Debbie Basden

Although Provocative Coaching was first published in 2012, the content is just as relevant today for those who wish to give their coaching style a makeover. And this is not for the faint hearted as you need to have really good rapport and calibration skills, be comfortable bringing humour and laughter into sessions as well as physically touching your Client. Nothing traditional when using reverse psychology ‘what’s the problem with that?’, to challenge your Client to do their thing even more to an absurd level.

Those familiar with Stephen Gilligan’s three archetypal energies of 1) love / softness/ tenderness 2) humour / flexibility / playfulness and 3) strength / hardness / ferocity will recognize the necessity for the coach to juggle and adjust their stance to best provoke the Client without becoming cynical, sarcastic, cold or plain confrontational.

The technique skilfully used, can reveal hindering patterns and strategies as well as applied to different neurological levels.

However, if you are uncomfortable with a Client leaving feeling confused and irritated, with a delayed response to happy and grateful, you may feel inept. Even the way the book is written literally as a transcript from a 3-day training session, like a play with the trainee actors and Jaap taking the lead, is itself different.

For me the image on the red cover succinctly defines provocative coaching as ‘pulling the donkey’s tail’. A very interesting and stimulating read.

Gosh. I feel the need to say ‘poleni sana’ to all my former Clients in Eastern Africa; the work we did together gave good results and we had fun. Yet as a management consultant, presenter, trainer and NLP Master Practitioner, I now realise how little I knew about NLP and how to use it to present magically. This book gives you your own Tinkerbell, with magic dust, to transform to a whole new level. 27 practical exercises will cast their spell so you are confidently ready to be yourself, and at ease in front of any size of audience presenting on any subject.
The book explains what NLP is and what it has to offer in presentation skills that fit those who do, or do not, know anything about NLP and those new to presenting. There are plenty of descriptions and pictures to explain the information before you experience the techniques yourself. The structure is logical and the exercises build on each other so you can start connecting and gain the attention of family, friends and work colleagues so everyone gets the message you are presenting.
By reading this book and doing the exercises, you will engage with your audience and get better results. So if you are about to do an interview presentation, are in sales, home schooling your kids or perhaps even seeking a date on Tinder, you will be able to deliver something that will work.
Why not use the book to refine your skills while in lockdown so you are ready to present magically to the post pandemic world.

As someone who coached staff in the 1980s, and Clients using NLP techniques, I welcome new ideas. It is well written, with attention grabbing metaphors comparing coaching to “motorway maintenance and construction filling in the ruts of life” and “NLP – a minestrone soup of techniques for change”. Interestingly the soup course forms the second half of the book, yet it is at a cocktail level leaving you hungry for a full meal.
Hints and techniques are shared logically that will assist coaches as a business proposition. Yet I started to get uncomfortable, and then more so when Curly indicated she considers health to be her “responsibility to encourage Clients” as their ‘guardian’. Perhaps it was my Covid stone making me feel uneasy.
Curly “would refuse to work with a Client and immediately issue a full refund” if the Client did not return their comprehensive internal analysis and I had to do some soul searching, before embracing my softer more compassionate approach. I am not interested in ‘having a 100% success rate’, or whether my ‘reputation is negatively affected’ by someone failing to return a form. And I don’t agree that my “morale, motivation and self-belief will need constant boosting if I were to work with a Client who lacks such commitment”.
I consider one of my biggest achievements during lockdown was assisting a young Kenyan woman, with suicidal ideations. This wasn’t a time for me to talk fees or forms. My model of the world also allows for Clients to text if they need additional coaching; something I can’t see Curly advocating.
So this book offers useful approaches to be considered when setting up a business, and provides an overview of some useful NLP techniques. Yet it could do with an update as it was published in 2001.

Gosh. I feel the need to say ‘poleni sana’ to all my former Clients in Eastern Africa; the work we did together gave good results and we had fun. Yet as a management consultant, presenter, trainer and NLP Master Practitioner, I now realise how little I knew about NLP and how to use it to present magically. This book gives you your own Tinkerbell, with magic dust, to transform to a whole new level. 27 practical exercises will cast their spell so you are confidently ready to be yourself, and at ease in front of any size of audience presenting on any subject.
The book explains what NLP is and what it has to offer in presentation skills that fit those who do, or do not, know anything about NLP and those new to presenting. There are plenty of descriptions and pictures to explain the information before you experience the techniques yourself. The structure is logical and the exercises build on each other so you can start connecting and gain the attention of family, friends and work colleagues so everyone gets the message you are presenting.
By reading this book and doing the exercises, you will engage with your audience and get better results. So if you are about to do an interview presentation, are in sales, home schooling your kids or perhaps even seeking a date on Tinder, you will be able to deliver something that will work.
Why not use the book to refine your skills while in lockdown so you are ready to present magically to the post pandemic world.