NLP Articles and Reviews

Trainer Training | Review

2011-10-25T12:11:00.000-07:00

I completed my initial SNLP trainer training with McKenna Breen in London in 2000 and have been training Business NLP ever since. I was particularly pleased to revisit this training in Orlando with Richard Bandler and John La Valle from the 3^rd – 8^th March 2004, after attending Persuasion Engineering and Design Human Engineering.

There were about 140 delegates from a real cross section of countries: US, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, Korea, New Zealand, Turkey, United Kingdom, Ireland, Holland, Germany, Austria, Belgium, and Denmark etc. with some of the very best trainers and master trainers assisting.

The thrust of the training was to give delegates the attitude and skill set to be excellent NLP trainers and inspiring public speakers, and to put in the feedback mechanisms to continually improve their performance in these arenas.

There was simply too much packed in to the six days to give a detailed review, however there are some of the key points I noted. These are meant to be reminders and not complete descriptions. Each one is worth continued practice.

State

As with all NLP the trainer / practitioner leads with their state and attitude. A state where you had a ‘peak experience of influencing someone’ and a ‘this is going to be fun attitude’, is a good start.

Posture and Centrering

Normally stand at 45% to your audience. Centre yourself by imaging a shaft of light coming down from the top of your head and going down through your body to the floor. Start by focusing your attention about 2 inches below your navel.

Practice rotating your body at the hip bones. As you rotate to the left your right knee will bend and vice versa.

Breathing

Breathe! Practice breathing in enough so the out breath is automatic, practice using less words for each out breath so you have more ‘breath’ left. Normally speak from 2 inches below your navel. Remember you can use your voice to bathe your audience in sound.

Rhythm

Use rhythm, practice with a metronome. Speak between the beats. Practice moving your hips: left – centre – right – centre – left – etc to a metronome. Then imagine the beat in your hips without moving them.

Engaging the audience

Consider drawing the audience in by casting your eyes like a ‘Z’ across the back, diagonally, and across the front of the audience.

Mean the words

Express words to reflect their meaning, generally stretch vowels and soften constanants.

Use ambiguities

Appropriate use of ambiguities creates genuine humour and a more ‘open’ state in your audience. Practice writing out lists of ambiguities.

Anchoring

Remember you can anchor visually and auditorally. When you notice that the audience is in a useful state anchor it! Practice anchoring by changing a ‘cupped hand’ to a ‘flat hand’ or by leaving a ‘hand print’ on the imaginary wall surrounding your ‘presentation space’.

Spatial anchors and chaining anchors

If you want your audience to be able to, for example, move from an ‘anxiety state’ to a ‘wanton motivation state’, anchor a chain of states that will help them make this transition. Mark out areas of the stage for different states. For example from ‘anxiety to ‘mild confusion’ to ‘intrigue’ to ‘wanton motivation.’ Then fire the anchors in sequence. Remember you have to access each state yourself before can expect your audience to follow and that you need to ‘break state’ between states.

Stories and nested loops

Practice starting a story and then without finishing it start a second, a third and forth (or more). You can add a useful embedded command in the middle. Then finish the forth, then the third, second and first.
Now combine stories and spatial anchors, and the preceding bullets – remembering that your tempo needs to match the state and use a different voice for each story. And complete the whole sequence in 2-3 minutes!

As a separate point remember that the purpose of a demonstration can be to complete the exercise on every member of the audience using the demonstration subject as a point of focus.

And also remember the rumour that Richard and John install a phobia of public speaking at the beginning, so that they can then install highly successful strategies to overcome it…is just that …..a rumour!

The training was good for me because it enabled me to practice a number of new behaviours, with the back drop of Richard and John’s powerful stories, supported by some of the best very best NLP trainers around. Highly recommended for anyone wanting to develop their NLP training and presentation skills to large audiences.

NB Richard’s wife Paula died shortly before the training. Richard carried out the training demonstrating genuine courage and emotion, weaving in stories about Paula and the realisation that life is precious. A unique and moving experience.

Michael Beale

Stephen Gilligan Trance Camp | Review

2011-10-25T12:07:00.000-07:00

I was particularly pleased to be able to take part in the first week of Dr Stephen Gilligan’s ‘Trance Camp’ starting on the 6th July 2003 at the Quails Inn resort, San Marcos, nr San Diego.

The reason was a mixture of simple curiosity and a desire to improve my hypnotic and NLP skills. Stephen was one of the original group of Richard Bandler, John Grinder, Leslie Cameron, Judy Delozier, Frank Pucilek, David Gordon et al, who were around at the time NLP was born. John Grinder mentioned Stephen at his recent London New Code NLP training.

Stephen was one of people to model Milton Erickson and in fact left his NLP colleagues to become a true long term Erickson student. He comments that one of Erickson gifts was the idea of utilisation -'that anything could be used for positive growth, no matter how sick, crazy and unaesthetic it may appear'.

Having fairly recently been to seminars with both John and Richard, I was again struck with the similarity of what they were all saying, albeit with different styles. If I had to compare the difference with a few describing words they would that Stephen was slower, deeper and more generative.

It's difficult to pick out specifics from the week however I was drawn to the to one of his basic concepts:

Identity is the basic distinction of self
Trance is the naturalistic learning state activated whenever identity is disrupted, and within which identity is re-generated
Hypnosis and therapy are forms of ritual space that provide a container for trance experience to be useful

Also the basic energies (states?) for the practitioner to weave are:

Tenderness
Fierceness
Playfulness

One example of a simple exercise that I found useful was this utilisation exercise. The addition of the feedback or receiving back step makes it significantly more effective.

