality when used professionally and ethically.

WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE? I hear you shout at the screen as the above statement triggers yet another tightening of the stomach muscles, hyperventilation in the chest, reddening of the cheeks and screaming.

Well what do you mean by “evidence”?

That is a good question because when social scientists…and psychology is a social science, talk about evidence they often refer to generalisations supported by tenuous and often weak statistical probabilities that say very little about the very specific client in front of them at that moment.

Such a psychologist will adopt a manualised approach, based upon a step by step method and will conclude there are confounding factors if and when what they are doing is not working. It would not occur to them that the so called evidence based method they are using needs to be tailored based upon calibration to the client. This could involve observation of non-verbal’s, appreciation of the context, an examination of secondary gains, clarification of goals and the many other important considerations which make up a successful individual consultation.

Going down the evidence based route we “know” from the research, the ability to obtain rapport and the resourcefulness of the client are the best predictors of a successful outcome with the modality only accounting for 15%.

Estimated percentages of common factors (adapted from Miller et al.,1997).

Even proponents of the so called “Gold Standard” which we worship as CBT point out by their own positivist criteria they are anything but the “Gold Standard”. David et al. (2018) tell us:

“If gold standard is defined as the best standard we can have in the field, then, indeed, CBT is not the gold standard, and CBT, as a progressive research program, would not even argue for such a status at this moment.”

Apart from weak controls in trials, as well as room for improvement in both effectiveness and underlying theories of mechanisms of change which is mentioned by David et al. (2018) One could add the replication problem cited by the British Psychological Society where methodological differences and cultural changes since the original research was conducted are mentioned, (Jarrett, 2016).  Often the statistical effects reported in these studies are so small that more is left unexplained than is actually explained and in the discussion section these difficulties are amplified. King et al. (1984) point out that in fact both qualitative and quantitative approaches miss the mark.

Qualitative researchers see themselves in relation with others in terms of their practice and their ideas. Their world is a dynamic world and it is always probabilistic. They can divide the world into apparently systematic and non-systematic components and consequently improve on prediction. However, there will always be a significant amount of non-systematic variation. This anti-positivist approach assumes an open system that is consistently reinventing itself and is to be contrasted with the world of the positivist who sees the world more in terms of a closed system. For the positivist, the fact that our world, and especially our social world, is not entirely predictable is only due to stochastic variation that we as yet have no explanation for. When we do have an explanation for it, as our understanding develops, then we too will have greater predictive power, until eventually we can predict everything perfectly. King et al. (1994) make the point that these two perspectives can be regarded as observationally equivalent. Because of this equivalence a choice between the two perspectives depends on faith or belief rather than on empirical verification.

As a psychologist who has been involved within the NLP community for 25 years I am dismayed by psychologists who treat NLP in an overly emotional way rather than in a way that would befit a professional psychologist.

Examples of NLP RCTs or meta-analysis were offered by me on Linkedin previously, even though the NLP epistemological and methodological approach does not generally call for RCTs and in fact is evidenced in more qualitative ways:

? Churches and Allan (2013)

? Arroll and Henwood (2017)

? Zaharia, Reiner and Schütz (2015).

These were dismissed by Rob Briner an influential psychologist pointing out that Zaharia et al. (2015) had no RCT’s within it. In fact if he had taken care to actually read the paper rather than just blurt out his own emotional response he would have seen there are 6 RCT’s in this meta-analysis and this was confirmed to me by the lead author in personal correspondence (20 March 2019).

What is particularly ironic in the influence Briner (2016) seeks to wield against NLP is he criticises the meta-analysis of Zaharia et al. (2015) as having no RCTs, and yet then in his own area of interest, evidence-based management, (EBMgt), comments: ‘A second danger is blind adoption of a “Big Science” perspective on evidence-based management EBMgt that prizes randomized control trials and meta-analyses above all other kinds of research evidence’ (Briner et al. 2009, p. 20).

I ask myself, you might ask too, ‘If blind adoption of “big science” is a danger for EBMgt, why does Briner then criticise NLP when it recognises this danger and anchors its evidence base primarily in more qualitative and dynamic ways that accord with its epistemology and some would argue reduce the theory–practice gap’ (Field, 2003)?

There are many other such examples which I talk about in my latest book “The 7C’s of Coaching”, however I urge you in the future… When somebody says they are an NLP practitioner, do not judge them according to the worst possible features of NLP that you see on the World Wide Web. Do some due diligence and treat them like you would any other professional. Check out their CV, their references and their education. If you like them give them a chance and you might be pleasantly surprised.

References:

Arroll, B., & Henwood, S. (2017). NLP research, equipoise and reviewer prejudice. Rapport, 54, 24–26.

Briner, R. B., Denyer, D., & Rousseau, D. M. (2009). Evidence-based management: Concept clean-up time? The Academy of Management Perspectives, 23(4), 19–31.

Churches, R., & Allan, F. (2013). Raising maths attainment through enhanced pedagogy and communication Results from a ‘teacher-level’ randomised controlled trial [An NLP related study]. Reading: CfBT Educational Trust. Retrieved on 23 October 2018 from: https://t.co/HYe7bQwX9V

David, D., Cristea, I., & Hofmann, S. G. (2018). Why Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Is the Current Gold Standard of Psychotherapy in Psychiatry. Retrieved on 23 October 2018 from:

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00004

Field, D. (2003). Use of Action Research to Reduce the Theory–Practice Gap in a Nursing Course. Doctoral dissertation, Open University. Retrieved on 7 January 2019 from:

https://oro.open.ac.uk/49391/1/272245.pdf

King, G., Keohane, R. O., & Verba, S. (1994). Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research, Kindle Edition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. A.. Korzybski, A. (1994).

Jarrett, C. (2016). Ten Famous Psychology Findings That It’s Been Difficult To Replicate. BPS research digest. Retrieved on 12th February 2021 from: https://digest.bps.org.uk/2016/09/16/ten-famous-psychology-findings-that-its-been-difficult-to-replicate/

Miller, S. D., Duncan, B. L., & Hubble, M. A. (1997). Escape from Babel: Toward a Unifying Language for Psychotherapy Practice. New York: Norton. In Thomas, M. L. (2006). Contributing factors of change in a therapeutic process. Contemporary Family Therapy, 28, pp. 201–210.

Zaharia. C, Reiner, M., & Schütz P. (2015). Evidence-based neuro linguistic psychotherapy: A meta-analysis. Psychiatr Danub, 27(4), 355–363. Retrieved on 23 October 2018 from: ow.ly/ncmg50hWzA4