NLP at Work

Sue Knight—2002

Chapter 1: what is NLP?

• Neuro: by increasing our awareness of the patterns in our thinking, we can learn how these thought patterns influence the results we are getting a work and in life. The key to finding personal and business success comes primarily from within ourselves and learning about how we think enables us to tap into our inner resources.
• Linguistic: our language is our life. What we can say is what we can think and what we can do. Learning to understand and master the structure of our language is essential in a world where we trade increasingly through our ability to communicate.
• Programming: we run our lies by strategies, in a way that a computer uses a program to achieve a specific result. By understanding the strategies by which we run our lives we give ourselves a choice: choice to do more of the same or choose to enhance our potential and our individual excellence.
• In essence, NLP is the study of our thinking, behavior, and language patterns so we can build sets of strategies that work for us in making decisions, building relationships, starting up a business, coaching a team of people, inspiring and motivating others, creating balance in our lives, negotiating our way through the day and above all, learning how to learn.
• NLP pays very little attention to what people say they do, as that usually bears very little or no resemblance to what they actually do.

Part one: the elements of NLP

• The first “technique umbrella” is neuro. Neuro is to do with the way we use our minds, our bodies and our senses to think and make sense of our experience.
• NLP is “thinking about thinking” and this chapter in particular will help you expand your thinking power. NLP does this by prescribing fixed techniques that work for some, but by enabling you to explore what it is that you do when you think positively, stay calm and keep control.
• The filters through which we experience the world governed our perception of situations and people.
• With precise questions you can learn how to generate quality information, the lifeblood of business. Precision questions are also undoubtedly one of the most powerful tools for challenging the constraints that people create for themselves.

Chapter 2: thinking patterns.

• Visual. You think in pictures. You represent ideas, memory, and imagination as mental images.
• Auditory. You think and sounds. The sounds could be voices or noises
• Feelings. You represent thoughts as feelings, either internal emotions are the thought of a physical touch. We will include taste and smell this category of feelings, the taste of the coffee for example.
• Outcomes could include:
  • Visual, an image of all the agreed actions written up on a whiteboard with names against each one.
  • Auditory, people talking to each other at the close of a meeting, making comments such as: that’s been really useful. I know exactly what my department has to do next.
  • Feelings, thoughts about shaking hands with other people at the meeting and a satisfied, warm feeling.
• We need to be able to offer choices that our customers only realize are important to them when they experienced the difference.
• A clue to the way we think is how we move our eyes.
• Good spellers will typically look up, eyes right or eyes left, to see a word in their minds eye.
• Let’s consider these distinctions in thinking patterns in more detail.
  • Brightness: bright or dim, dull or sparkly?
  • Clarity: Damon hazy or sharp and focused?
  • Size: larger than life, life size or smaller than life?
  • Color/black and white: full color, shades of gray, particular color, black and white?
  • Location: in front of you, to the side, behind you?
  • Distance: close or distant?
  • Motion: still snapshots or movies?
  • Speed: fast/slow?
  • Framed/panoramic: closing frame or panoramic?
  • Sequence: in order/random/simultaneous images?
  • Associated/disassociated: are you seeing it as if out of your own eyes, or can you see yourself in the picture?
• Think for example, about your journey to work. You can change your experience of this journey to make it better or worse by experimenting with your thinking about it. Start by changing some of the visual distinctions. For example, if it is Damon turn up the brightness. Then put it back where it was. If it is still, make it into a movie.
• Auditory distinctions and patterns:
  • Volume: how loud/quiet?
  • Speed: fast or slow?
  • Location: where is the source of the sound, is it in front of you, to one side, behind you?
  • Distance: is the sound close or far away?
  • Voice/sound: it is a voice or can you hear other sounds?
  • Pitch: high/low/mid range?
• Feeling distinctions:
  • Pressure: what sort of pressure can you feel, is there a sense of being pushed, a general or specific pressure Russian Mark
  • Location: when your body do experience the sensations?
  • Motion: is there movement to the feeling? Is a fluttery, steady, and tingling?
  • Temperature: hot/cold/stamp?
  • Intensity: strong/weak.
  • The pace: is it fast feeling, a slow one?
• The swish pattern. The swish is a technique for utilizing these distinctions in thinking to replace a problem state with the desired state. It is fast and powerful, as well as being great for dealing with unwanted behavioral habits. Note that the swish will not necessarily be ideal for deeper, more significant issues. There are other techniques later in the book that can help you with these.
  • First, identify their response and yourself that you want to change. Where exactly is the reaction you would like to replace? For example, you might want to change the state such as anxiety or apprehension.
  • Identify precisely what is that triggers this response. There will be something specific that immediately precedes your reaction. Identifying this trigger is a key part of the process. If, for example, it is a response to the way in which someone speaks to you, identify what it is they say or what it is about the way they say it that triggers your reaction. We create this in your thinking in exactly the way it happens. If it is the way in which someone speaks to you, then steer them saying the words exactly the way they do. If it is the site of an audience in front of you, imagine yourself in that situation looking at the audience in the way you do. See exactly what you see as if you were there.
  • Now determine which facets of the way you think about this trigger have the greatest effect. There will be some elements that intensify your reaction. The swish lends itself most readily to visual triggers and most often the size and brightness of the image have the greatest impact. For example, if it is the site of a certain person who works for you that triggers a response, experiment with each distinction in turn, putting the image back the way it was before you experiment with the next one. The aim is to find the one or two that intensify the response. Although these elements are currently triggering the response that you don’t want, the aim of the swish is to hook these elements to the response that you do want. In doing so, you’re making your own resources work for you rather than against you.
  • Think about something completely different to “break your state.” For example, what color was the front door of the house in which you lived last?
  • Now imagine that the person you would like to be, irrespective of what you have been in the past and irrespective of any specific behavior. This is an opportunity to imagine how you would like to be, the sort of qualities you would really like to have, the style that fits with who you truly are. Imagine this as if you are looking at yourself as an observer, disassociated. Develop this until you have an image that is compelling and desirable. Check that this you really fits in with the significant people in your life—it needs to be a real benefit to them to free to be this new way. Explore how this fits with whatever sense of purpose you have, with your beliefs and values, with every aspect that is important to you. Check that this new you meet any needs that you may have been satisfying and less healthy ways in the past. If for example, you have been getting attention for being stressed, check that you are going to get the level and quality of attention you need from this new way of being in the world.
  • Think of something completely different to break state again—for example, your telephone number backwards.
  • Make an image of the trigger, a stimulus that prompts the response that you want to change. Use the key factors that enhance the trigger. For example, if the distinctions of size and brightness intensify the trigger, make this image bright and big.
  • Take the image of the new you and make it small and dark. Place this small, dark image in the corner of the bigger image.
  • They quickly make the large image small and the dark and at the same time make the small image large and bright. Do this as fast as you can: the speed is important. You can make a sound to company this movement, a swish sound, hence the name of the process.
  • Break state again. Clear the images so you start fresh. Create a new image so you can break the image before you start again, otherwise you may set up a loop in your thinking.
  • Repeat the process 5 to 10 times and check to see if it works.

