In today's post, I share how and why an NLP Modeling project could be set up to fail, and what to do instead!

A few simple distinctions separate Failing from Succeeding at NLP Modeling.

Years ago I was asked to do some minimalist NLP-based Sales training for an organization that held monthly sales meetings. I was asked to provide one four-hour training session, once a month, for a group of sales professionals (times two, for two different groups at their company).

If you know anything about soft skills training to medium to large groups, you know that four hours is next to nothing. Its enough to get people thinking, and its enough to inspire them, and its enough to get them listening a little differently.  One-on-one coaching can be profoundly life-changing even just in minutes,  let alone four hours, but in group training contexts (where most of the attendees do not have a background in NLP), its not really enough for immersion training, so just four hours per month are unlikely to be sufficient to change anyone's habits in any quick and heavily measurable way. You might get a little mileage out of that, but probably not a lot.

I told the client all of the above, and the response was "Unfortunately, that's what we've got. Lets do the best we can."

While having a private discussion with the managers, I happened to mention the idea of NLP Modeling, which they didn't really know about.  NLP Modeling, in business contexts,  can be used to model their highest performers, so as to then train the rest of their team in whatever their highest performers were doing both consciously AND unconsciously.  The results usually include reduced training time, as well as significantly improved sales or performance, customer service quality, etc.  If you apply this to enough employees, this could result in many millions of dollars of saved losses, and/or additional earnings.

For the most part, they had come to NLP from the intention of using NLP to be more persuasive salespeople.  When I discussed NLP Modeling with them, they got very excited. But they still weren't willing to step sufficiently outside of their map of "do what's possible in a couple of hours."

So when they started thinking about how they could have me spend just an hour or two modeling their top sales person (in front of all the other sales people, no less), the modeling project they had in mind was doomed from the start.

So what are some of the Top Factors for Success with NLP Modeling?  (In any domain, not just Sales/Business).

1. Full Access to the Exemplar for NLP-styled interviewing. And not just for an hour or two. You need access until the model is built. The duration will depend on many things.
2. Optimistic, Interested involvement from the Exemplar (VERY helpful; not always necessary, but VERY helpful). Without this, the cost/duration of a modeling project can massively expand if you want to achieve accurate and effective results.
3. Continued Access to the Exemplar after a model has been encoded, for feedback and refinement purposes while testing, validating, verifying the model.
4. Time to encode and design a training process
5. Time to train the model to other people
6. Time to measure and discuss the results (which sometimes leads to another round of refinement).

What happens to an NLP Modelling project when you don't have all of the above Six Factors covered?

1. When you're asked to "do the best you can in a couple of hours:" The results you get are an utterly incomplete cognitive model, which isn't likely to help anyone -- and in fact, it could be detrimental to others. Best case, you get the same checklist of 'gee this is what I *think* the high performer is doing' that one of the managers at the company would produce after months of the manager knowing them. Worst case, what you acquire will slow all of the other employees down further, and annoy the high performer to the point of hurting their results. You need to allot sufficient time for the NLP Trainer to *acquire as sufficiently complete a model as possible of the desired behavior.*
2. If you don't have cooperative optimistic involvement from the Exemplar, then your model isn't likely to be accurate. You can 'trick' an exemplar into leaking other than conscious information but this is far too time-consuming and arduous a process to apply in the process of actual extensive behavioral modeling. Also, a modeling exemplar could intentionally throw you off the trail with red herrings. Which are not impossible to see through, but certainly an unwanted challenge. Best case, it doubles your modeling time. Worst case, an accurate model is never acquired, and/or an incorrect model is taught to others and that degrades performance even further.
3. You might have a resistant exemplar.  They may not be used to 'being under the microscope', and that could be a more important factor if the modeling is done in front of the rest of their team.  They may have concerns about their image or how they're perceived, as the top performer.  If they answer a lot of questions with "I don't know," that may make them feel self-conscious.
4. If getting access to a modeling exemplar is difficult after the initial modeling has been completed, it makes it hard to test and refine the model. The quality of the model is often judged when it's not yet at its most refined level. Modeling is almost never completed just after a first pass at the exemplar. Measuring of results ought to be delayed until after a refinement process has been completed, during which, the exemplar needs to be available to confirm/deny accuracy of (the first version of) the model in action. Best case -- the 1st cut of the model gets minor incremental improvement in results or training time for some of those who'll learn the new model (instead of massive improvement for the vast majority of trainees). Worst case, myopic managers incorrectly judge the project prematurely based on results that aren't expected to ramp way up until after a model has been refined, and will NEVER realize the massive benefits of high-performance NLP/behavioral modeling.
5. If the Modeler doesn't have sufficient time to encode the model properly and design the right training process, then the trainees will never learn the high performer's model well. And don't leave this to people not trained in NLP-based training unless the Modeler has trained the trainers. They don't have the experience to know how to 'install' a high-performer's model that includes more than behavioral checklists -- such as emotional state transitions, and cognitive representations such as visualizations or auditory experiences.
6. If a myopic manager tries to fit the NLP Trainer's training time into some arbitrary window (i.e., "You'll have 30 minutes with each group...") then you may as well just go home and wish them 'good luck.' The training time takes what it takes. Give the NLP Modeler ample time to train trainees the first time through, until high performance results are achieved, and see how long it takes. Then, look for opportunities to streamline. Pre-determining a very short maximum training time for something you don't fully understand is like killing the project before it even gets off the ground. Any experienced NLP Modeler would tell you that in advance.
7. There needs to be analysis and refinement time, and usually will be. Oddly, this is the part that most managers will agree to, because by the time a first training round has occurred, chances are, you'll have already seen some impressive results. Approving further consulting time, once those results have been quantified, is usually seen as the smart investment they originally hoped it would be, instead of an initial worrysome cost.