Pacing statement (“This is so” - eg "You're sitting in a chair")
Pacing statement (“This is so” - eg "and you may have noticed the carpet is blue")
Pacing statement (“This is so” - eg "and you're listening to what I'm saying")
Leading statement (“This can be so” - "and you're beginning to feel really comfortable")
Receiving back (“And what are you aware of now”)
Feeding back feedback (“And you’re aware of X”)
Repeat!

I can report that I felt comfortable that I had clearly achieved by own objectives during the week. That I had both improved my own NLP and hypnotic skills, and thoroughly recommend 'trancecamp' to anyone with similar objectives.

Stephen has an excellent website with more information for those interested. I can also recommend his book 'Therapeutic trances' for those interested in Erickson hypnotherapy.

Highly recommended.

NLP and Sales Success

2011-10-25T11:55:00.000-07:00

This article was written after attending persuasion engineeringTM by Richard Bandler and John La Valle.

NLP can improve almost every one’s sales performance. There are many ways that you can use NLP to improve sales.

We have produced the following checklist to remind you of some of the elements.

We suggest that careful practice is needed to build them into your own buying/sales cycles and achieve the best results.

Basic sales cycle

Get attention
Establish Rapport and gather information
Package presentation
Inoculate against objections and test for close
Close & future pace and build in prospecting

Sales and nlp skills

State
Rapport
Value statements
Fact finding questions
Identifying criteria
Intonation
Anchoring
Presenting back and story telling
Tag questions
Handling objections
Closing
Build in prospecting

NB Less is often more …….it can be as easy as …….induce good state ……..introduce product or service……..close………....SHUT UP.

State

You lead with your state

What’s the best state to be in? For you and the situation – Curious, powerful, interested, confused, empowering etc. They all have their place – you chose. Practice!!

Rapport

Remember pace and lead. You can match, mirror to a greater or lesser extent – but keep it natural. We’ve found matching voice speed – and to a lesser extent pitch and tone, the most useful. Where appropriate use your customers exact words.

Value statements

When you have to get a message across quickly i.e. in a cold call or meeting the CEO in a lift – play with the following sentence structure. Keep the structure but change the content.

I can increase your (adjective) market share by 5%. (Adverb)

E.g. I can increase your profitable market share by 5%. Quickly.

E.g. I can reduce your key sales cycle by 25%. Easily.

E.g. I can reduce your average product lead-time by 5 days. Safely.

Remember when developing slightly longer value propositions include both ‘toward’ and ‘away’ from motivation;

E.g. Increasing your service package will both increase your efficiency and reduce the frustration of long down time.

The best value statements are developed with successful customers!

Fact finding questions

If in doubt ask! What do you really need to know to progress the sale? It can be really useful to refine your questions simply by asking ‘What am I really trying to find out?’ If your question fudges it, refine it.

Being able to ask ‘difficult questions’ is a key sales skill.

Continually update your own list of key questions

Identifying your customers criteria

Ask “ What’s important to you about in buying X?”

“What does that give you?”

“Anything else?”

Listen to your customer’s exact words including their ‘needs’ ‘wants’ and ‘likes’ for each criteria. Note towards and away from motivation. Note strong sensory words.

Continually update your own master list of possible customer criteria.

Anchoring

Remember you can anchor using touch, voice tone and/or looking at a point (among other things).

E.g. you could look at the floor at the left when you mentioned anything bad, including any competition (care though!).

Intonation

Remember

Questions tone up
Statements tone flat
Commands tone down

Presenting and storytelling

The object is to relate your product and service to your customers stated criteria. Use story telling to appeal to identified emotional issues.

E.g. I’m wondering if you’re nervous about going ahead. It’s interesting that when I was discussing this with x, he felt really concerned. Infact he almost pulled out at the last minute – If you speak to him now he’s really happy about his decision.

Keep your eyes and ears open for (true) stories.

Tag questions

To:

Inoculate against objections
Test for close
Build yes sets
Build response potential

e.g.

"wouldn't it"

"aren't you"

"wasn't it"

"won't you"

"aren't you"

"wasn't it"

Useful when used sparingly

Handling Objections

Inoculation

Build up a list of your likely objections. The best place to answer them is pro-actively as part of your presentation. You can inoculate against specific objections. Puts the odds in your favour!

“Would you believe it I had a potential customer try to negotiate our prices down, he had absolutely know understanding of the real benefits over the investment, amazing how he thought he could waste my time – isn’t it?

Ignore

Yes, just carry on; your customer will bring it up again if important!

Out-frame

Ask a question for clarification offering 2 alternatives.

E.g. where do you want to be in 5-years?

In my professional or personal life?

E.g. it’s too expensive?

Are you questioning its value or how much you can afford to pay at the moment?

Fog

Agree with your customer. Then ask a question.

E.g. You’re right. Ask a question.

E.g. Maybe you’re right. Ask a question.

E.g. Perhaps you’re right. Ask a question.

Final Objection

E.g. if we could find a location you’d be happy with you’d go ahead – wouldn’t you?

Close

You have to know where you are!

Test close

“I’m wondering whether you’re ready to go ahead yet?” Just wait for and acknowledge the response.

Other ideas

“What do we need to do to move this forward”

“Are you going for the 10week or the 6 week option?”

“Mastercard or Visa?”

“Have you already thought about it or would you like to decide now”?

Remember you either move the sale forward or move on!

Building in prospecting

Whatever happens as a minimum ask something like

“I’ve really enjoyed this – tell me who else do you know that I ought to talk to?

Michael Beale

New Code NLP | Review

2011-10-25T11:47:00.000-07:00

A review of John Grinder and Carmen Bostic St Clair's 4-day 'New code NLP seminar' from 3rd-6th April 2003 in London

I was particularly looking forward to attending the above seminar having heard a lot about John, being a co-founder of NLP and yet having no particular expectations of what to expect.

