Strategic Intervention and Coach Training

Strategic Intervention (also known as SI) is a project dedicated to extracting the most practical and effective forms of strategic action and communication from a variety of disciplines: Ericksonian therapy, strategic family therapy, Human Needs Psychology, organizational psychology, neurolinguistics, psychology of influence, strategic studies, traditions of diplomacy and negotiation, and others. Our aim? To develop an eminently practical method for taking action in a strategic way to get things done so that human needs are fulfilled and elevated.

We believe numerous traditions of Strategic Intervention exist wherever human beings use extraordinary skill to bring about positive personal and cultural change. Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Ghandi are examples of masterful Strategic Interventionists that transcend the particularities of religion, culture, institution, job description, or political philosophy (as a Strategic Intervention should). What distinguishes SI from other strategic studies is the belief that certain holistic solutions “snap into place” when more people’s needs are met, expressed, and elevated. These solutions actually deliver more benefit for less effort.

Our tradition of Strategic Intervention (called Human Needs Psychology or HNP) originates with the understanding of the power of meaning to shape all aspects of a human being’s life. Both Anthony Robbins and Cloe Madanes have been powerfully influenced by the great insights and works of Victor Frankl and Milton Erickson’s creative breakthroughs in human intervention.

We are also grounded in the work of the Gregory Bateson group at the Mental Research Institute, which in the late 1950’s originated the new paradigm of interactional and systemic studies, which became a watershed in the development of disciplines such as game theory, cybernetics, neurolinguistics, organizational psychology, management psychology, and dozens of other systemic disciplines. Cloe Madanes, who has been associated with this project for four decades, is now the senior member of this tradition. Cloe has recognized Anthony Robbins as one of its most highly skilled thinkers and practitioners.

The goal of Strategic Intervention is to integrate the core insights of these traditions into a method of practical strategic action. SI encompasses strategies that span from the belief systems and emotional patterns within an individual, to individual relationships, to group dynamics, to organizational and cultural interventions. A trained SI coach navigates these different arenas with ease.

If coaches and consultants were knowledgeable in strategic intervention, they’d find their clients taking more action on their advice, side-stepping interpersonal restrictions, and enjoying breakthrough performance.

If business people were to implement SI, they would resolve individual and organizational and cultural paradoxes that otherwise lead to internal conflict and blocked initiative.

If legislators and judges understood human and family dynamics outlined by SI, they would find ways to pass judgements without disrupting essential structures of the family, and more children would be supported in their upbringing without medication or institutionalization.

By distilling the most essential, practical, and effective principles and strategies from master Strategic Interventionists – whether these relate to matters of the individual, couple, family, partnership, company, organization, or culture – our mission is to make these principles more active on a cultural level.

Anthony Robbins

For more than three decades, Anthony Robbins has served as an advisor to leaders around the world.

A recognized authority on the psychology of leadership, negotiations, organizational turnaround and peak performance, he has impacted the lives of more than 50 million people from over 100 nations.

One of the most sought-after speakers in the world, more than 3.5 million people from over 100 countries have attended Anthony Robbins’ live seminars or speaking engagements. Robbins has spoken for such distinguished audiences as the British Parliament, Harvard Business School, and the World Economic Forum.

Robbins was recognized by Accenture as one of the “Top 50 Business Intellectuals in the World,” by American Express as one of the “Top 6 Business Leaders in the World” to coach their entrepreneurial clients and by the Harvard Business School Press as one of the “Top 200 Business Gurus.”

Mr. Robbins is also credited with initiating the Life Coaching industry over three decades ago. His bestselling books Unlimited Power and Unleash The Giant Within introduced a philosophy of personal action that combined individual responsibility, emotional resourcefulness, and strategic intelligence based on recent breakthroughs in linguistics, strategic studies, neuroscience and peak performance.

Robbins’ unique experience of working with millions of people live and in person led him to develop a series of principles and tools called Human Needs Psychology. It is in applying these principles one-on-one that he is able to lead people to extraordinary results, even in the face of dire challenges.

Robbins’ one-on-one intervention work with individuals from all walks of life, whether onstage at seminars or in his private consultations, formed the template for modern one-on-one coaching practices. Robbins’ audio recordings of these concepts, strategies, and exercises led to producing the #1-selling audio coaching system of all time, which has transformed many millions of lives.

Since 2002, Anthony Robbins has partnered with renown teacher Cloe Madanes to form the Robbins-Madanes Center for Strategic Intervention, which is dedicated innovating cutting-edge strategic solutions to the most pervasive and difficult problems.

Cloe Madanes

Cloé Madanes is a world-renowned innovator and teacher of family and brief therapy.

She was a direct student of intervention master Milton Erickson and was one of the originators of the strategic approach.

