but we are more than all or any of these. In business, organizational identity is the business culture. It emerges from the interaction of the other levels.
6 Beyond identity: connection
This is the realm of ethics, religion and spirituality – your place in the world. For a business it means vision and how the business connects with the community and other organizations.
Neurological levels are not a hierarchy. They all connect to each other and all influence each other.
Neurological levels are useful for outcome setting. You can specify your outcomes by:
the sort of environment you want
how you want to act
what skills you want
what attitudes and beliefs you want to adopt
what sort of person you want to be
Outcome thinking itself is a skill or capability, an approach you take to all the decisions you make.
Outcome thinking aligns with your beliefs and values when you see how well it works and when it becomes an important principle in your life.
Outcome thinking reaches the identity level when you become the sort of person who moves towards what you want in your life instead of leaving it to chance or for other people to decide.
Neurological levels
The Language of Neurological Levels
You can tell what level a person is thinking on by listening to the words they say. For example, you can map all five levels using one sentence: ‘I can’t do that here.’
When ‘I’ is stressed, it is a statement about identity: ‘I can’t do that here.’
When ‘can’t’ is stressed, it is a statement about belief: ‘I can’t do that here.’
When ‘do’ is stressed, it is a statement about capability: ‘I can’t do that here.’
When ‘that’ is stressed, it is a statement about behaviour: ‘I can’t do that here.’
When ‘here’ is stressed, it is a statement about environment: ‘I can’t do that here.’
Here are some examples of statements that clearly show which level they are coming from:
| Identity | ‘I am a good manager.’ |
| Belief | ‘Taking the MBA helped me a great deal in my career.’ |
| Capability | ‘I have excellent communication skills.’ |
| Behaviour | ‘I did poorly in that appraisal.’ |
| Environment | ‘I work well with this team.’ |
| Identity | ‘I am basically a healthy person.’ |
| Beliefs | ‘Physical health is important to me.’ |
| Capability | ‘I am a good runner.’ |
| Behaviour | ‘I ran a mile in seven minutes.’ |
| Environment | ‘The new gym is a great place to work out.’ |
You can also use neurological levels to explore a problem, or when you are confused and uncertain what to do. Once you know what level you are stuck on, you know what sort of resources you need.
Environment: Do you need more information about the situation?
Behaviour: Do you have enough information, but do not know exactly what to do?
Capability: Do you know what to do, but doubt your ability to do it?
Beliefs and values: Do you know that you have the ability, but not want to do it or not think it is important?
Identity: Do you feel that it is a worthwhile thing to do, but somehow it’s just ‘not you’?
Confusing neurological levels causes many problems. The most important one is the confusion between behaviour and identity. Children are often told: ‘You are bad!’ (identity statement), when they have done something wrong (behaviour). Consequently many people think that they are what they do and judge themselves accordingly. But each of us is a person who is able to do many things, not all of which will be approved by others.
Neurological levels separate the deed from the person.
You are not your behaviour.
Neurological Level Alignment
This is a powerful exercise to build your resources and congruence by using neurological levels. It is best done with a guide who can talk you through the process. You can do it mentally, but it is more powerful if you do it physically.
Start by standing where you can take five steps backwards.
Think of a difficult situation where you would like to have more choice, where you have the suspicion you are not using all of your resources, where you are not completely ‘yourself’. You can also use this exercise for a situation in which you want to make sure you engage all your resources.
Describe your surroundings.
Where are you?
Who is around you?
What do you notice particularly about this environment?
What are you doing?
Think about your movements, actions and thoughts.
How does your behaviour fit into the environment?
Think about your skills. In this situation you are only expressing a fraction of them.
What skills do you have in your life?
What mental strategies do you have?
What is the quality of your thinking?
What communication and relational skills do you have?
Think of your skills of rapport, outcome and creative thinking.
What qualities do you have that serve you well?
What do you do well in any context?
What is important to you?
What do you find worthwhile about what you do?
What empowering beliefs do you have about yourself?
What empowering beliefs do you have about others?
What principles do you strive to act on?