Why would an Expert/Exemplar / High Performer not cooperate?

Pretend you're the top salesperson in your team.  You earn the most.  You get the highest bonuses and rewards.  And significantly, your team's income and incentivization structure includes competition. A limited pie divided up among competititors. So you have a position to protect.

So you're actually incented to keep outperforming your co-workers at lower sales targets.  It helps you to stay at the top.  It doesn't help the company, or your managers, but it helps you.  So here we have a classic conflict of interest.

Then your manager comes to you and says, "something you're doing, or not doing, outperforms everyone else.  We're bringing in an NLP Modeler who's going to capture what you do, or don't do, and is going to teach it to everyone else, so we can get everyone performing at your level."

To do this, they're going to require you to participate in NLP modeling sessions, using time you'd probably actually have spent... selling.  Doing your job.  And earning money.  So not only are they not paying attention to the conflict of interest, they actually want to hinder you from reaching your potential this month (and maybe next), in order to cooperate.  And if you don't, of course, they'll say "you're not a team player."

Now, they can try and demand your cooperation, they can try and strong-arm you, but if they're not smart enough to recognize the outrageous conflict of interest they're creating for you, then they truly deserve the pathetic results they'll get when you tell them "of course I'm a team player..." then give the NLP modeler disinformation, and act surprised when the modeling project doesn't work as intended.

When I meet managers and business owners who attempt to structure things like this, I always aim to educate them about the pitfalls of ignoring major conflicts of interest, and incentivizing your exemplars.  You really should properly reward them for their full and active cooperation.  Don't skimp.  It's the difference between failure and success.

Can you model from books, audio or video?

Remember what modeling is.  It's the process of capturing as much information as possible from an exemplar about their cognitive strategies, their somatic (physical skills), their emotional state(s), their conscious and unconscious knowledge, and how all that ties together.  If at all possible, you're going to want and need direct access to a living, breathing, cooperative expert!

So, yes you can still model some things from books, audio, or video... but the results will never be as in depth, or as accurate, as they would if you had lots of one-on-one time with an exemplar.  Video is better than audio, audio is better than books, and modeling from books and other written records alone is, simply put, unlikely to be taken too seriously in the NLP Community.

The most successful modeling projects that I know about were done in contexts where:

1. The modeling exemplar did not have any dis-incentive to cooperate; on the contrary, the modeling exemplar was proud of their expertise, and was flattered that so many people wanted to share it more readily with others.  They were committed to contributing to the project.
2. The people paying for the project were different than the managers, and those who commissioned the modeling process had a long-range large-scale financial perspective. If the person asking you to do the modeling is the person that signs your checks, and they're trying to "nickle-and-dime" the project, the best you can do is say "no" and go home.  You may as well  avoid associating yourself with a project doomed to fail from the start.
3. There is direct access to the primary exemplar(s) until a model can be acquired, codified, and then tested and refined several times.

