Milton Erickson, Virginia Satir and Fritz Perls (see Chapter 2).
In studying these people who excelled in their professions, Bandler and Grinder were curious to explore what was ‘the difference that made the difference’ – in other words what, specifically, led these people to excel. They found that each of their subjects exhibited specific personal patterns of behaviour and thinking, and it is these patterns, with their component elements, which form much of the basis for NLP.
So what are the elements involved in people’s patterns? Although not originally put into a specific unified model, certain discrete elements are involved; in particular thoughts, feelings and behaviour – in other words, how people think, how they feel and what they do. These three elements are the foundation of performance. Other elements can be added, in particular objectives, beliefs/values/attitudes and spirituality. (In taking these elements as key, I have drawn upon the work of David Gordon, Graham Dawes and Robert Dilts, and the next part of this chapter is based especially on the Experiential Dynamics model of Gordon and Dawes; see Chapter 3.)
What Bandler, Grinder and their colleagues noticed was that the people they studied had ways (or patterns) of thinking, feeling and behaving which made them effective. The people were not always aware of these patterns, but they could be noticed by keen outside observers. The conclusions reached were that once you can observe and describe such patterns, they can be copied by others. This meant that other people could learn to follow the same patterns in order to achieve similar results.
Now there is nothing startlingly new in this process; it is how much learning takes place. For example, to learn how to tie a shoelace a child has to copy (model) how someone else does it. What makes NLP particularly effective is its ability to break performance down into very small elements and to take account of ‘internal’ processes such as thoughts and feelings, as well as ‘external’ behaviour, when helping others to learn and develop.
UTILIZING AND WORKING WITH THE PATTERNS
If we take each element of a pattern in turn – objectives, behaviour, thoughts, feelings and beliefs – we can see how NLP enables people to explore and enhance their performance. Later I will be returning to some of these aspects and showing how you can use them personally in your own development.
OBJECTIVES
There are already well-established approaches to objective setting, for example the SMART approach (see Chapter 6). NLP goes beyond these, and helps define objectives in a way which makes it much more likely that they will be achieved. To do this, NLP uses what it calls Well Formed Outcomes, or WFOs. The WFO model for setting effective objectives is covered in detail in Chapter 6 and is the foundation for effective NLP work; by ensuring that objectives are well defined, progress and change are facilitated.
BEHAVIOUR
Behaviour is the only thing which is observable by others; they cannot see into your mind or know how you are feeling unless you either tell them or show them – and both of these processes (telling and showing) are behaviour. So NLP works with all aspects of behaviour, helping people to observe and respond to behaviour in useful and appropriate ways.
Some specific ways in which NLP works with behaviour are the following:
Helping People to Learn Skills
This often involves ‘role modelling’ someone with excellent skills in a particular field and learning how to transfer these skills to another person. Examples of this could include playing a musical instrument (finding out which techniques are used by professional musicians and emulating them) or taking part in sports (selecting top performers in different sporting fields – for example golf, athletics, tennis – and breaking down their performance into component parts in order to replicate it).
Creating and Maintaining Rapport and Influence
NLP has specific ways of enhancing rapport and influence, notably the concept of ‘matching’ (or copying) other people in order to make them feel at ease. The idea is that most people feel comfortable with others who are similar to themselves, so by making yourself a little more like another person you can enhance their feelings of comfort and acceptance (see also Chapter 5).
Using Language to Communicate and Influence
There are a number of aspects here, including the following:
recognizing people’s personality and motivational patterns through their language patterns
recognizing which senses people favour or rely on, through listening to the actual words they use
being able to use either precise or imprecise language where appropriate to achieve particular results
using indirect language for persuasiveness and influence
respecting the actual words and phrases used by individuals, as those words represent their experience of reality
Language will be covered in more detail in Chapters 4–6.
THOUGHTS
The elements of thought involve seeing (visualizing), hearing (imagining sounds or having ‘internal conversations’ or dialogue in one’s head), experiencing sensations (emotional or tactile), sensing smells or sensing tastes. In each of these areas, NLP enables people to notice their thoughts and then, if needed, to modify them and thereby their experience.
For example, you might ask someone to think about a flower. First they can imagine how the flower looks (its colour and shape), then imagine how it smells (its scent), then imagine how it feels (its form and texture), then imagine how it sounds (perhaps its leaves rustling in a breeze), then imagine how it tastes (some flowers are edible!) So far, the experience has been imitating reality – you have asked the person to imagine a real flower, as it is usually perceived. Now for the interesting part: you can ask the person to manipulate their mental experience to create something entirely new. So, for example, you might ask the person to imagine the flower a different colour, a different size, with a different smell, making an unusual sound, and so forth. The ability of the mind to make these changes is a foundation for learning and innovation, and if you have never experimented in such a manner, you may be amazed at the changes in experience which such shifts can bring about.
Because of its ability to manipulate the senses, NLP can help people create more (or less) pleasant experiences for themselves. And in case you are wondering why they should want to create a less pleasant experience, think of how to teach someone to avoid putting their hand in a hot fire, or how to make sure they don’t drive after they have been drinking.
FEELINGS
NLP was largely founded on the activities of therapists and it has continued to emphasize the importance of a balanced emotional state in achieving effective performance. It has techniques for managing emotions, many of them involving the sensory shifts referred to in the previous section. Emotional responses are often brought about by thoughts and are certainly closely linked to them, so by changing thought patterns it is often easy to change emotional responses.
Another way in which NLP engages the emotions is through its association with behaviour. Because there is a close link between body and mind, by making changes in the body, changes in the mind – and thereby the emotions – often follow. An example of this is posture. Most people have habitual postures associated with different emotional states, for example being