Curiously enough while the reality surprised me - it was exactly like I would have expected had I thought about it. In fact I could sum it up by saying the course gave some really good quality, precise, exceptionally well delivered NLP training and practice - a useful refinement, without anything particularly new. The exception being some useful distinctions and some stories about Erickson, Bandler and Gilligan that I hadn't heard before.

Carmen didn't really work for me. In the end I found walking down some really attractive London streets, appreciating the buildings, listening to the muted weekend sounds and feeling the warmth of the spring sunshine more appealing - however many appeared to enjoy her sessions.
In summary the course gave:

Some useful distinctions in using NLP
Good techniques to practice/use
A model of excellent NLP training
A chance to talk to John himself

Some useful distinctions in using NLP
The key point I remember was John's view of not setting specific conscious outcomes in personal change work. The idea is that the unconscious is much better at this, and therefore the emphasis is on providing additional resources to help the unconscious choose the best outcome*. (*Note you need to set outcomes in business work!!)

In 'true' NLP modelling, the modeller takes on board the new skill set without consciously working out what he/she should be doing - Too much conscious thinking will create filters which interfere with the process. The test and initial feedback loop is that the modeller carry out the new skill on a third party.

Good NLP techniques
We covered 'new code' NLP when I took my own practitioner course several years ago, however it was only after this course that I understood some of their strength and have included them in some of my own trainings. Two examples include 'stalking' and 'physiological walking'.
These are just two examples are what I've taken on board and use, what follows is what I remember and use - it may be different to what was actually demonstrated:

Stalking
For use when a client slowly 'sinks' into a less than useful state without noticing it. By the time he's noticed it its hard to get out.

Practitioner ask client to develop a 'resource' or 'sanctuary' state and anchor it to a specific location on the floor. Practitioner asks the client to take a step to a different position.

Practitioner asks the client to imagine the 'less than useful state' in a position on the floor away from the sanctuary state. He is asked to notice what he sees and hears in that state. (Without actually walking over to that position).

Practitioner asks the client to walk towards the 'less than useful' state as if he was stalking it. As soon as he starts to be influenced in any way by that state he is to rush back to the 'sanctuary state'. Repeat two more times. (ie he will not actually reach the negative state.)
In the future the client is likely to notice the approach of the 'less than useful state' and can choose to avoid it.

Physiological walking
For use when a client wants more resources in any situation.
Practitioner asks client to see and hear himself in the situation he wants more resource in, in a location a few feet away. He is then asked to come up with 3 additional states to help him.
Practitioner asks client to walk and coaches client to release any tension and move his physiology to achieve the 3 additional states. Walking as many times across the room as needed. NB pay particular attention to breathing.

Practitioner asks client to look at the situation he needs more resource and notice what he sees and hears differently.

In the future the client is likely to find he has more resources in the original situation and can use this technique himself in many other situations.

NB in both techniques the practitioners main role is to be aware of the clients physiology and state and coach as required.

Model of excellent NLP training

John has obviously learnt a lot about NLP training over the last 30 years and it shows. I was taken by the similarity to Richard rather than the difference. In the way he used anchoring, voice tone and stories, and the way he worked with the audience.

The experience was a pleasure. A chance to talk to John himself

John was extremely approachable and eager to answer individual questions in breaks and coffee time. In fact an ideal model for anyone wanting to socialise in business gatherings.

Michael Beale

Meditation | Building Resilience

2011-10-25T11:39:00.000-07:00

Meditation can be a very useful skill and practice for anyone involved in any activity or role which needs focus and clarity. It can significantly reduce 'excess' stress.

There are four basic components necessary to successful meditation:

A quiet environment
A mental device, usually a sound, word or phrase repeated silently to help break the train of distracting thoughts
A passive attitude. Adopt a 'let it happen' attitude. Distracting thoughts will happen but do not worry about them. Also don't worry about how well you are performing the technique. A passive attitude is probably the most important element in successful meditation.
A comfortable position, (not lying down - sleep is not meditation) with a straight back that encourages good breathing

The most straightforward meditation / relaxation technique (of many) is as follows:

Sit quietly in a comfortable position
Close your eyes
Deeply relax all your muscles, beginning at your feet and progressing to your face. Keep them relaxed
Breathe through your nose. Become aware of your breathing. As you breathe out say the word 'one' silently to yourself. For example, breathe in ...out, 'one'; in....out, 'one' etc. Breathe easily and naturally.
Continue for 10 to 20 minutes. You may open your eyes to check the time , but do not use an alarm. When you finish sit quietly for several moments, at first with your eyes closed and later with your eyes opened. Do not stand up for a few moments
BE COMFORTABLE WHATEVER STATE OF RELAXATION YOU DO OR DO NOT ACHIEVE, with practice relaxation will come easily. It is recommended that you practice once or twice a day, but not within 2-hours of any meal as the digestive processes seem to interfere with meditation

Michael Beale

NLP and Leadership | Laura Lewin

2011-10-25T11:34:00.000-07:00

NLP has a lot to offer individuals who wish to develop their leadership skills. The following ideas gives some clues about leadership and some tools and ideas that we hope will be useful to you.

Why is leadership so important?

Leadership, in a nutshell, is about creating a compelling vision and motivating people to achieve it. Businesses that don’t have this capability, can’t hope to survive in today’s turbulent economy. For this reason more and more businesses are focusing on developing their leaders.

But leadership is key for everyone – for individuals in terms of how they lead their own lives, through to political leaders rallying support for radical, global change.

Can leadership be learnt?

We believe so. Certainly there are mountains of theories and tactics about how to lead. And many of these can be learnt from books and in business schools. But we don’t believe that acquiring these skills or knowledge is what makes the real difference.

Many leaders share characteristics, but no characteristic is true of all leaders, except the fact that they all have followers. What attracts people to follow others are how they make them feel, and this is where NLP can help you to develop your true leadership potential.