Here's how NLP was used to improve the US Army Pistol Marksman Training

Some of you may be aware that NLP Modeling was used to improve the US Army Pistol Marksman training.  According to NLP Master Trainer Eric Robbie: the primary NLP Modelers for that project were LTC Robert Klaus, Wyatt Woodsmall, Richard Graves, Paul Tyler, John Alexander, and Dave Wilson.  A then-young Anthony Robbins was brought along by Wyatt Woodsmall to help train the successful marksman learning patterns to other army personnel, after the primary modelers had elicited it (Robbins was not a key player as some have heard or assumed through the rumor mill, but he was there to assist).

Results?  The qualifications back then were Marksman, Sharpshooter and then Expert (from basic to advanced, in that order).  A Marksman has to get 30 hits on target from 45 rounds fired. One group of soldiers received the nlp-based training, a second group of soldiers (the ‘control group') received standard army pistol training.  The control group took 27 hours to get 73% of their soldiers to Marksman (only 10% made Expert).  The NLP-based group took 12 hours to get 100% of the soldiers to Marksman level (and 25% made Expert).  (Thank you Eric, for keeping the facts about this project alive!)

Success Factors?  The modelers modeled successful exemplars, and were able to distill down the key elements leading to more rapid success, and train it sufficiently well to a group of new trainees, and a proper opportunity to measure the results was allowed.  The exemplars were not dis-incented to cooperate; their income was not based upon doing an activity in some other location; their time was not being co-opted at their own loss.  And they were getting attention for their high performance in a way that did not threaten their performance levels.  Simply put, this modeling project involved win-win, not win-lose.

What sorts of modeling have I done?  Many of my courses over the years were the result of my own modeling projects.

As a Knowledge Engineer, prior to even learning NLP, I modeled (and then built software to replicate the decision making for):

1. Check Guarantee experts -- for the purposes of building an expert system for approving/declining bank checks at retail points of sale.
2. Credit Report Incoming Data Correction experts -- for the purposes of an internal project at a major credit bureau (with massive implications on the consumer credit system, that I cannot discuss the details about).  One outcome was that it took a year for the credit bureau to realize how utterly inconsistent the knowledge base was across their experts (they couldn't agree on anything), and how little the upper managers knew about these inconsistencies.  Our project cleaned all that up, and gave the company one consistent set of rules for moving forward.
3. Chase Bank Silver & Gold Customer Service Reps -- for the purpose of building intelligent software to maximize client satisfaction and further financial product buy-in.

After learning NLP and opening my training business, I continued to model exemplars met during my global travels, whenever I met with "high performers."

1. Charisma -- for the purposes of teaching others (became a 3-CD-set called "Charisma Fuel")
2. Humor -- for the purposes of teaching others  (became my "Becoming Outrageously Funny" workshop)
3. My own work with Beliefs -- for the purposes of teaching others (became my "Knowledge Engineering" home-study and live courses, and half of "Belief Craft").
4. Great Interviewing (both roles) -- for the purposes of teaching others (became my "Own the Interview" course)
5. Great Public Speakers -- for the purposes of teaching others (became my "Speaking Ingeniously" course)
6. Great Salespeople -- for the purposes of teaching others (became my "NLP Sales Wizardry" course).
7. (and more that I just don't write about!).

If you have a need to acquire or re-acquire some amazing expertise from one of your employees, or experts, or associates -- especially before they retire or jump ship to go somewhere else -- consider hiring a skilled NLP Modeler today, and cut your losses before they could happen.  It's the fastest way to replicate someone's expertise, and share it with others, successfully.

author: Jonathan Altfeld

In today's post, I share a sales-closing I think you'll love, and follow that with NLP skills applied to selling, including: Sensory Acuity, Sensory Awareness, Calibration, Using Suggestions to 'plant' thoughts ethically, and other NLP language patterns!

How I used NLP to Close a Client's Real Estate Deal

Some years ago, I was called in to a Real Estate office where I'd been doing some custom training work. One of the managers, Tom, also brings me into deals occasionally. I'm like his secret weapon. They know my methods can be unpredictable and counter-intuitive, and I haven't failed them yet, so, they give me license to do unexpected things.

