The Use of Anchors in Coaching

July 7th, 2010

Anchoring is a powerful technique, known mostly from its use within NLP.

However, because it is an extremely powerful tool, its use in coaching is highly recommended.

When using the anchoring method, we ask the client to recall a specific situation in the past where he used a certain feeling he is seeking to use now or in the future.

Let’s say the client wants to feel confident or powerful. We ask him to recall and describe the situation in the past where he felt confident or powerful. Then we invite the client to select an anchor and associate those feelings with this particular anchor. By “anchor” we mean a physical act. It can be clenching a fist, squeezing a knuckle, touching a ring, pressing two fingers together, etc.

We repeat this exercise a couple of times, until the clients feel confident that by repeating the physical act from the exercise (firing their anchor), they can bring their required feelings back whenever needed. The motion of firing the anchor releases their positive energy from the previous experience and carry it over to the experience they are about to face.

This method can be used in a more simplistic form. When the clients talk about their previous strong experiences, their energy is usually so high, that if we simply ask them to hold on to the energy and bring it forward to the anticipated and feared event, they can do it without any effort.

From my experience, 9 out of 10 clients will be able to do this and it is sufficient for their success in the new situation. Once they try a re-run of the new situation with “transferred old energy” they are positive they can handle new situation easily.