If it can be learnt, where do I start, it seems such a muddled topic?
To get a grip on leadership, it’s helpful to think of it as an onion and explore each layer:

Leading yourself
Leading your team
Leading organisations
Leading yourself – the heart of the matter

Fundamental to leading yourself is learning to live ‘at cause’ rather than ‘at effect’. This means taking responsibility for the results you get from what you do, and recognising that if you want different results, you need to do something different - only you can change! Others can be influenced, but not changed directly.

Part of learning to live at cause is choosing to be in a resourceful state when you need to be. ‘State Management’ is core to NLP and there are many techniques for allowing you to ‘access’ states that were useful to you in the past so that you can use them in the present.

One of the key tools is ‘anchoring’ and it’s hugely beneficial to leaders to be able to draw on positive experiences to help them handle difficult situations in the present.

To get an idea of this, think about an experience that represents your ‘personal best’ as a leader. Think about the underlying themes – what factors, resources or strategies helped create this achievement? What was special about that situation – what you believed about it – that led you to this extraordinary achievement? Can you really get back into that experience and remember what you felt, saw and hear? If you can, then next time you need to feel more resourceful in a leadership situation, you can draw on this memory or ‘anchor’ and become more resourceful on the spot.

In addition, you may be able to influence the situations you find yourself in to recreate the beliefs you had that led you to extraordinary performance. If you understand what brings about the best in you and create more of those situations you will find it easier to lead yourself.

Learning to live ‘at cause’ and being able to select ‘resource states’ when you need them will help you achieve many things. However, to satisfy yourself, you need to select courses of action that are in line with your values. If you don’t things will be ‘incongruent’ and decisions and actions may ‘feel uncomfortable’.

Getting clear about your values isn’t straightforward, and values do change over time. But to get started, take a decision of major importance in your life (such as getting married or moving house) and ask yourself what led you to make that decision – what did you want it to get for you?

If you do this with several major decisions, several decisions of medium importance (where you chose to go on holiday) and several minor decisions (what you ate for lunch yesterday!) you will build up a picture of the values that drive you.

Once you are clear about what’s important to you as an individual, you will be in a position to create a personal vision that honours these values.

With this in mind, you can give your goals some POWER:

Goals that are ‘well-formed’ are much more likely to be achieved than those that aren’t. The following model will help you create well-formed outcomes:

Positive: what you do want rather than what you don’t

Own it: What can you do to influence or initiative this?

What will it look like, sound like, feel like, taste like and smell like – make it sensory specific

Ecology: What are the wider consequences of achieving this goal? Are there any downsides? If so, how can you refine the goal to eliminate the disadvantages?

Route: What is the first step? What’s the next step? What will the last step be?

If you can master these skills you are well on your way to creating the personal foundations which will enable you to lead others.

Leading your team

When leaders are at their best, they Challenge, Inspire, Enable others to act, Model the way, and Encourage the heart. This model, developed by Kouzes and Posner following extensive research, builds on useful NLP tools.

Challenge the process: Sometimes leading means initiating change and sometimes it means accepting a challenge that others might have overlooked or ignored.

Either way, people who lead need to take risks and innovate. This either means creating new ideas or recognising and supporting new ideas and challenging the system to turn these ideas into action. Most important technological breakthroughs were not initially recognised as good ideas (e.g. personal computers) – remember this the next time someone comes to you with a ‘crazy’ idea!

Inspire: Creating a picture of a positive future is essential if people are going to join together in achieving a collective goal. Often people think this comes down to inspirational speeches, but leaders find all interactions moments to inspire whether they are one on one or with large groups.

Some useful ideas about how to do this do come from looking at inspirational language used by great leaders however. And there are many examples that that have led to major changes in mass behaviour.

One of the best examples is Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. Unpicking the constituents of his speech reveals why his speech was so influential:

It was vivid – he used lots of images and word pictures and people could see the examples.

People could relate to the examples - they were familiar

He appealed to people’s values and common beliefs

He used repetition and was positive and hopeful

He started using the term “I” and changed to “we” halfway through

He spoke with passion and emotion and his words felt highly congruent – he was personally convinced

As you think about the future you want for your team and organisation, how can you use these tips to make the way you talk to people more compelling? Not just in group situations, but one on one.

And can you frame your own personal vision in terms that are compelling to you too?

Try some of these things out next time you have an opportunity.

Enable Others To Act: When your team has understood and taken on a shared vision of the future, you need to enable them to deliver for you. Coaching is becoming a core competence for leaders today, to help them deliver through others.

A simple model which builds on NLP tools is the ROME model.
R=Rapport. Until you have built effective rapport your coaching efforts will probably be wasted
O=Outcome: Are you clear about what their outcome is for the coaching? And what about yours? Are they well formed i.e. in the POWER format? And do they dovetail?
M=Method: What is the best method for coaching them? What resources will you need?
E=Evaluation: How will you review their progress against the outcomes?
As well as setting up the direction for people, you need to think about how you delegate to them.

Challenge turns work from a chore into an adventure, but too much challenge creates stress. Instead of relying on carrots and sticks to motivate people, think about how can you provide your team with unique opportunities to discover learn and grow – opportunities where they can work in a ‘flow’ state: not bored and not over stretched.

And think about the impact you have on them each time you interact with them. Do you know what happens when they think about you, are they energised or demotivated? If you don’t know, then ask them – and take responsibility for changing things if you don’t get the answer you want!

All the above things are easier if you have built good relationships with your team. But good relationships aren’t necessarily about ‘liking’ people, they are about two-way communication.

If NLP is about anything, it’s about helping people communicate more effectively – try the following ideas on for size: how would you behave if you believed that “The meaning of what I said is what is understood” or “ you cannot not communicate”. These presuppositions of NLP help people take responsibility for their experiences and, we believe, make them more effective.