Tom was trying to close a deal with a guy named Marvin. Tom was holding out for a higher price.  Marvin was also just holding out for a better deal. Every day Marvin waited, was costing him.  Every day Tom was waiting was also costing him in multiple ways.  He knew it, too, and he was blindly hoping he could do better than those losses by waiting. Marvin also didn't know Tom had another lower offer on the table. Tom's efforts to date hadn't been able to close the deal.

I went into one of their meetings... sat on Tom's side of the table, and I paid attention to what was going on. And I listened to Marvin's language... and I heard what he was saying... and watched what he was doing. And I mirrored Marvin. Only I took what Marvin was doing, further. He had his arms crossed, so I crossed my arms. Meanwhile, I was sitting next to Tom, on Tom's side of the table, and I started sliding further off away to the side. I almost disengaged from the meeting. I mirrored Marvin's arms and started looking over at my client, radiating mild annoyance. I knew that Tom thought it was doing him good to hold on to his little secret about the other deal on the table. And I knew he wanted it closed with Marvin. But Tom didn't want to pay him extra money if he didn't have to, partly because he knew Marvin would make money starting from the day he closed the deal! It was purely emotional, because Tom would also make money and avoid wasting money by closing on that day.  So I metaphorically went over to the opposition's side, and asked Tom, "why aren't you telling Marvin the whole story?!"

Tom looked at me like I was nuts... even though of course I'd prepared him, letting him know I might do some very weird things. So he went along with it for the time being. Reluctantly! Meanwhile the dynamic was changing.... Marvin suddenly felt like his holding out had "won over" a guy from the other team... who was now doing his closing for him. I said out loud to Tom, "You have this other offer on the table, from someone you could call today. Why haven't you explained that to Marvin? Because ALL of us could just go home right now and enjoy a long martini and a swim knowing how much money we'll all be making tomorrow? But no, both you guys have to have the upper hand in this.

Pay close attention to that phrasing.  By saying they both had to have the upper hand in this, what their conscious mind was hearing was that they were still butting heads.  What their unconscious minds were hearing was that they were in rapport, in agreement on something.  Both were included together by the word "Both."  And neither knew it at the time.  Additionally, had Tom shared his other offer himself, he would have created animosity in Marvin, because there would be no way for Marvin to prove that other offer existed, either way.  But by me sharing it, and Tom being shocked, it had instant credibility.

So, naturally, Tom's jaw was wide open in shock. Which is to say that his state was anchored, not so much by me, but by Marvin's reaction (and vice versa). Meanwhile, Marvin was starting to make pictures of closing the deal successfully right there, and realizing that if he didn't close the deal right then and there, Tom was eventually going to offer the deal to someone else. And that state of needing to close to prevent loss was achieved not in response to something Tom was saying to him, but by Marvin's own thought process!  Marvin's goal then became not one of holding out, but of preventing loss.

This strategy created an instant propulsion system for Marvin and Tom to close the deal that night (at a reasonable price good for both of them). WIN-WIN for everyone. A final agreement was brokered five minutes after my antics. Everyone ended up happy. And I didn't have to make anything up or lie or do anything inappropriate.

Both parties had a potential win-win they couldn't see.

Granted, I could have made a little more money for my client, rather than both parties, and that would likely have delayed the sale longer. I knew both parties would benefit by closing sooner rather than later, and that both parties would lose out by waiting. It occurs to me that all it took to get the close, was to sell Marvin on feeling really good by closing now, and feeling bad about everything he'd be missing by not moving forward. Also, both parties involved had already dealt with the pros and cons of having the deal go through. They'd already thought through that. So there was no chance of either of them being irritated about finally closing.

Sensory Acuity, Sensory Awareness, Calibration – and Simply Being Fully Present

When you... open up your eyes... open up your ears... and pay attention differently with more clarity... to the signals people are giving you all the time, you become a more effective salesperson.

When you choose to be there, fully present with your sales prospects, completely – you both connect with each other more easily. You create a stronger sense of credibility and trust. You create an easy rapport together.

It's OK to learn a script cold – but then forget the script. Pay attention to your prospects, and be as aware as you can about what's going on with them. That's essential whether you're on the phone or with them in person.

There are many NLP exercises taught that increase your sensory acuity – that teach you to see more, hear more, and feel more of what's happening between you and another person.