Chapter 3: filters on your world.

• When Janet and Bill had a conversation, each found the other frustrating. Janet like to discuss the details of what was needed, whereas Bill prefer to discuss the broader strategic concepts. For example, Janet would say, “I’d like Peter to go to the next meeting,” and Bill would reply, “We haven’t decided on the main areas of the plan that didn’t work.” Jens conversation centered on future actions, whereas Bill concentrated more on the past. Janet would pay attention to the similarities between one situation and another: this is like another idea I have about what we might do to improve the office layout. Bill would concentrate on the exception by saying things like: no, this is different or we didn’t include an overall plan. It was if Janet and Bill were talking different languages. They had different filters on their experience. They didn’t find meetings with one another easy.
• Skill lies in choosing either an associated or a disassociated state for purpose. The appropriate choice depends on your desired outcome. You might choose to disassociate to protect yourself from painful emotions, or you might choose to associate in order to fully experience all the feelings of the situation. Did you know that for most people decision-making takes place through a feeling? If your preferred style is to keep yourself and others disassociated, don’t be surprised if you and they struggle to make decisions. If your business depends on supporting others in making decisions, you need to know how to associate and how to help others do the same.
• One of the directors of a marketing company found that she was struggling to get potential clients to make a decision about the work for company was proposing.
• Your ability to think about what you really want is known as towards thinking. Your ability to think about what you don’t want is known as away from thinking.
• When looking at shapes and patterns, what do you notice? Do you notice in what ways they are similar, they are all oval, or did you notice that to our upright and one is on the side? In effect, do you look for what is the same—match—but you look at what’s different—mismatch?
• When meeting a person for the first time, someone who sorts for a match might think of similar people, similar situations or how the other is like that. Someone who sorts for mismatch will identify what is different about this person and the situation compared with the others they know in themselves.
• Past/present/future. Where in timekeeper your attention? Some people live their lives in the past, thinking about what has gone before. Some people live for the moment, and their attention is on the present. Some are continually planning and thinking about the future.
• You may have experienced these kinds of questions that look for the future:
  • What’s for dinner, how long until we get home, where we going on vacation, what’s next on the agenda, what I want to achieve by the end of the project is…
• Someone who focuses on the past:
  • What did you say earlier, did you see what that person was wearing, to remember when we were last on vacation, the last meeting we had is important.
• Think of the best meal you ever had. The filter you use will determine your memory of this. For example, if you sort by:
  • Activity: your call what you and others did it at this meal. Maybe you had a memorable conversation with a way to drop the plates.
  • Person: remember the meal in relations to who was there.
  • Object: your memories are associated with the food, a present you are given, the pictures in the restaurant, the type of furniture.
  • Place: your memories are on the location: the restaurant, the town, the country, or possibly the location of the table he sat.
  • Time: remember the time and date, an anniversary or special occasion. You might remember that it was the first day of your new job or fell well dinner at the end of the term.
• Externally referenced people rely on external sources for that evidence of fulfillment. For example, they rely on what others say or do. They may also rely on external factors such as “more orders,” or “people use the results of what has been produced.”
• People who are independent in style are usually internally referenced. This is a characteristic pattern of senior managers. They can be concerned about what happens outside themselves, they need to be! However, they do not depend on external circumstances to feel satisfied. Can you imagine a managing director who dependent on having his staff tell him that he was doing okay? Some of the leading it figures of our time have succeeded because of their ability to persevere despite the external feedback they received.
• Everyone has a specific means by which they become convinced. In this client’s case the principal factor was that he needed to see the ideas visually before he was convinced they would work. So part of what makes someone convinced is the channel through which they receive information. Other people might equally have been convinced by:
  • Hearing what I had to say, trying to find out if it worked in practice, reading the plan in more detail.
• Others need to be convinced over a period of time, time is the deciding factor for them.
• If your job involves you having to convince others to achieve the results you want, you need to know the pattern by which they operate. You can then matches pattern in the way you present your information.

