NLP

Carolyn Boyes

• Publisher: HarperCollins Business
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9780007360437
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The NLP secrets that experts and top professionals use.

Boost your performance

There are likely to be many times when you and your team face personal blocks to performance. Luckily, there are many solutions and techniques that you can use to help yourself and others through difficult situations. The advantage of all the performanceboosting secrets in this chapter is that they are simple and quick to learn yet yield extraordinarily effective and lasting results.

5.1
Believe in yourself and other people

The beliefs you have about people, your abilities and business in general will determine the results you get in business. If you believe that you can do something you will find a way to do it. If you believe that people like you can’t be successful, then you probably won’t be. Change your beliefs, and change your success.

Here’s a useful belief that many effective people hold to be true:

• People work perfectly (and that includes you).

When perfect people do something wrong it’s not because there is something wrong with them personally but because their behaviour is not useful. The same goes for you, if you don’t perform how you would like to. Thinking about people and performance in this way stops us demonizing others or beating ourselves up. It means that you can separate what people have done or not done from who they are.

“Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail”

Charles F. Kettering, American inventor

Think of it the opposite way round. People who don’t have this belief see a colleague do something in a particular way and think something like, that’s so typical of that person or that means they are…. This way of thinking is counter-productive to building good relationships. If you are a manager and think about your employees in this way, what’s going to happen? Would you want someone to think about you like this?

It’s more useful to think that you or your colleague is always doing the best they can and simply may need to change the way they do things to get different results.

• The effective way to create change in behaviour is to change the way you think: you will create different results.

Imagine that your subconscious is just waiting for new information and new instructions. Imagine that it has been running certain programs like a computer for years and years. Load up new software and you’re going to get different output. The programs you were running were effective, but they were out of date and not as user-friendly as the new ones.

• Now choose some useful new beliefs.

What you believe may well come true, so believe something useful.

5.2
Change your perspective

Let’s face it – people don’t always get on. Where a conversation hasn’t gone as planned or there is a block to resolution, see what happens when you ‘try on’ the other person’s perspective. This technique is very simple but powerful.

Think about two people: you and a person who has a different opinion than you about a subject. Practise this technique first of all in a situation where there has been a small disagreement or difference in perspective rather than a big one. With practie, you’ll find this easier and easier and you’ll get used to seeing events from three perspectives: yours, the other person’s and the viewpoint of someone who is totally detached from the situation.

one minute wonder Hold a mirror in front of you. What does the you in the mirror see when they look back at you? How are you presenting yourself in business? Think not so much about your appearance as about what attitudes come across from the person in the mirror.

“If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own” Henry Ford, American industrialist

1 Imagine you are sitting in a chair looking at them sitting in another chair. Ask yourself: “What do I see, hear, feel and think in this position about the interaction?”

2 Then imagine sitting in their position looking at you from their point of view. Ask yourself: “What do I see, hear, feel and think in this position about the interaction?”

3 Now, imagine you are standing at a distance between the two of you, being an observer. What do you notice as a detached observer about the relationship and interaction between you and the other person?

Each position will bring fresh insights. Do a round of the three positions first, then go back to each position again to see if this brings any additional perspectives. As you gain insights, think about what you want to take on board and use as a resource in the future.

If you use this exercise frequently you will find that it really helps you overcome blocks with colleagues and opens up your thinking. These benefits will directly feed through to your business performance and success.

Practise looking at life from other perspectives to avoid conflicts.

5.3
Change your negative thoughts

Do you encourage and motivate yourself like a good leadership coach? Or do you push and punish and beat yourself up? What happens when you face a challenge at work? Are you negative or positive?

A negative person sets off on a goal and then thinks, “I’m not good enough to do this” or “this is bound to fail” or “my clients don’t like me”. Here’s a powerful tool for changing these sabotaging thoughts.

• In your mind, see your negative thought as an image.

• Is the image light or dark, framed or unframed, small or large, moving or still, in colour or in black and white? Are you in or out of the picture?

case study Eleanor says, “I had a voice in my head every time I had to stand up and talk at my company meetings. I used to get really nervous. I realized that my ‘self talk’ was really cruel. I said things to myself such as, “You’re no good at this and everyone’s laughing at you.” It really was talk too – a voice in my head that sounded a bit like an old teacher I had. I changed it by first turning down the volume. Then I changed the voice so it sounded a bit silly, like a cartoon character talking. I sped it right up until I couldn’t take it seriously at all and I made it friendlier. The voice had sounded as if it was from the left side of my head so I changed it to coming out of my big toe. Now I just laugh whenever it tries to talk to me!”

“For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don’t believe, no proof is possible.”

Stuart Chase, Economist

• Now see what happens when you change the picture. Make the image smaller and darker, move it away from you, if it is framed make it unframed or vice versa. Experiment.

You will find that you feel differently about the thought when you change the way it is stored in your subconscious. We call these different aspects of the image ‘submodalities’. Making a negative image smaller, darker and further away works for many people in reducing the strength of the thought.

Do the opposite with a positive thought. Create a mental image for “I always get what I want. I can do it.” Now make the image larger and brighter, move it towards you in your mind, if it is framed make it unframed or vice versa. Experiment. Change the colours. Make it warm and friendly. See what works.

Notice how you feel now.

Minimize negative mental images.

5.4
Change the frame

A central belief of NLP is that all meaning is ‘contextdependent’. This is just a way of saying your view might change if you see things in a different light or if your perspective is reframed.

Here’s an example. You wake up late one morning and miss the train to work. What does this mean? Well it rather depends who’s looking at the situation. If you have an important meeting you might think, “This is terrible. My business is ruined today.” But what if missing the train meant that you missed an accident? You would think “How lucky. I am a fortunate person.”

• Change the frame. This idea is like changing the frame on a picture. When you look at a picture through a small frame, big frame or different coloured frame, you will see it differently. The frame you put

one minute wonder “I’m too…” or “he’s too…”, “I wish I could do this more…” are complaints that someone is a particular way in a particular context. Change your perspective by thinking where the behaviour would be useful. E.g., “He’s too sensitive to be a manager.” In what job would sensitivity be useful?

“If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning” Mahatma Gandhi, Indian leader

on things changes their meaning because it changes what aspect you pay attention to. Nothing has meaning in and of itself. We give it meaning.

Think about a tricky situation you are in or have experienced recently. How would other people react to the same experience? What positives might they gain from the experience that you’ve overlooked?

• The situation is not absolutely negative. You have given it a negative meaning. If you choose to see it differently you can choose to give it a positive meaning. Negative emotions about an event are not caused by the event itself but by your response to it. By changing the frame, you can create positive emotions and new choices.

For example, suppose you miss out on winning a client. It seems a disaster in the short term but in the long term you are able to win a bigger competitor as a client who is only willing to do business because there is no conflict of interest.

How do you change your view? Change...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Learn how to use NLP in business
• Take responsibility
• Focus on your outcomes
• Be an excellent communicator
• Be a great motivator
• Boost your performance
• Make a powerful impression
• Sell to anyone
• Jargon buster
• Further reading
• About the Author
• About the Publisher