If you see, hear and feel more of what's happening for others (and it helps to have reduced or cut out that internal dialogue, too), then you're more likely to notice when your prospect:

• Shifts from doubtful to certain.
• Shifts from certain, to doubtful
• Starts asking themselves questions internally
• Is imagining things inside their mind (visually)
• Has brief subtle unconscious negative (or positive) responses to things you say

Most NLP-trained salespeople know that these are all significant moments in any sales experience for a prospect. The question is, have you been trained to notice them? And if you did notice them, would you know what to do in response to them, for best results?

I invite you to consider that if you miss these moments, or worse, if you do the wrong thing after them -- you'll lose the sale, and never know why -- relegating them to the pile of 'it just wasn't a good fit", even if that was never the case. Food for thought!

VALUES-based selling with NLP: People don't resist their own thoughts.

NLP is extraordinary for enabling you to speak to people's inner wants and needs, and provide thoughts to people 'as if they were their own thoughts.'

There was a movie that came out recently called “Inception.” Inception was based on the idea that you could plant an idea in someone's mind, through a dream state, and that they would then act on it as if it was their own idea.

If you think about doing this for your own gain whether they need that result or not, that's a sneaky and manipulative intention -- and has no place in ethical selling skills.

But, if you're doing this to help people get past their own hesitations and resistance in order for them to get their own needs met – suddenly that's not manipulative or improper.

NLP gives us tools and skills for doing this – partly.

You CAN use NLP like Inception to provide a person with specific suggestions or ideas... if those suggestions or ideas will satisfy some of that person's values, without violating any of their other values.

You cannot use NLP like Inception to provide a person with specific suggestions or ideas that would violate any of their values.

The critical distinction is that you simply can't use “Inception” to quickly implant a new value in someone's mind. People value what they value; values are formed throughout life based on life experiences. Values will change only very slowly through normal life, and sometimes more quickly through dramatic or tragic circumstances.

With NLP, however, you can more quickly learn and identify what people value – and then you can present ideas to them that will satisfy those values. And NLP helps us do this in a way that people don't resist, because when its done well, they think it's their own thought – and it matches their deep values. And they'll often thank you for your assistance.

Many people go weeks, months, years – without getting their values and needs met. If a salesperson learns how to help a person get their wants and needs met – thereby satisfying some of their values (without violating others), then they're creating win-win results.

NLP Language Patterns

Language patterns can and do help – but for salespeople, far too much emphasis in NLP is on the choice of words and language patterns. In using NLP with selling, I would focus more on understanding the process of communication, sequences of emotional responses, and how all of this changes from moment to moment over time.

Let's laugh, please, about the typical language patterns in NLP that were originally suggested as a way to manipulate people unconsciously: “By Now, you may have discovered, how nice this will be for you.” The idea behind that crap is to suggest “Buy Now.” Here's why I don't recommend this: It's pretty much 'out there' now, and while a rare person won't catch you doing this, those who do – will never trust you again. So please join me in purging this from the NLP vocabulary. Those of us who believe in selling ethically with NLP do not believe in the use of language patterns like this.

There are however multiple Ericksonian language patterns that are useful to learn and use regularly. These include:

• sensory-rich-language (so you can flesh out desirable results and create more vivid pictures in prospects' minds – for the right reasons)
• embedded commands (so that you're not unclear with your suggestions)
• time distortion (so you can walk customers through thorough descriptions of desirable futures and have them feel as if they've already lived through the results of their choices)
• modal operators (so you can move people from negative necessity or possibility, to positive possibility and necessity – and only when it makes sense for them)
• and lots more

Sales is one of the absolute best applications of NLP. Yet many salespeople well-trained in traditional models haven't taken advantage of this, usually because they're skeptical of whether or not NLP would get in the way of what they're already doing. Many of them have been trained in one or multiple sales models and found that studying certain other sales models could or will get in the way of the ones they already know how to use well. It's an understandable skepticism, but it truly doesn't apply to NLP, so they're all leaving money on the table unnecessarily.

"Why Every Sales Professional Ought to Learn and Use NLP"

Some sales models that are self-contained; i.e., use this model, or that model. Salespeople often avoid learning new models, in case they might interfere with, or pollute, the results they're already getting with the model they know. These concerns are well-founded with some sales systems. E.g., Relationship selling conflicts with Urgency-based or Scarcity-based selling.