Chapter 4: thinking with your body.

• 90% of our ability to influence lays outside of the actual words we use.
• I was talking with someone about their goals for their work and their life. This person talked about two goals. The first was a goal they had been given in their work. She talked about this her face was pale, her lips are taught and she sat forward with her shoulders hunched. Then she talked about a goal that she had to travel and work in Canada. The moment she began to think about this her face flushed slightly, her shoulders dropped, and the muscles of her face relaxed and she began to move her arms in a fluid easy way as she gestured while she spoke. But we established was that when she was thinking about her work goals she was very much into problem thinking, concentrating on what she had to do and what she ought to do. She was also disassociated in her thinking as she did this. When she thought about her goals for working in Canada, she immediately imagined herself they are doing the kind of work she really wanted. She was thinking about this in an associated way, she could see it as if she was already there.
• Try selling to someone who stays in a disassociated state and you will probably find that is hard if not impossible. For most people the decision to buy is associated with the feeling. The skill in this kind of influencing situation lies in knowing how to achieve that and recognizing when you have it.
• You can easily notice someone who prefers to mismatch—they stand out from a group as the one whose behavior is different to the rest. Mismatch and externally with others often stems from conflict going on inside the person and they may indicate this conflict by talking about or experiencing parts of themselves at odds with each other. They show this by spatially indicating the parts as being in separate hands, hence the expression “on the other hand… On the other hand…” Trying to match someone who is preference is to mismatch can feel somewhat like nailing jelly to the ceiling! This kind of behavior is characteristic of someone who may have difficulty in relationships, who may not be easy to converse with, and who seems to put obstacles in the path of any connectedness to anyone else.

Chapter 5: enriched communication.

• Trust and understanding. The difference that makes the difference lies in the speaker’s instinctive ability to adapt their language to match the language of the person to whom they are speaking.
• Feelings language is what encourages the reader to associate and connect with what is being said and this is at the heart of this passage. And finally he leads us to less usual forms of language, leaving a sweet taste in our mouths.
• Excellent communicators naturally use the system preferred by the person who they are speaking, at least initially. This ensures that they are talking the same language and are more easily understood than if they were to use a representational system that was disliked by their listener.
• As he walked down the corridor to the main office you will see a pink notice on the wall to the side of the exit door. Read this, it will remind you of the emergency procedures that we have demonstrated this morning. This has a very different effect to saying: be sure to take account of emergency procedures on the way out.
• Each style of communication has its place. Unfortunately, neutral, abstract language is often used in business through a habit rather than choice. If you want to increase understanding, motivate and inspire than in rich communication is the way to do it.

Chapter 6: precision questions.

• Do you have a “they” in your company?
  • They don’t communicate effectively.
  • They introduce changes without consultation.
  • They don’t listen.
  • They expect you to know what’s going on.
  • They keep you in the dark.
• They are very elusive. They never are in the same room as the people who are talking about them. They are very often one or two levels higher in the management structure, even when the people referring to them in one case where board of directors themselves. Alternatively, they are unknown quantity outside of the organization, a group of people who represent existing and future clients, suppliers, members of a holding company and so on.
• The question “how did she ignore you? Or how specifically did he/she/they do that?” Challenges the way you and others interpret and evaluate actions.
• Comparisons: compared with what, better than what exactly, compared to whom, fewer than what, more than what or then whom, better than what precisely?
• To test for abstraction, if you can part “ongoing” in front of the word—ongoing communication, ongoing relationship—is probably an abstraction. For example, if someone says “it was a difficult conversation,” your question would be, “who was talking to whom and how was it difficult?” If someone says, we have problems with our communication, how do you want to be able to communicate differently? Would be a way of introducing the possibility of the speakers beginning to move forward and away of developing new skills.
• Alternate ways of responding would be to challenge the detail behind the statement:
  • “She never listens to me.”
  • How do you know that? Has there ever been a time when she did listen to you?
• Another possibility to ask, “What would happen if you did?”
• “I know you camp but what would happen if you did use her skills to help the management team?”
• “You make me angry, this company de-motivates me.”
  • The owner of the short statement has given the responsibility for their stay and feelings to others. They have become dependent on the environment and surrendered their choice to feel the way they want to feel. It is not that these statements are true, they are. But the speaker has allowed the others to affect them.
  • The challenge: how is it possible for me to make you feel angry, how does the company de-motivate you?
• You want to bolster the confidence of a member of your team. They frequently come to you with questions:
  • Give them the answer or encourage them to find an answer. Asked them how someone else in the department, who is good at this aspect of the work, would do it.
• That I’m specifically about all the problems you have noticed. Ask them to imagine what it would be like if the situation were just as they wanted it to be.
• You want to create a culture of learning and organization by supporting a process of giving and receiving feedback. You are being given feedback.
  • Explain why it acted in the way that prompted the feedback. Ask the giver of feedback to explain what you could do for them to feel that you have learned from the feedback they are giving you.