Modelling the way: Leaders who say one thing and do another have little credibility and rarely generate willing followership. Take some time to evaluate how consistent your behaviour is with what you’ve identified as your values.

Pay particular attention to your diary and time management – how well does what you are scheduled to do over the next month reflect what you say you believe is important? If it doesn’t match, how can you change what’s on your agenda? You can even ask your team what they think is important to you – if they can’t tell you, they won’t know how to please you!

Encourage the Heart: Unless you show people how you value their efforts motivation will wane. There are a whole host of ways to recognise individual contributions to the success of every project. And one of the most simple is to say thank you and provide feedback. It’s also well known that the thing most people want from their bosses is to understand how well they are doing, which means providing constructive feedback as well as acknowledging what people do well.

Ask yourself how often you praise people. If you find this straightforward, ask yourself if you ever find reasons not to help people improve their performance?

Create a plan to rebalance things if they need it.

Leading organisations – creating mass followership

Leading larger groups of people requires all the skills covered in the first two ‘layers’ of leadership – leading yourself and your team. To succeed in today’s business environment, leaders also need to ensure that their vision for their group includes becoming more flexible and faster when reacting to the market.

In addition, leaders need to understand how to relate to stakeholders and build partnerships in new ways. In today’s business environment, clients are sometimes also competitors, and the people who contribute to the success of the firm are not always directly employed by the business.

And as a firm, you still need to be able to identify commercial opportunities and take calculated risks. To be an effective leader, you don’t need to necessarily cover the spectrum of competencies yourself.

We believe that if you are skilled in the foundations of NLP, lead your own life according to a set of principles and can motivate a team, you are probably equipped to select and motivate a group of people who have the diversity of skills to complement yours. By inspiring a team who collectively have the skills to succeed in today’s economy, and sharing that vision with the wider set of stakeholders, you will have set yourself up for success as an inspirational leader.

Summary

Isn’t all of this common sense?

Hopefully. Although it’s amazing how little common sense seems to be around when things get tough. Truly awesome leaders know that success comes from engaging hearts and minds. Yet many people still get caught up the more tangible aspects of business such as the financial aspects and underestimate the value in the long term of effective relationships.

We believe that NLP is the very best set of tools for developing leaders and we hope the ideas detailed here are useful. If you have questions or comments about any of the ideas raised, please contact us a PPI.

Similarly, if you would like to lean more about the techniques and how to apply them in your own environment, feel free to e-mail us and we will do our best to help.

Laura Lewin.

John Grinder Coaching Course | Review

2011-10-25T11:24:00.000-07:00

I was lucky enough to attend John and Carmen’s 5 day (plus one day’s accreditation) coaching seminar in Croydon on the 26-30^th November 2004 with about 50 delegates. I was particular interested in this particular seminar because in addition to John being an NLP co-founder both John and Carmen have a track record in business coaching. I was also looking for any ideas to improve our own coaching training.

It was a great learning experience which is a reflection not only on John and Carmen but also on the NLP Academy and the other delegates. Having five days to model John was great; having five days to practice coaching with open feedback was also great. Unlike the ‘new code’ seminar I stayed for Carmen’s sessions. What follows is my recollections of some of the key points as I remember them; I’m not claiming they’re accurate and they’re not comprehensive but I hope they’re useful.

As a preamble I’ll say that all learning in the context of coaching is experiential; what’s important is noticing (hearing and feeling?) what works. I’ll also quote John quoting Gregory Bateson, “The logic of unconscious process is profoundly different from the logic of conscious process; it’s the collision of these two processes which is the basis of creativity and art.” For the sake of this article I’m concentrating on some of the conscious logic; use your experience or come to the next seminar to fill in the rest!

Headings

Two types of coaches

Some characteristics of excellent coaching

Coach’s purpose

Phases of coaching

Bostic–Grinder Coaching Model

The purpose of tasking

Some neat exercises

Accreditation

Two types of coaches

Some coaches are experts at what they do and their feedback against what works is invaluable; some aren’t and therefore have to manage the process – which in a different way can be a significant advantage

Having knowledge of the context or being an ‘expert’ can give additional rapport

Some characteristics of excellent coaching

It’s a learning process for both the coached and the coach

You do not build a dependency

Set up an agreement that the person coached may be asked to do a task without understanding the reason why

Nothing happens without rapport – defined in this instance as having the full conscious and more importantly the unconscious attention of the individual being coached

Effective change occurs at the level of ‘state’ rather than ‘behaviour’.

Explanation can hinder change

Coach’s purpose

Elicit

Define

Refine

Challenge

Facilitate, assist but not (necessarily) give solutions

Phases of coaching

Gain rapport/contract

Establish frame

Elicit information

Create action plan

Get commitment

Follow up

Bostic-Grinder coaching model (as a guide)

Elicit information

Working goal

Is goal ecological for coach or client?

Goal’s intention

How many ways can this be satisfied?

Graphically or spatially represent options

If the client were to choose X, would they commit to an action plan

Negative and positive consequences of X

Sensory representations of X

Test – summarise and check congruency

Commit to action to plan (could use Smart goals)

Commitment (could use unconscious signals)

The purpose of tasking

A task set by the coach which will provide a counter example to the clients limiting belief/value

For example a man shy of talking to women could be asked to complete market research in a women’s store; the task could be a game or a specific NLP technique

Some neat exercises in 3’s

Client talks too much – how many pattern interrupts can you use?

Client doesn’t know what he/she wants – how many interventions can you use?

Client doesn’t want to explain content – agree a metaphor with client; discuss options and solutions using the metaphor

Coach and observer work as one – Observer tells the coach which technique (or part of a technique) to use in real time and the coach executes it. The observer is responsible for ‘strategy’ the coach for ‘execution’.