She has authored seven books that are classics in the field and are taught in virtually every graduate school in family therapy: Strategic Family Therapy; Behind the One-Way Mirror; Sex, Love, and Violence; The Secret Meaning of Money; The Violence of Men; The Therapist as Humanist, Social Activist, and Systemic Thinker; and Relationship Breakthrough.Cloe has presented her work at professional conferences all over the world, and has given keynote addresses for the most prestigious conferences in her field. She has won several awards for distinguished contribution to psychology and has been featured in Newsweek, Vogue Magazine, The Washington Post, and the Boston Globe. Her books have been translated to more than twenty languages.Cloe’s strategic methods have created remarkably swift, effective, and lasting solutions to the whole range of human challenges, from the problems of the very poor, to so-called “chronic” problems such as eating disorders and sexual abuse, to the challenges faced by Senators, Fortune 500 CEOs, bestselling authors, and billionaires.

Since 2002, Cloe has worked side by side with Anthony Robbins developing the new field of Strategic Intervention. This cross-disciplinary project combines their two legacies, distilling the most swift, effective, and practical strategic intervention methods from a variety of fields.With Anthony Robbins, Cloe co-founded the Council for the Human Rights of Children, co-sponsored by the University of San Francisco, which applies the insights of Strategic Intervention for the protection and healthy upbringing of at-risk children.

Mark Peysha

Mark is the CEO of the Robbins-Madanes Coach Training Program.

In 2002 Mark left his Harvard Ph.D. program for the chance to join Cloe and Tony at the inception of the Robbins-Madanes Center. He has co-authored, produced, and directed well over thirty intervention films for the Robbins-Madanes Center as well as numerous training programs, including the Ultimate Relationship Program. He lives with Magali, his wife of 20 years, and their 5 children.

Description: Training Modules

Each module consists of several parts:

a. Anthony Robbins live intervention film. These are documentary films of Anthony Robbins’s live one-on-one interventions with real people in a group setting. The films begin when one or several people stand up to share a serious life challenge (getting a divorce, going bankrupt, struggling with their health, dealing with family or parenting issues, coping with sex or relationship problems, dealing with a tragedy or trauma) and ends an hour or more later when the problem is resolved. Most films feature follow-up interviews with the participants one to five years later, showing how the intervention has continued to impact their life. Narrated by Cloe Madanes, these films reveal to you step by step what enables people to create dramatic, permanent core changes in their lives, and how you can learn from these interventions to be able to do them as well. This is the only training available that guides you in detail through interventions “from the inside.”

b. Personal questionnaires, worksheets and exercises. Each film comes with a homework and journal/questionnaire to strengthen your grasp of the concepts and experiences of the films.  Suggestions for exercises to help you internalize the concepts are also provided.

c. Live or recorded teleclass. Cloe Madanes and Mark Peysha take you through a one-hour discussion of a major strategy from each film, as well as key information about how Strategic Interventionists navigate different kinds of relationships and situations. These tele classes also provide a valuable forum for discussion and questions and answers.  Recordings and transcriptions of the tele classes are provided to the participants.

d. Live “Open Question” sessions. In addition to the teleclasses, Cloe and Mark offer “Open Question” sessions where they take any number of questions about your practice or even your life. Participants often find while absorbing the material, that they derive benefits or make new decisions in their personal as well as their professional life. In these Open Question sessions you get direct access to Cloe Madanes’ mastery of problem-solving and human change.

e. “Study Buddy” & Coach Partner Training. Participants have the option of signing up for telephone coaching with another participant. Study Buddies can review material, discuss films, and are given exercises to do together. This is a series of extremely practical training materials that will take you step-by-step through key moves of Strategic Intervention.

f. Suggested Reading. Suggested readings in the literature on therapy, coaching, negotiations, and communication are provided.

g. Discussion community. RMT has a vibrant discussion community on its online forum.

h. Electives. For participants wishing for greater degrees of engagement or seeking answers to specific questions and situations, the following electives are provided:

1. Coaching Business Marketing Mastery. This training contains core advice for setting up your own coaching business, including branding, specialization, and advice for marketing and client acquisition.

2. Ultimate Relationship Educator’s Kit. This kit was designed for pastors and counselors wishing to give presentations on the Ultimate Relationship Program to live groups. This

kit contains step-by-step blueprints for creating a presentation and discussion based on the films and principles of the Ultimate Relationship Program.  The focus is on preventing divorce and increasing marital happiness.

3. Workplace Intensives (in preparation). This training focuses on customizing the principles of Strategic Intervention to different environments where you will be putting your focus. We will have a special discussion on each of these types of environments and situations: workplace (as a colleague), management (as a manager/owner), health care (as a physician, specialist, or caregiver), Legal & consultation (e.g. for attorneys, financial consultants, advisors, etc. ), Family and friends (increase your skill and helpfulness in casual conversations), Therapy/child services (how to have a powerful impact as a therapist or in relation to therapy and childcare-related environments.)