Chapter 7: hypnotic language.

• Ambiguity is an important aspect of hypnotic language. It causes disorientation and creates space for the listener to create their own meaning, one that might take you much longer to discover at a conscious level. The significance of encouraging the listener to find their own meaning is that they are likely to have a higher level of commitment to any meaning they find for themselves then any you might offer them.
• Our unconscious minds are very obedient and detect any commands in conversation and seek to fulfill them. So on hearing of this little girl was doing exactly as her unconscious mind believed it was being told to do when she blew down the straw.
• You can embed positive or negative commands. Examples of positive commands might be:
  • You can begin to relax. I have been wondering how you might begin to see a way forward. I don’t know if you will begin to feel motivated.
• Some negative ones that went our unconscious minds find them, are stripped back to the command component:
  • Don’t think deeply about what you might be learning.
  • On no account to you need to be aware of what you’re saying.
• “I am curious to know what you would like to get from this meeting. I was just wondering what you would like to drink.”
• One way to help embedded commands or questions be received as such is to mark them out in some way in the way we present them. For example, we might pause before and after the embedded command or mark it out with a raised eyebrow or hand movement.
• Presuppositions are very effective in training programs when you want a group to accept certain premises for their development. For example, if you want a group to learn how to give feedback to each other, rather than asking if they want to give feedback to each other you ask how they will give feedback. You have given a choice, but not over what you consider to be the non-negotiable. This is why in coaching it is so important to be aware of the language use.
• Some traditional sales closes include presuppositions, for example: “do you want to place the order now or later this week?”
• In these two examples it is the use of the “and” that has the influence by linking two components of the sentence together. What happens is that you get the listener to say “yes” way of thinking and without a break you present another nonfactual idea to their mind.

Chapter 8: metaphor: the key to the unconscious mind.

• The following is an example of one of his stories, told to explain the way he worked with his clients:
  • One day an unknown course straight into the yard of the farm where I lived as a child. No one knew where this horse had come from as it had no markings by which it could have been identified. There was no question of keeping the horse—it must belong to someone. My father decided to lead it home. He mounted the horse and led it to the road and simply trusted the instincts of the horse to lead itself towards its home. He only intervened when the horse left the road to be grass or to walk into a field. On these occasions my father would firmly guided back to the road. In this way the horse was soon returned to its owner. The owner was very surprised to see his horse once more and asked my father, “How do you know the horse came from here and belong to us?” My father replied, “I didn’t know, the horse new! All I did was keep him on the road.
• When presented with a metaphor we make our own unique interpretation of it in the way that makes sense to us. Most significantly, it is our unconscious mind that makes sense of it and so metaphors bypass conscious resistance and embrace our unconscious. If you’re faced with someone who will not intellectually consider what you are saying, try telling them a story, parable for what you want them to learn.
• “I hired a carpenter to help me restore an old farmhouse. After he’d just finished a rough first day on the job, a flat tire made him lose an hour of work, his electric saw quit, and now his ancient pickup truck refused to start. Why drove him home, he sat in stony silence. On arriving, he invited me in to meet his family. As we walked towards the front door, he paused briefly at a small tree, touching the tips of the branches with both hands. When opening the door, he underwent an amazing transformation. His hand face wreathed in smiles and he hugged his two small children and gave his wife a kiss. Afterword he walked me to the car. We passed the tree and my curiosity got the better of me. I asked him about what I had seen him do earlier. “Oh, that’s my trouble tree, I know I can’t help having troubles on the job, but one thing is for sure, troubles don’t belong in the house with my wife and children. So I just hang them up on the tree every night when I come home. Then in the morning I picked them up again. Funny thing is, when I come out in the morning to pick them up there aren’t nearly as many as I remember hanging up the night before.”

Chapter 9: meta-Messages.

• Will you need to know how the message you are giving matches, or not, the perception of those on the receiving end of you and your business. If you get the match right, it is increasingly likely that people will choose you as the person or business with whom they want to trade, and keep on choosing you for the future.
• This overall impression is the meta-message, the message that is the sum total of all we are doing, and not doing that is creating an impression on other people. A metamessage is what is Kit located but not said.
• The meaning of our communication is the effect that it has.
• Everyone has their own unique perception of the world.
• All informants tell a story. Our surroundings are an expression of decisions we make, compromises we have agreed to, goals we have achieved, desires and obligations. Look around you now. What does your environment say about you? In what way is it a metaphor for who you are? What message does your environment give to people who come there? Do you know?
• Every detail reflects something of the inner workings of the company. Coffee stains on the flip down trays of an airplane means the company doesn’t do it and engine maintenance right.
• What we wear communicates messages about what is important to us, both generally and in the moment when we picked that jacket or that suit out of the wardrobe.
• Skilled trainers know that if they want to teach the principles of the topic—let’s say rapport—they teach at first to the unconscious minds of the audience by doing it before they talk about it.
• She recognized in other situations in her life that sometimes when she was not winning she gave up. Several of her colleagues are telling her how she could deal with this. Essentially they were telling her what they would do. However, one colleague remembered that she was a good runner who frequently took part in marathons and had talked about her strategies for finding energy to keep going when she hit the wall. Next time she talked about her concern of how she might handle rejections if she experienced them, he asked how she found the tenacity to keep going when she was running. It was as if a light bulb had gone off in her head and she realized that she already had the right strategy for keep going when things get difficult.
• Conversely, the metamessage of the colleagues who helped her find the strategy from within her own experience was “you all the resources you need within yourself already. This is an empowering way of responding to Alicia or anyone else with a personal issue for which they have not found a solution yet.
• The process of coding talent is known as modeling. You step into someone else’s shoes and reproduce what they do and the results they achieve, you are modeling. Modeling involves reproducing the same sequence of thinking, language and behavior patterns as your subject. To do this, you may also need to take on their identity and beliefs. In effect, to use a computer metaphor, you are a licking the program code needed to demonstrate the talent and you are running the program as and when you want it. The purpose of modeling talent in business is to reproduce excellence. If you want to reproduce the success of an outstanding salesperson, manager, presenter, modeling enables you to do this. Equally, if you want to reproduce the way successful, enterprising company or individual presents themselves through a remote media him such as the World Wide Web or email, you can do this too.