Accreditation

In 3’s the client and coach were briefed separately, the observer wrote a brief report on what happened. Results collated with John and Carmen’s observations. Delegates were either accredited or had to come back to demonstrate proficiency in something they hadn’t shown proficiency in yet.

After thoughts

A great learning experience; I recommend John (and Richard) to anyone who wants to develop their NLP attitudes, modelling skills and techniques.

The oddest thing was listening to John tell a story that I normally associate with Richard; I’m sure the voice was the same…..

Highly recommended

Michael Beale

NLP Training | Protecting your Investment

2011-10-25T11:14:00.000-07:00

I often hear companies say "people are our greatest asset". What I think they really mean to say is "knowledge is our greatest asset" but they believe knowledge to be irretrievably locked within the heads of people.

Over the years, many methods have been developed to transfer this knowledge. When we can see what people do to perform a simple task, we replicate the task and make people practice it. This is called training. Sometimes, the knowledge is less physical.

We communicate the theory using a variety of symbols and metaphors and call it teaching. Sometimes, we let inexperienced people stand next to experienced people for a long time and hope that something valuable rubs off. We call this mentoring.

None of these methods has, in the past, been perfect. One of the key reasons for this which is only just finding its way into the learning industry is that people learn in much more individual and unique ways than has ever been realised before.

Of course, throughout history, the best teachers have known this intuitively and have exploited it. One great way to leverage the individuality of learners is through stories, as stories tie into those unique mental processes and generate a powerful and individual learning experience for each listener. The best teachers have always been good storytellers, but unfortunately the training boom of the 1970s and 1980s suppressed and trivialised the power of stories, because we couldn't see how they worked and they didn't seem to be appropriate in a business context.

Thankfully, things have moved on considerably. The business environment is not what it was 20 years ago. The time has come for a learning revolution. We, as individuals, can demand more and expect more. We have tasted the power of knowledge.

Companies cannot exist without knowledge. The people in positions of real power in organisations are not always the managers but are often the good networkers - the communication hubs.

People who know where to get things, how to get things done, who to go to for what you need. You have probably experienced this yourself - someone who doesn't have a terribly important job title but who seems to know everything about the workings of the organisation.

This learning revolution is bringing with it an increasing demand for training in the basic human skills - communication, personal management, influence, creating change, flexibility, resourcefulness, empathy and so on. Where do you get training in these disciplines? Traditionally, before corporate training came along, you would go and find masters who were outstanding in these fields of human ability and learn from them.

The good news is that there's a short cut. A group of people have already distilled and refined the knowledge that makes up personal mastery. They called it Neuro Linguistic Programming, which shows that you can't get everything right. Perhaps in the future they'll also distil the knowledge of people who are good with brand names.

NLP training provides an excellent foundation for improving the effectiveness of everyone in your organisation. NLP training taps into the uniqueness of each learner and enables them to create their own powerful tools for selling, presenting, negotiating, managing, changing, leading and learning - in fact, all of the skills that underpin the success of your organisation.

NLP is the operating system that your people build their own applications upon. In my experience, everyone who attends a NLP course takes away something unique and powerful - the ability to adapt what they have learned to their own skills, needs and responsibilities.

The question is, how do you continue to develop this? How do you protect this investment in learning, people and knowledge?

Why are cars with main dealer service histories worth more? Why do companies buy maintenance services? Why do world class sports players still practice every week? The answer is that regular maintenance protects the original investment.

Are you running the latest operating system on your PC? Does your company upgrade it regularly? Why would your company spend money on operating software? It doesn't do anything! Whether you use Windows or MacOS or any other operating system, it doesn't actually do anything useful for you, the user.

The operating system lets you run other applications - software that allows you to write letters, draw pictures and add up numbers. These are useful tasks because they extend your capability as a human being.

Consider this. A PC cannot do anything that you cannot already do. You can write, you can draw and you can add up. A PC can often do it faster and more consistently, but it cannot do anything that you can't do. Based on this thinking, it's a wonder that anyone buys PCs at all, yet they do.

Can you imagine life without a PC? Can you imagine life without telephones or cars? These technologies are all enablers. They extend your capabilities. NLP is an enabling technology - it enables you to extract the maximum performance from yourself.

Protecting your investment in knowledge is easy, once you realise that practising the basics is the way to achieve high performance.

When you run a NLP training program in your organisation, you must accept that the days spent in the classroom are the start of the process. NLP is about life, about people. Every moment of every day is an opportunity for people to develop their skills.

Give people specific opportunities to get together and celebrate their learning. Provide learning support groups and practice groups at lunchtimes and evenings to help people develop their skills more and more. Lifelong learning isn't about going on lots of training courses, it's about providing opportunities for people to satisfy their hunger for knowledge.

A learning organisation isn't a place where focus groups meet to discuss feedback forms. It isn't a place where there are suggestion boxes in the tea rooms. It isn't a place where people are afraid to ask customers "why did you buy from us?" in case they change their minds. Many organisations want to investigate what went wrong, but few ever ask what goes right. You might even think some organisations are afraid of knowledge.

If knowledge is power then people are batteries. NLP turns them into power stations.

NLP and Cold Calling

2011-10-25T11:10:00.000-07:00

The other day, I received this email from a recruitment consultant:

"I would just like to say a BIG, BIG thanks, I feel totally transformed, my 'phone fear' has disappeared. Its really quite weird, but I don't hesitate to pick the phone and ring people, in the past 10 days I've picked up 4-5 briefs. When I see an opportunity I just grab it.

I've noticed a big difference in my day too, I just don't know where the hours go, and I wish there were longer hours in the day to fit everything in. This will make you laugh, the last few days I've had lots of admin work, and haven't been able to get on the phone, I actually heard myself saying that 'I wish I was on the phone more' can you believe it?"

