Taking a walk at lunchtime, I find myself reflecting on two messages which have landed in my in-tray during the course of the day. One message asks how I am faring at this unquestionably terrible time. Another points me to the opportunities that are open to us all at this time of recession. One thing is clear: whichever way you look at it, the generalisation is alive and well.

I am reminded of the body of work which has become known as Neuro-linguistic Programming or NLP. My first glimpse in the direction of NLP – though I didn’t know it at the time – came in 1983 when I took a paper in linguistics as part of my degree and grappled with the theories of Noam Chomsky. Dr John Grinder was also a student of Chomsky’s work, studying Chomsky’s theories of transformational grammar in the early 1970s. This was about the time he was approached by under-graduate student Richard Bandler who asked Grinder to join him in modelling the various cognitive behavioral patterns of three leading therapists in the field of Gestalt. Eventually, this work became the basis of the methodology that became the foundation of Neuro-linguistic Programming.

Bandler and Grinder created something they called the Meta-Model to examine the way we structure language to describe our model of the world. Historically, the Meta-Model provided the first publicly available NLP interventions and Richard Bandler described the Meta-Model as “the engine that drives NLP”. Bandler and Grinder proposed three primary processes by we translate experience into language: deletion, generalisation and distortion. If Bandler and Grinder are correct, the process of noticing patterns in our experience and forming generalisations provides the basis for forming a set of rules or principles by which we go on to operate. These rules help us to simplify our understanding and to make predictions. They also guide our choices and behaviours.

So much for the (brief) history lesson. Of what interest is this model during our current times? It seems to me that to view the current economic climate as one of unremitting gloom is to invite outcomes which may not serve us. Our mood may quickly come to reflect our belief and this may be an unpleasant experience in its own right. What’s more, by forming the view that we are all in the same (terrible) boat we may miss out on a variety of opportunities – to take positive action, for example, or to connect with the people around us.

A generalisation which creates a world of opportunity may also have its drawbacks. How can we be sensitive, for example, to those people whose livelihoods are in danger (or who, at least, fear their livelihoods are in danger) when all we can see is a world of opportunity? And if opportunities are everywhere, how can we begin to tease out and discern the real opportunities that face us and our businesses? Perhaps the key here is to recognise that, whether or not we choose to generalise, and whether we choose to generalise a gloomy or a positive world, we do choose.

I think of my work as a coach which helps the people – often leaders – with whom I work to become aware of the choices they are making and to make choices which serve their aims and intentions. It seems to me that the work of helping clients consciously to choose has its time in the “hard times” every bit as much as in the “good times”. And of course, as a coach, I recognise my own responsibility to monitor my own choices at this time. It seems to me that, no matter what, nobody wants to work with a coach who feels defeated by current events.