Chapter 10: modeling.

• When Price Waterhouse Coopers wanted to reproduce the outstanding performance of some of its top project leader coaches, it decided to use NLP to model the strategies that work. It selected its outstanding performers and I was invited to model them to find out how they do what they do. I watch them in action working with groups of trainees and talked with them about their beliefs, their values and their sense of identity and purpose. What emerged was a constant pattern for the ones who achieve results significantly above the norm. All had quality of selflessness, a purpose that was beyond themselves, and all had values that included love and care for others. At the level of behavior they were all skilled in the way that they used metaphor and visionary thinking. And they were all dedicated to meeting the learning needs of the trainees that if they did not do that to their satisfaction this resulted in the coaches temporary feeling physically sick. However, once we knew what some of the key pieces were in the strategies I was able to present this to others who had not yet achieved the same level of excellence.
• A major car manufacturing company encourages its employees to invest time in their personal development. If funded everyone to learn something new on one condition, that it was not to do with their work. Some people learned a new language. Some learned how to play a musical instrument. Whatever they did, they did it because they wanted to. This is a smart move on the part of the company. When it was doing was strengthening its employee’s strategies for doing what they really wanted, outcome thinking, and for learning.
• The point of modeling is very different way of thinking and working to the past. Giving people in the company the skills to model is giving them the means to generate ways of finding solutions to any situation they encounter.

Elements of excellence: Systems, mission, beliefs, capabilities, behavior, environment.

Chapter 11: strategies for successful living.

• It is our patterns and thinking and behaving that Cray our response to our circumstances, not the circumstances.
• These patterns and habits are known as strategies and NLP terms. A strategy is a sequence of thoughts and behaviors based on a set of beliefs and a sense of self.
• At our home in France we have a well dating back to the 17^th century. There is a groove in the front of the well where the rope to lower and raise the bucket has been pulled for all these years. It would be difficult to get the rope positioned in any other place than in this groove—the rope naturally defaults to the groove.
• For example if you want to help someone make a decision and you have learned that their strategy for decision-making involves some creating an internal image, then asking themselves a question in order to get an internal feeling that lets them know the decision, you can adjust the way you summarize your discussion with them. To match their strategy you can say, “imagine the scenario in the future, and ask yourself how this is going to make a difference to you, and you will sense that this is the decision that fits for you.
• The key here is not just to ask the person you are modeling. What they think they know and what they really know are two different things. It is key to have the subject imagine that they are doing the act you want to reproduce.
• This exercise is about identifying a strategy that leads to resource. See can increase the likelihood of having consistency in your ability to choose the state when you wish.
  • One: identify a resourceful state that you would like to experience when you choose, one that you have experienced before. For example, it might be a state of confidence, enthusiasm or motivation.
  • Two: way until the next time you have this state. (You could alternatively go back in your thinking to associate into a time when you had the state previously.)
  • Three: the aware of what it is like to be in this state—what are you seeing, hearing, saying to yourself and feeling?
  • Four: what was the trigger for this state— what’s that you on a sequence of getting in this state?
  • Five: what happened next—what did you see/hear/say to yourself/feel? If you are not sure just keep the question “what am I doing in my thinking” in your mind each time he experienced estate.
  • Six: write down the sequence of thinking patterns so you can check it out again next time you experience it.
  • Seven: test to see if you can create the state without the usual trigger. If it doesn’t work, keep tracking what happens when you do get the state so you can find what’s missing.
  • Eight: keep the question “how am I doing this” in mind.

Part two: model yourself with NLP.

• A woman took her son to see Gandhi, who asked what she wanted. “I’d like you to get him to stop eating sugar,” she replied. “Bring the boy back in two weeks time, Gandhi replied. Two weeks later the woman returned with her son. Gandhi turned to the boy and said, “Stop eating sugar.” The woman looked surprised and asked, “Why did I have to wait two weeks for you to say that?” “Two weeks ago I was eating sugar, Gandhi replied.

Chapter 12: tap into your inner potential: anchoring.

• Leaders are typically people who have this capacity to stand firm and stand alone. Leaders intuitively know how to anchor the emotions and the confidence in themselves that they need.
• Given that what we choose to think is one of the single most powerful influences on the outcome of a situation, this is one of the most significant ways in which we can influence how we experience our lives and what we get as a consequence to our thinking.