What would it be like if you felt the same way about your sales calls? Now, in order for you to be succeeding at your job, you must already be making sales calls, so I'm not talking about teaching you the basics here. I'm presuming you already do make calls, but maybe you tidy your desk, answer your emails and make a cup of coffee before you get yourself into the right mood. Maybe you stop after ten calls instead of stopping when the clients have all gone home. Maybe you make it harder for yourself than it needs to be.

Maybe you already love sales calls and you're already getting great results, in which case – why are you reading this? Get on the phone!

So, I'm presuming that you're reading this because you'd like to get the same results as the person who wrote that email. The good news is that this can happen very quickly. The longest this has ever taken was about an hour, the shortest about 10 seconds.

But how? Well, the exact process varies from one person to the next because every person I've ever worked with creates this situation in a slightly different, unique way – and so will you. Having said that, there are some general principles and patterns that I can tell you about that you can use right away to improve your approach and therefore your results.

Firstly, stop cold calling. It's difficult, time consuming and produces poor results. Instead, spend some time each day calling people you haven't spoken to before and finding out how you can help them.

Secondly, At the moment you pick up the phone to dial, what picture pops into your head? What does the voice in your head say? Do you begin your call by apologising, or does your voice tone demonstrate the pride you take in your job? Just work through these simple steps, giving yourself time to think this through very carefully:

Imagine yourself sitting at your desk at the time you would begin making sales calls. As you imagine starting to dial, what picture pops into your head. Specifically, whose picture? If you find sales calls consistently difficult, I'm guessing the picture is of someone you don't have much in common with who doesn't look pleased to hear from you.

If you find calls randomly difficult, I'm guessing there's no coherent picture. In either case, that's good news.

Next, imagine you're about to call your best friend or someone you like very, very much. You know exactly what I mean. As you dial, what picture pops into your mind? Now, stop and think about yourself – are you smiling? Are you sitting upright? Are you dialling eagerly? When you speak, does your tone of voice reflect this?

So, if you imagine someone who doesn't want to talk to you, simply imagine reaching out and grabbing the picture, screwing it into a ball and throwing it over your shoulder. Then simply draw a new picture of someone who looks like you, who you have something in common with and who looks pleased to hear from you, or at least open minded. Imagine calling that person and notice how your voice tone is different.

Practice this a few times, just repeating the process over and over. Imagine starting to dial, see the face of someone you want to talk to, hear your positive voice tone, notice how that feels nice to talk to someone who enjoys talking to you.

Thirdly, what do you say to yourself before, during and after the call? If it's in any way critical that's not helping. Often, the voice in your head has really valuable feedback but you don't hear it because it just sounds like nagging or criticism. Think again about sitting down to make your calls and this time pay attention to what you are saying to yourself.

Change the voice tone to something more neutral, like a news reader, or to a voice that you like – even something sexy! Now, listen to what the voice tells you – is the information more useful? You can also ask questions back. If the voice is critical, say "Thankyou! Now, how does that information help me?" or "Thankyou! Now, what do you suggest I do differently?" Oddly enough, you'll find the same approach works very well with that person in the office who always offers you helpful criticism.

Last of all, you can't really control what happens during each call as you are not in control of the person at the other end. They might be busy or tired and you know the importance of respecting their state. So, no matter how each call goes, it's important to treat each call as if it's your first. There are many ways that you can quickly control your state, and the simplest for our purposes here is through your focus of attention.

Think of a time in the past when you felt really confident and in control of yourself. Remember that time in all the detail you can, recalling what you saw, heard and felt. Maybe you even remember some smells and tastes. When you have all that, think of a word, colour or piece of music that seems to represent it. Repeat this a few times so that the trigger becomes associated with the feeling. Now, in between calls simply replay the trigger and your state will switch to the confident, in control state.

After you have practiced all this for a day and then slept on it, your brain will build it into an unconscious calling routine for you so you won't even have to think in order to get good results.

What's this based on? The principle that you are already following an unconscious process which is working perfectly for you. The process is fine but the results need a little tweak. By taking conscious control over the process and making some slight adjustments, you'll find that you can get surprising results, very quickly. How quickly? You'll only find out by finding out!

Coaching | An Introduction by David Stitt

2011-10-25T11:02:00.000-07:00

Coaching is a way of helping individuals, teams and companies improve their performance by getting them to identify and act upon the things that are holding them back. It's also about helping people broaden their view of a situation so as to enable more choice in how they respond.

For example, if someone has worked in a particularly adversarial organisation for many years, their first and often only response is to write an aggressive contractual letter - 'first line of defence is attack'. Coaching would help that individual open their perspective, get clear on what they really wanted to achieve, identify options and then choose the most appropriate approach.

A coaching management style involves more communication and support and less command and control. The idea is to help people solve their own problems (Pull) as opposed to solving someone's problem for them (Push).

Why use coaching?

The World/ industry is changing so we need more intelligent ways of getting the best out of our resources. People are our most precious and I would say most under-utilised resource. Often I felt that my company was only getting about 30% of my potential even though I was working hard, long-hours and doing my best. I had so much more to offer but didn't have the time as my job included all kinds of hassles, hurdles and interferences. What if I am representative? - The construction industry employs 2 million people!

What is currently hindering your performance?

Also, we now have a more intelligent workforce; when I graduated in the early-eighties I was told I was in the top 5% - 20 years on many more people graduate and apparently the Government is on track to raise that percentage to 50% by 2010. This more intelligent workforce is less inclined to put up with being pushed around and told what to do - they simply leave and find another job or career!

What is your company's current staff turnover level?

Given the chance many people will find the easiest and most effective way of getting their job done - the coach manager spends far less time telling people what to do, motivating them to do it and checking on their progress, timekeeping, quality of work etc.