Introduction to Strategic Intervention

Strategic Intervention Mega Strategies

Having broken down hundreds of complex master-level interventions, we’ve been able to identify what we call “mega strategies.” Mega strategies are the “master moves” the “big block” changes that create 80% of the results in an intervention. Mega strategies are also actions that you can practice one at a time. You can practice them in everyday life, introducing them one at a time into conversations and gaining practice with them. Most importantly, mega strategies can be communicated simply and deliver a disproportionate level of results. For example, one of the most simple and self-evident of mega strategies is the Elevation Strategy, meaning your ability in a conversation to bring someone to a higher level of positive intention. This can be done through talking about a goal in an inspiring way, or it can be done simply by complimenting someone on their strengths. It’s an essential skill for any interventionist, and therefore it’s something we ask our members to practice independently in various situations until they become skillful. As you can imagine, being able to inspire someone is a basic but indispensable skill for any leader. For us, it is just one of a number of mega strategies to be mastered.

INTRODUCTION TO STRATEGIC INTERVENTION (5 Modules)

Module 1: Identifying resources and overcoming helplessness

Mega Strategy: Expanding the UnitIntervention: Lyndsey

Module 2: Finding meaning and purpose

Mega Strategy: Elevation StrategyIntervention: Dana & Greg

Module 3: Identifying a strength and magnifying it to create real results

Mega Strategy: Finding the SparkIntervention: Beverley

Module 4: Overcoming fears & breaking through to the life you really want

Topic: Understanding Life StagesIntervention: Tahnee

Module 5: Laying Down Your Weapons

Mega Strategy: Creating a Permanent BondIntervention: Paul and Jenn

Mastery Units: Understanding Life Stages

One of the most important ways to understand someone’s needs (including your own) is to understand the life stage they are working on. You may have two clients come in who express the same desires, have the same goals, and are asking the same questions, but if one of them is a 23 year old single woman, and the other is a 55 year old grandfather, then your understanding and approach need to be different. In our view, each of these life stages represents a juncture point with 3 or 4 major goals to be accomplished. These are big achievement items that represent 80% of the success of that life stage by creating a basis for the next stage of your life. For instance, if you’re in your late teens or early twenties, one of your major goals is to leave home in a good way and start working towards a future. If someone comes to you for help as an interventionist, and you understand the 3 or 4 major goals of the life stage they are in, you are in a great position to orient them towards what they really want and need, and to help them make progress quickly.

For this reason, we have designed a series of modules into Mastery Units relating to life stages. Our students not only solidify their own needs for their stage of life, and gain a more solid understanding of the choices they have made in the past, but they are able to offer their own clients new levels of insight and direction when it comes to their own vision of their life.

Specialized Mastery Units

The following Mastery units focus on achieving a specific result. In order to do so, one must understand one’s decisions, needs, priorities, values, and relationships, and make a concerted effort to break through internal conflicts and external obstacles. Our focus here is on obtaining the performance needed to make our goals a reality, even in the face of adversity.

Mastery Unit: LIFE PLANNING & REVISING

So many personal performance issues come from an internal incongruity – a decision, identity, relationship, or belief structure that contradicts or limits your greater intention for your life. These are advanced core strategies for aligning yourself for maximum performance and fulfillment. As Strategic Interventionists, we give each of these an interactive dimension so that you find alignment not only within yourself, but in your key relationships as well.

Module 1: Revisiting & revising key decisions

Topic: Decisions, life direction & family structureIntervention: Lise

Module 2: Breaking through a limiting identity

Topic: Overcoming family cultural limitationsIntervention: Sukey

Module 3: Overcoming an overwhelming crisis & managing emotions

Topic: Accessing strength & response to crisisIntervention: Jim

Module 4: Reconfiguring your life values

Topic: Values ElicitationIntervention: Jim 2

Mastery Unit: OVERCOMING INNER CONFLICTS

These are advanced strategies for overcoming internal conflicts and re-creating who you are. These trainings focus on delivering weight loss and health. They can also be applied to any other area of personal growth and repatterning of habits.

Module 1:  Overcoming abuse, finding your core energy

Topic: Weight lossIntervention: Shelia

Module 2: Overcoming internal conflict, creating determination, and letting go

Topic: Weight lossIntervention: Regina

Module 3: Resolving mother-daughter conflict

Topic: Weight lossIntervention: Gulia

Mastery Unit: RESILIENCY IN CRISIS/OVERCOMING GRIEF

Everybody encounters crisis, difficulty, and loss at sometime in their life. These modules offer a series of principles for overcoming loss and developing a new, compelling future. You will see

people who were in deep despair reclaiming their ability to heal, choose their lives, and create new direction.