Chapter 13: align yourself: neurological levels of change.

• I’ve seen a new and different style of achievement develop in the last five years. This relies more and more on our ability to allow outcomes to unfold. We have to be able to walk forward with faith into a world that is chaotic and abstract and allow opportunities to present themselves. What we do need to be able to do, however, is to be so aligned, so true to what we believe, that we are in a position to seize these opportunities when they occur. Our example is our reputation. By being aligned with ourselves we find that we attract the opportunities that fit with the direction in which we want to move.
• The level of purpose is sometimes described as the level of spirituality.
• Our purpose is lived out through the kind of person we are. Identity/mission defines our sense of self and contains statements describing how you think of yourself as a person.
• Our belief systems are shaped by our purpose and identity and, conversely, they support who we are and what we give. Our beliefs are views about ourselves, other people, and the situations that we hold to be true. They are emotionally held views.
• Capabilities are increasingly becoming known as competencies. They are resources that you have available in the form of skills or qualities, such as sensitivity, adaptability, flexibility, outcome thinking.
• Finally, our environment defines the context in which we demonstrate all of the above elements. Environment refers to everything outside ourselves: the place we work, the economy, people around us, our business, our friends and family, our customers and also including what we wear.

Chapter 14: prayer own life script: beliefs of excellence.

• Beliefs that are so vital today:
  • Each person is unique. There is a wealth of untapped talent in everyone and we can help to release this talent by the way we relate to people.
  • Everyone makes the best choice available to them at the time they make it. By believing this we can learn how to understand, coach high performance and forgive.
  • There is no failure, only feedback. We must be able to take in and learn from the changing situations. Consequently we need to be able to learn continuously and this believe is central to our ability to do this.
  • Behind every behavior is a positive intention. This belief is fundamental in our being able to take whatever happens to us, the matter how detrimental it might be initially, and turn it into personal learning and growth.
  • The meaning of communication is it’s a fact. We may not be able to control our environment, but what we can do is be aware of the effect we have on it.
  • There is a solution to every problem. This belief is characteristically held by people who find new ways of working through our around obstacles and challenges. People recognized as leaders typically hold this belief.
  • We have within us all the resources we will ever need. By believing this we can learn how to tap into every resource that we will ever need to achieve what we want.
  • The person with the most flexibility in thinking and behavior has the greatest influence. If what we are doing isn’t working, then the more choices we have the more likely we are to find a way that does work.
  • Mind and body are part of the same system. And if we listen to our bodies they can tell us what our minds need to know.
  • Knowledge, thought, memory and imagination are the results of sequences and combinations of ways of filtering and storing information. If we learn what those sequences and combinations are, we can influence what is and isn’t working for us and do something about it.
  • The nature of NLP is that you can change your beliefs so that you create your own set of principles to support the way you really want to be.
  • Because your unconscious mind does not know the difference between what is real and what is imagined, you can imagine the past you would prefer to have had and rewrite your memories.
• This belief can be mind blowing. It means you choose to believe that behind every action there is a positive intention toward you
• Imagine what it would be like to believe that you could find a solution to every problem you ever encountered. You probably spend much less time worrying about how you are going to get on in life.
• Anything that occurs in one part of the system will affect other parts.
• Stand up to do the following exercise. Look ahead, stand feet apart, face forward, raise one arm horizontally out front of you, and gently twist around, keeping your arm horizontal and toll it is pointing as far behind you as it will go. Keeping your arm fixed in apposition, turn around and note where your arm is pointing to. It may be a point on the wall or in the distance that marks how far you have been able to move your arm behind you. Now look carefully at the scene behind you as you decide how far you would like your arm to be able to move beyond the original point. Fix that point in your mind as he turned to face forward again. As you face forward twist again, moving your arm behind you as far as it will go. When you have pushed it as far as it’ll go, hold it steady, turn around, and see how far you have moved your arm this time.
• The point about all these beliefs of excellence is that they don’t have to be true. Their power lies in the affect they have when you choose to believe they are true. So what are the implications for you of believing that mind and body are part of the same system?
• Beliefs that support negotiation:
  • It is desirable and possible for all parties to meet their needs in negotiation.
  • The other parties have ideas and views that can benefit everyone.
  • I have a positive intention towards the other parties and whatever they say or do has a benefit for me if I choose to open my mind to what might be.
  • We all have a common goal even if we don’t yet know what it is.
  • There is a win-win outcome in most scenarios if we are willing to learn, forgive and move on.

Chapter 15: achieve what you really want: well formed outcomes.

• Many training programs concentrate on format such as Smart goals, specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound. Do you really think that the high achievers in life, the people who act as the inspiration to the rest of us, sit down and wonder if their goals are realistic? The high achievers act out of passion and a love for what they do.
• Goals expressed in outcome thinking mode indicate that the person is imagining what they do really want as if they have step forward in time and have got it.
• Think about one of the outcomes you really want to yourself. Imagine yourself having achieved what you really want.
  • What does it look like? What do you see? What is around you, is there anyone else in the picture? Look around, take in the details.
  • What does it sound like? What do you hear, what are you saying to yourself, what are others saying, what sounds are there?
  • What does it feel like? Physically what does it feel like? What can you touch and what sort of feeling is that? What textures do you experience?
  • What does it taste like? What sort of tastes do you get in your mouth, what is it like?
  • What does it smell like? What is the aroma of achieving what you really want?
  • What does it feel like? Emotionally, what are the emotions that you feel in achieving what you really want?
• If our attention is centered on problems, problems are what we get. Even if we focus our attention on the reduction of problems, we are still paying attention to the problems. In contrast, if we have imagined what we really do want and concentrate on how we will recognize when we have it, we will influence the likelihood that this is what we get.