How much of your time (and stress) is spent checking for compliance?

When to use coaching?

Any time and all the time - for problem solving, organising and chairing or participating in meetings, improving team performance or helping operatives out on site increase their productivity, safety and quality of work. For example, ask a bricklayer what's getting in his way/ holding him back and how he can overcome it, then listen to his response and help him bring about the necessary change.

Who can use coaching (effectively)?

Anyone who is committed to their personal growth and the success of other people.

How to coach

Ask open questions (what, when, where, who - about facts) and listen to the response - feedback the response to the person being coached to gain clarity.

Then ask more probing questions (how much, how often, how many, what else, what if) to open up options. Ask the person/ group to weigh up the options and decide on their way forward. Follow their interest and use their words - try to avoid the why question as it provokes a defensive response.

The basic coaching process is to ask questions and actively listen - there are many more techniques that build on this foundation.

Where to find out more?

There are many good books on the subject though for starters I would suggest:

Coaching for Performance by John Whitmore ISBN 185788 1702

The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey ISBN 033029 5136

Alternatively there are organisations that run coaching programmes - check out the Web, talk to a few and then get into action.

Dave Stitt (FCIOB) has led change and improvement programmes for major contractors and now runs his own performance coaching company, DSA Building Performance.

Contact dsabuilding@btopenworld.com or visit www.dsabuilding.co.uk

Alpha Leadership Course | Review

2011-10-25T10:52:00.000-07:00

A review of the NLP Alpha Leadership in Coaching course, February 2003-02-12

Having read the Alpha Leadership website but not the book and having read and heard about the work of Robert Dilts, I have to admit that I was very keen to see Dilts in action, but less clear about what Alpha Leadership was, is or will be. I think that this open minded approach actually helped because the course focussed more on coaching leaders than on the leadership model in itself.

Before I begin, you probably want to know more about Alpha Leadership itself. For the past 20 years or so, Robert Dilts has been studying, modelling and just hanging around with a whole range of outstanding people. One of the things that interested Dilts was the notion of "leadership" and specifically, what makes an outstanding leader.

Robert Dilts then got together with Anne Deering and Julian Russell to turn this experience of leadership into a model, a book and a training course aimed at developing leadership potential. Actually, the main body of the course was aimed at people who develop people with leadership potential, as you'll see later.

So, Alpha Leadership is a model of leadership ability. It can be replicated by anyone who wants to develop themselves and it really lends itself well to developing leaders who are strong in one area of the model yet weak in another. Like any model, it's true without being accurate so you may or may not agree with any of the specific elements. Having said that, it strikes me as a neat model and one that's easy to understand, remember and apply - and that makes it practical and useful which is, for me, the most important thing.

The model breaks leadership into three areas; Anticipate, Align and Act. Clearly, if you want a detailed description of the model you should buy the book or visit www.alphaleaders.com to learn more. The names of the three broad areas are really self explanatory so I'll just add that within each area there are three further distinctions of the behavioural elements of great leadership.

Throughout the course, the three "trainers" used the practice of training horses as a metaphor for leadership. Essentially, authoritarian, dictatorial leadership was likened to the traditional practice of "horse breaking" where a horse is forced into submission.

Horse breaking takes a few days to reach the first milestone in the training program. Recently, a controversial approach to horse training has appeared which, like all radical ideas, actually seems like a return to traditional methods. This new approach, called "Horse Whispering" involves the trainer understanding the horse, speaking it's non-verbal language and using techniques modelled from wild horses to bring the trainee horse to that same milestone in a much shorter time - in the video that we saw, just 11 minutes!

From this point on, horse breaking was used as a metaphor by trainer and audience for "old style, bad" leadership and horse whispering was used as a metaphor for "new style, good" leadership. My insatiable curiosity made me wonder about this, so at the end of the day I went to Robert Dilts and asked "We've talked about horse breaking as bad and horse whispering as good, what I want to know is - what's the flipside of horse whispering?" In answering this question, I found Dilts to be very accessible, open, honest and without any ego or point to prove. I liked him already! He said "Well, you know, a lot of people really get hung up on the metaphor, but actually it's just about training horses!" Then, he gave me a very straight and honest answer to my question, "I guess horse whispering has a tendency to create cults".

So, now I had all the information I needed to make up my own mind - and I hope you do too!

But what about the other two? Well, if you want to know what the presenters were like I would say: Dilts - thoughtful and insightful with a great clarity of explanation. Russell - empathic and supportive with a great enthusiasm for helping people achieve their best. Deering - upbeat and reflective with a great talent for drawing out learning.

Of course, those descriptions apply to all three of them, so these were just the characteristics that stood out to me. The three of them represented a spectrum of experience and style that worked well in a highly interactive, open environment.

Essentially, Alpha Leadership is a model which is used by great relationship builders, people who create great loyalty and commitment. They never seem to ask for anything directly but the people around them delight in taking action. These Alpha Leaders understand the ultimate goal or purpose and they align people and resources to achieve that purpose. A key characteristic is that they adopt a ready-fire-aim approach to new ideas. This does not mean that they act before they're ready, it means they act early and adapt and refine as they go, rather than waiting for an idea to be perfect. They are open to new ideas and information that other people miss and by doing this they often steal a lead on their competitors.

You can probably see how this style has both upsides and downsides and, for me, I can see how this approach would work well in some organisations and not in others. At this point, we're entering into a discussion on leadership effectiveness, not Alpha Leadership so I will end with my recommendation: If Dilts, Deering and Russell are back in town, go see for yourself, be entertained, informed and involved and then decide for yourself how to add Alpha Leadership to your armoury of coaching tools. And remember, being only one model, it's up to you to decide how to use it. It's just horses for courses, I guess!