Nominalization

The trainer's rule of thumb: if you cannot put it in a wheelbarrow, it may be a nominalisation. Motivation, confidence, communication, relationship, rejection, empowerment. Your job is to turn the noun back into a verb.

• Deleted: the process and how it happens
• Deleted: who is doing it, and to whom
• Distorted: something changeable now looks like a fixed object

"I don't have motivation", "There is no communication here." Nothing can be done with a missing object — but plenty can be done with a process.

Convert the noun to a verb and ask for the referential index: who is doing what, how, with whom.

• “Who is not motivating whom?”
• “How would you like to communicate?”
• “Who is communicating what to whom?”
• “What are you doing, or not doing, when you say confidence?”

Practitioner judgement: challenge what is useful, not every pattern you can hear.

You are recovering process and participants. Once the client hears their problem as something being done, choice reappears.

Client autonomy first — offer language the client can verify and decline.

• Accepting the noun and discussing it as a thing the client lacks
• Missing the simple deletion alongside it ('motivation to do what?')
• Explaining the wheelbarrow test to the client instead of just asking the question