Part three: leader of NLP.

• There is one common element in all their approaches: their ability to build immediate rapport with the people with whom they are working.

Chapter 16: develop a climate of trust: rapport.

• Rapport is the ability to connect with others in the way that creates a climate of trust and understanding. It is also the ability to appreciate one another’s viewpoints, not always to agree with it, to be on the same wavelength, and to understand and accept one another’s feelings.
• If you think building rapport is just about matching people’s behavior then think again. The skill of building and maintaining rapport goes well beyond the level of body language. Report involves not only relating to people based to face but also remotely by appealing to their style of communication and their expectations.
• Rapport is about joining people where they are in their style so you can connect to them in a way that supports all future communication.
  • By modeling people who have deep levels of rapport we discovered that they adopt the same or similar styles of: Posture, movement and gestures, breathing levels, voice tone and quality, language content.

• Achieving a state of rapport is the most important outcome at the beginning of the negotiations.
• To find out someone’s values, watch and listen. Pay attention to what excites them and what changes they state to one of interesting curiosity. What do they pay attention to? If they’re constantly looking at their watch and want to get on with discussion straightaway, you may find that attention to time and the way time is used is important to them.
• Business people who listen with care and skill are still in the minority. The people who have this ability are usually those who generate immense respect and influence. And we usually find that Rapport is a major component in their ability to listen. When you listen with a report you are listening with your whole body. Not only do you hear what other people are saying, you also gain insights as to what they are thinking and feeling. You are influencing the interaction with your nonverbal behavior more often than anything that you do. Tom Peters in a passion for excellence says, “Listening is the highest form of courtesy.” Whole body listening can be the trigger that influences someone to gain insight, to find their own solutions, and to generate commitment to those solutions. Contrast the difference between someone whose attention is internal, on themselves, and someone who is listening with their whole body.
• Everyone has their own way of satisfying their needs, their evidence of fulfillment. It is crucial to know your customers evidence of fulfillment and to find ways of meeting this if you want to be successful in business.
• Ask your customers the most important question of all: “what would have to be true for you to want me to be a main supplier for the future?” Then sit back and listen. You will learn some of the most valuable information for meeting your customer’s needs that you will ever need to know.
• Before any contact with the other person:
  • Choose the person with whom you would like to enhance the rapport you have or expect to have.
  • Imagine yourself having a kind of rapport with them that you would really like to have.
  • Measures of being connected to them in a way that fully respects who they are.
  • Pay attention to how they communicate as much if not more than what they communicate.
  • What is significant about their: behavior, language, body language? Pick one of the above to concentrate on.
  • Match the element you have chosen.
  • By being similar to this person, what do you detect as being important to them? For example, time, silence, integrity, innovation, decisiveness, action, strategy, thinking, acknowledgment, sense etc.
  • How are you/can you respect this aspect that is important to them?
  • Monitor how the connection between you strengthens.
  • What else can you do to build the report even further?
• After the interaction:
  • How would you evaluate the strength of the connection between you?
  • What made the difference?
  • What else could you have done/could do in the future interactions?

Chapter 17 Negotiate Your Way through life: perpetual positions.

• What are these different perspectives and how can we take ourselves through them in a way that gives us breakthroughs we want in our personal and business lives?
• (Own shoes) By putting ourselves in first position we are able to fully appreciate what is important to us personally.
• (Their Shoes) By putting ourselves in second position we are able to understand where the other person is coming from and what has to be true for them to be doing or saying what they are.
• (Observer) this is the ability to stand back from the situation and experience it as if you are a detached observer. In your mind you’re able to see and hear yourself and the other person as if you were a fly on the wall. This is a position of analysis and learning.
• At first I thought it was for someone else. That I thought my colleague had dreamt up a nickname for me, Jones. Eventually I realized he was answering a question I had asked him in an email several days earlier. In Brian’s shoes he read my question and, treating it like a regular conversation—answer the question and closed the message. However, if he had put himself in my shoes he might have realized that a lot of emails had flowed through the ether between the time I had sent him this question and getting his answer, and the original question was not at the forefront of my thinking.
• Skillful negotiators in all contexts and all media instinctively use three positions as a way of taking a balanced approach to a situation.

Chapter 18: resolving conflict: parts integration.

• One of the principals I’ve emphasized throughout this book is that we can only influenced by our example.

Chapter 19: giving and receiving feedback.