Module 1:  Reconnecting with what you’ve lost

Topic: Overcoming griefIntervention: Maggie

Module 2: Overcoming blame

Topic: Overcoming blameIntervention: Gary

Module 3: Reclaiming your choices

Topic: Breaking through self-limiting emotionsIntervention: Carol 1

Module 4: Reclaiming your choices: family and children

Topic: Balancing choices & positions in familiesIntervention: Carol 2

INTERVENTION INTENSIVE

Module 1: The Seven Master Steps

Topic: Intensive on executing the stepsIntervention: Mark Leadership Film

Module 2: Indirect Negotiation

Topic: Intensive on Indirect negotiationsIntervention: Asad & Bernie

Mastery Unit: LEAVING HOME

Module 1: The family life cycle and the challenge of leaving home

Topic: Understanding Life Stages: Leaving Home

Intervention: Scott

Mastery Unit: EARLY MARRIAGE

The early stages of committed relationship have a unique set of challenges. When this stage is navigated successfully, it gives us the greatest joy but it can also be the source of the greatest pain.  The birth of the first child is statistically the most vulnerable point in a relationship. This mastery unit will help you to understand the 3 biggest priorities for couples at this stage, and how to advise anyone to adjust and succeed in making this transition to a mature relationship. This unit includes powerful strategies for understanding and overcoming challenges in any form of a partnership (i.e. business, friendships, or colleagues).

Module 1: Rekindling intimacy and passion

Life Stage: Understanding a Partner’s Changing NeedsIntervention: Arontza & Alan

Module 2: Overcoming Infidelity

Life Stage: Taking Responsibility for the RelationshipIntervention: Marcus & Belle

Mastery Unit: MID-MARRIAGE

How do you give a boost to a relationship that has suffered a betrayal or a loss of trust? How can you quickly rebuild trust and mutual direction, even if your partner is not cooperating?

Module 1: Compassion and Forgiveness

Life Stage: Setting Aside the PastIntervention: Jessica

Module 2: Transforming arguments into greater closeness

Life Stage: Creating Presence and Building TrustIntervention: Sam & Daryl

Mastery Unit: SECOND MARRIAGES/TRIADS

How do you manage and shift a relationship that is overshadowed by a relationship with a third person? If you’ve ever been in a relationship with a traumatic history preceding the relationship,  “ex-issues,” or challenges integrating children from a previous relationship into your family, this mastery unit is very helpful.

Module 1: Accepting a Partner’s Loved Ones

Life Stage: Integrating Step FamiliesIntervention: Susanne & Ole

Module 2: Overcoming Wounds from the Past

Life Stage: Living in the Present MarriageIntervention: Olivera & Marco

(Note – this module has not been developed yet)

Mastery Unit: INCREASING MARITAL PASSION

This mastery unit will focus on marital passion and features a unique, exclusive one-day workshop Tony Robbins gave to large audience of Marriage Educators. This is a unique distillation of our relationship teachings delivered to people like you who want to transform relationships. We will also delve into the core principles of igniting passion within a relationship. This mastery unit contains our core teachings on interpersonal communication, including the theory of double binds.

Module 1: Overcoming shyness

Topic: Exploring the Dark Side of PassionIntervention: Justin & Ruthie

Module 2: Double Binds

Topic: Breaking through communication dead-endsIntervention: Karen & Warren

Module 3: Core teachings of Relationship Education delivered by Anthony Robbins

Topic: Relationship PrinciplesIntervention: Smart Marriages Workshop, parts 1 & 2

Module 4: The Older  Couple

Topic: Increasing passion and presenceIntervention: Mike & Judy

Mastery Unit:  SYSTEMIC THINKING & HIERARCHIES

In this mastery unit we encounter a new level of complex engagement with systemic group dynamics. We have worked with individuals, couples, as well as third parties who influence those relationships (such as ex-spouses, children, or parents). In this session we’ll learn how to work with a single person from a group (in these cases a teenager) and utilize that communication to completely re-organize the social group to which they belong. In each of these cases, a teen presented a problem which originated in relationships to their parents and several other family members. By understanding the problem in a systemic fashion, Tony and Cloe were

able to give directives that restructured the social group. These strategies can be applied to any situation where you seek to create change in someone’s family, peer, or work group.

Module 1: Understanding & correcting cross-hierarchical protection

Topic: Understanding teen communicationIntervention: Ocean 1 (individual)

Module 2: Understanding & correcting reactive communication patterns

Topic: Understanding teen interventionIntervention: Ocean 2 (family)

Module 3:  Understanding social group structure & reassigning roles

Topic: Family dynamicsIntervention: Mponda

Module 4: Reconfiguring a social group by shifting the priorities in one member

Topic: Teen interventionIntervention: Hannah

Final Requirement

Upon completion of the program, each participant must submit an audio or video recording of their work featuring a coaching session and/or a strategic intervention.  In lieu of an audio or video, a transcript or an essay may be submitted.