All about NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming)

I recently went on an NLP course so that I could not only learn to effectively communicate with my clients and audience but also understand myself a little bit better. And be able to apply it to my coaching. Well, it certainly has opened up my eyes.    

The neuro part means the nervous system or the mind. And it’s about how the mind processes things. The mind processes things visually, auditory, kinaesthetically, olfactory (nose), gustatory (taste). So you could have twins in the same family and what the one experiences could be completely different to the experience of the other. This is based on timing, based on the environment, based on belief systems, based on what they’ve heard from someone else, etc. It’s your model of the world based on your experience, or what you’ve understood. Now, neuro-linguistic is language. And this is how we make sense of things.

Why is this important? This is important because if this happens for you, in the way that you understand things is that this is how other people understand things. So when it comes to marketing, it’s important for us not to just include the things that we like. I’m a very visual person, and I’m a very auditory digital, and I will go through what they are. But auditory digital is very much about research and ways of researching things. But if I only provided the stuff that was research-based or visual, I would lose the auditory people. So it’s important for me then to use podcasts, or to use the webinars because then they can listen to those. The P is programming for your neuro-linguistic programming, and the programming means that we can achieve a specific outcome. So if we are aware of some of our self-talk or beliefs and if we want to change, we can work towards achieving a certain outcome.  

Neural Linguistic Programming techniques can be used to try and facilitate those outcomes.

What was probably the most challenging thing for me, and something that I noticed is that I love to tell people what to do? I’m a coach, I say ‘Do this, ‘do this, ‘do this. Instead, I should be facilitating word learning and my students should be coming up with the answer themselves. Because that’s what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to facilitate, facilitate the process of them coming to the solution.

It comes down to really deep, subconscious stuff that you are stuck on for it to be an everlasting change or an everlasting outcome. You have to see that problem for yourself.

In business if you lay the foundations and if you do the research and you water the garden and you do your research and you take care of it. And when there are storms, you’ll come out the other side, and you will have thrived and not be broken. Our understanding of that, as I said, will be slightly different, because we’re all different, we all learn differently. And it’s all based on our past experiences. So what happens is, there are all these external events and things that are happening around you, okay, we’ve all been brought up differently. And this is why a lot of stuff comes from our parents, thanks, parents. But we do the same things to our children. So all these external things come into us. And we absorbed them into us based on our senses or preference for the sense that we like. What happens is, all this stuff gets down into the subconscious. And then we get this big, thick line between our conscious and subconscious, which is called your critical factor. And the whole purpose of taking people through the process is to come to a new belief or new understanding or new model of the world, a new outcome that they’re looking for – to soften that critical factor. So making them believe that something is possible. And again, this comes down to marketing, because if you think about it, we are talking to people out there who’ve got all these different beliefs and their beliefs may not be our beliefs. I’ve been doing this without even thinking I’ve been doing it, but I always say, you’ve got to get them to believe what you believe. So if you believe paying money for a coach is an investment, you’ve got to get them to believe that because they may not believe that. So in our marketing, we’ve got to understand what their beliefs are – wrong or right. And we’ve got to soften that critical factor line to help them come to the new belief that they can believe what we believe now.

Metaphors are a great way to do this. Because they can come to that all by themselves. Of course, it’s only going to happen if they truly want the outcome though. If they don’t want the outcome then they don’t want to work with you. However, they’ve just got to believe that they can be changed. And they want to change their belief that you can do that. You can change those belief systems.

These are some of the processes.

• The one is called submodalities, which’s all about changing the internal state. So changing the internal state and coming up with a new internal state.
• The next one is strategies. And I love this because I love the Sword strategies, and I couldn’t believe that strategies were a part of NLP. And it’s about looking at the way that people internally process things. And then coming up with more effective ways for them to process it.
• Sensory acuity This one’s pretty cool. So when you talk to someone, you can notice a change in their skin colour in the tone in their face, even in their breathing, their lip size and their eyes. So if you were talking to a client in the sales process or if you’re talking to a cloud client, or even on the phone, you can hear a change in their voice. And from that, you’ll be able to determine whether or not you’re getting closer towards them believing what you believe and getting a yes, or whether or not they’re moving further away. Which is important.
• There are also eye patterns. So I always thought there was just something wrong with me, whenever I look at videos back at me, my eyes always go up to the I think right-hand side, if you look at me, my eyes will always go up to the right-hand side. And, if it goes up to the right-hand side, it’s visual recall. So if the eyes just go straight to the ears, it means auditory, you’re trying to remember based on sound, if you look to the bottom of the right side, it’s auditory digital, which is how you learn, which is what I predominately AM. And if it’s kinaesthetic, it means you’re trying to learn kinaesthetic keep up based on the feeling. Now if you know that and they go to the visual, the auditory or the kinaesthetic then you know how to satisfy them. You can use their language. If you know they’re a visual person, you can use the language of ‘I see, would you like me to show you?) because you’ve now identified based on their skin colour, their eye patterns and the language that they’re using, that they’re a visual person.
• So the next one is language, okay. And again, it comes down to the language. They will use words, which will give you cues as to how they like to learn and how they perceive things or how they interpret things. And this is going to help you get help them to become more comfortable with you. So when you can pay attention to those words, and you can use those words, it’s going to be helpful.
• Then about building rapport. So if you are with someone, you can sit how they are sitting, and you can mirror them, or use them. So if I talk with my hands and you wanted to get me across the line, you would just slowly start to just move your hand. It must not be obvious. But building rapport is being able to mirror that person. I’ve always said this, you have to mirror your customers online and what they’re doing. But this was interesting, because in the sales process, if you’re sitting with someone, and you want to get them across the line, you can do that. 7% of the communication that you use is words based – Physiology. Only 7% of the words that you use! 38% is tonality, the tone of how you deliver that message. And 55% of that is physiology. And what this means is that when people are like each other, they will like each other. So if you want your ideal customer to like you, we’ve got to focus a lot on our physiology and our tonality. Words are important, especially in social media. But it’s important to look at the tone of those words.
• Outcomes, which is allowing people to make decisions and on their own – people love choice. So let me use an example. Would you benefit from doing this program now or later? You almost make it impossible for them to say later. But you’ve given them a choice, as opposed to would you benefit from doing that program? Now, people of choice, you give them the choice, would you like to do that now or later. Because again, they feel like they’re in control of the decisions that they’re making, and we are reducing their critical factor faculty line.
• Representational systems are all about how you notice or how you interpret things. You can use predicates to engage those sentences. So visual people memorize by seeing pictures and are less distracted by noise. They often have trouble remembering and are bored by long verbal instructions, because their mind may wander. They are interested in how the program looks.  Auditory people – they are typically easily distracted by noise. They can repeat things back to you easily and they learn by listening to music and like to talk on the phone. The tone of voice and the words used are very important to them.
• The next One is kinaesthetic. Often they talk slowly and breathe slowly. They respond to physical rewards and touching. they memorize by doing or walking through something. They will be interested in a program that feels right or gives them a gut feeling.
• And then there’s the auditory digital. They spend a fair amount of time talking to themselves. They memorize by steps, procedures sequences, they will want to know the program makes sense before doing it.