• The head of the creative department in a marketing organization wanted to develop the creative team so that they would be open to giving each other feedback and increasingly open to feedback from their clients, both within the business and externally. He called a team meeting and told them beforehand that he wanted feedback from them. In a team meeting he invited them to prepare individually to give him feedback and gave them time to do this. He asked them to think of something they would like him to do more of, something they would like him to do less of or differently, and something with which they were happy. He invited them to give him feedback and he modeled all the principles of how to accept what they were saying with openness and learning. He demonstrated how to live out the beliefs that underpin effective feedback. He was open, accepting and curious about what they had to say. He was not in any way defensive or attacking. The team members also became more and more open at the end of the meeting they commented on how viable they had found that time with him.
• Our beliefs influence our capacity for feedback. A belief that is fundamental to our ability to give and receive feedback constructively is: there is no such thing as failure only feedback, or there is only learning.
• There are other beliefs that support our ability to give and receive feedback. The first is that: everyone’s perception is there truth.
• The second belief is that: what we recognize in others is true about ourselves. An extension of this is that the characteristics in others that touch us emotionally are a pointer towards those things being characteristic that we don’t want or like to accept within ourselves.
• What can you do to model excellence in the way to receive feedback:
  • Get yourself into a resourceful state for receiving the feedback. Anchor a state that has worked well for you in this way in the past. The state could be one of learning, for example or one of openness, self-confidence, humility or curiosity.
  • Remind yourself of the beliefs above.
  • Respond in a way that presupposes acceptance, saying things like “in what ways do I do this”, what effect this has on you.
  • Always anticipate feedback and always invited when appropriate so that feedback is inconstant supply for you.
• Steps that help ensure that feedback we have to give is received in the way that enhances learning for both the giver and the receiver:
  • Check that you are in rapport with the person to whom he proposed giving the feedback. If you are not, do whatever it takes again to rapport before you even start the process.
  • Ask yourself, “how is his feedback as true about me as it is for the person whom I’m offering it?” In this way you will create a connectedness in your thinking and in the way you offer the feedback.
  • Imagine how by accepting the feedback both you and the other person can improve. Take this as a well formed outcome in your thinking.
  • From the feedback first to say how it has come about or what area of performance it relates to, so that you can warm up the receiver to what you are going to say next.
  • The other person does not immediately accept the feedback, find another way to give it to them so they can understand what you are offering. Their ability to receive the feedback is a measure of your ability to give it.
  • Maintain direct eye contact and imagine the receiver of the feedback both accepting and using the feedback constructively as you do so.
  • Recognize that the response you get from others is coming up from the part in which you are choosing to engage. If you do not understand what I’m telling you, it is the non-understanding part with which I am choosing to engage.
  • Ian example at all times of the response you want from others.
  • Ask the receiver of the feedback to tell you what they are going to do with what you have given them. Sometimes it helps to ask this before you give the feedback. “If I give you this feedback what will you do with it?”

Chapter 20: high performance coaching.

• It is based on the premise that most of the limitations to our true potential are not represented by other people but by unhealthy strategies that we have learnt and that are entirely within ourselves.
• So in essence what we are doing when we coach using NLP is making the person being coached aware of the process they are living out.
• If any business colleague were to ask me a question with the same format, “do you think I should…,” And if my outcome were to support them to find their self-esteem and confidence, that my principal is to say yes. By saying yes I’m confirming the perception they have already formed within themselves. I’m confirming that their map of the world is valid. By saying yes I am presupposing that they do have all the resources they need already within themselves.
• I also believe that the fastest and most effective way to do this is to help them find the resources they already have within themselves.
• To develop someone’s confidence in themselves and therefore in their ability to draw on their own resources, I want to reward and confirm any opportunity when they are indicating that this is what they are doing. So if someone has the structure of the answer in the question, the role as a coach is to reinforce that.
• Examples of questions in which the answer presupposed is yes:
  • Do you think I should take the job I have been offered in this new company?
  • Do you think I can find the confidence to do this?
  • Should I really consider that decision?
  • In my being very direct in the way I am saying this?
• Your present state most certainly does not yet match your desired state. What steps can you take yourself through?
  • Identify what you believe you need in order to achieve the desired state. When you identify is an emotional state of confidence. The question is how to get it.
  • On the premise that you have this resource already, the question to ask yourself is: where in my experience did I have the kind of confidence I want right now? You can find a situation in your experience even if it’s months or years old.
  • Step back into that time and associate so you relive it, especially that confidence. To do this it helps to imagine what you were seeing then, what you wear hearing and feeling physically, and to do this from your own shoes so that you now re-experience what you are feeling emotionally—that state of confidence.
  • Once you have this, anchor it with a touch, a word or an image and bring it the state of confidence back to you in the present as you prepare your thinking for the presentation.
  • The test again. Does your present state match your desired state? If yes, you have what you want, if no, ask yourself what else you need to realize your desired state.
  • This time you realize that what you need is to build rapport with some of the people who will be at the presentation.
  • Explore and plan ways in which you might do this. You can either imagine yourself doing this to test if that is all you need, or you can do it in reality and go through the tote again.
• One of the simplest yet sometimes most powerful ways of using the logical levels of change model to coach using questions to chalk up and shut down the levels to recognize in what ways you are, or are not, making a decision that is congruent.
• **Insert page 362**.
• One of the biggest influences we have as a coach is our belief in the person with whom we are working. If we cannot imagine the person we are coaching achieving the kind of outcomes they express, or if we cannot imagine them realizing any kind of higher potential, that we should not be coaching them.
• Coaching is not about facts, it is about processes and beliefs.
• We influence others by the beliefs we hold in them.
• How do you strengthen belief in others? Belief comes from our ability to imagine either ourselves or other people achieving outcomes. If we can see, hear and emotionally experience them realizing their dreams, that translates itself into a belief and we communicate this to them whatever we do and say.