NLP-based selling isn't like that. In fact, it couldn't be further from that. Because NLP is a “process” model that enhances or optimizes everything else.

What if you could learn techniques and systems and skills... that would improve and accelerate everything you already know about selling?

NLP helps you become better at selling, often just by enhancing the way you're already selling. It's like taking what you already do and kicking it up a notch. And for those who aren't already good at selling, it will help you become a more natural salesperson, by teaching you skills for connecting more easily with people, and learning how to identify and deliver to their wants and needs – both the obvious ones, and the unconscious ones – the ones they didn't know they had.

If, however, you thought NLP is being taught or used to be more pushy with people, or to inappropriately manipulate them, then... we think you've been reading or talking to the wrong people. If all you're reading about is manipulative techniques, we believe that type of content is based on scarcity-based thinking, and on a foundation of deprivation and desperation. Neither we nor you want anything to do with that.

We believe the act of selling ought to be about helping match {A: people with wants and needs} with {B: providers} and structuring win-win transactions (regardless of whether you play the role of A, B, or even as C - a broker or referrer).

At its best, selling is about helping people get what they want and/or need, and making it easy and rewarding for everyone.

That is our altruistic focus in this article, as well as in our live NLP Sales Wizardry course.

We believe NLP can help every salesperson do this more effectively, regardless of which sales models a salesperson has learned over their career.

Some examples of sales models include: 5-P, Mental Conditioning, Relationship Sales, Personality Styles, Closing, Problem-Solving, Value-Added, Consultative, Partnering, Team Selling, Complex, Value. And there are many, many more.

Often salespeople need to combine models, depending on their unique selling circumstances.

Your performance in any and every one of these and other models can and will usually rapidly improve, with the use of NLP. You shouldn't look at NLP as replacing what you currently do in selling – think of it as an accelerator or performance-enhancer.  So, you might find it useful to think of NLP (when applied to selling) as much like:

• the supplements a weightlifter takes to optimize his workouts
• the spice you add to a dish to make it more tasty and fragrant
• the grease you add to bicycle parts to make them run more smoothly
• the dessert you offer after a dinner party to end on a sweet note
• the charismatic social butterfly who breaks the ice and introduces everyone naturally
• the mirror that quietly shows you your flaws – in time to do something about them!
• the negotiator who comes in and saves dying deals

The entirety of NLP is NOT helpful to selling. You'll want to be selective in your NLP studies. Is it possible that learning NLP will hurt closing ratios?

It is possible, yes – and that would only occur if you made poor choices for what NLP material you study and what NLP training(s) you choose to attend. Because if you're not NLP-trained, and you attend a typical NLP Practitioner training, you'll be immersing yourself in largely therapeutic techniques that may or may not help you in sales. And by yourself, how would you know what would be most useful and what would be unhelpful? You won't, at least for the first few months or possibly years, if you try to figure it all out on your own.  We think that would be too costly an approach, when better, faster, more affordable and more selective alternatives are available for a fast-track to results.

You might think you can figure it all out by yourself, but many people have tried that along the way and ended up learning far too much of the material that doesn't apply well to selling. And trying things out when it counts the most, without a little wisdom about what to use and what to exclude, can lead to a reduction in your bottom line.

By significant contrast, if you attended a course that was intentionally designed to present only the specific NLP skills that would help you sell more effectively, and leave out the material that would only distract or confuse you (or be irrelevant to selling), then that will improve your bottom line.

Can't almost any NLP technique apply to selling?

Yes, and no.  Some of NLP's techniques are so grounded in therapy, you'd never want to use them in the vast majority of cases.   here are some examples of why selectivity in NLP studies and training are so important for sales and business professionals:

You'd never want to use the fast phobia cure in Selling.  After all, if any of your sales prospects are feeling intense fear around you or your products, you have much bigger problems to worry about than using any NLP technique with a prospect.

No salesperson in their right mind would use an NLP swish pattern with a sales prospect directly, but there are ways to use aspects of Swish with a prospect in a very helpful way.

No salesperson in their right mind would use "6-Step Reframing" with the vast majority of sales prospects -- but we could easily see a way to customize and simplify that technique to help resolve conflicting desires among a buying family that can't agree on what they want.

Most salespeople will never actually figure out how to use Anchoring effectively in business situations.  They just won't.  Most NLP certification trainings are now too short for people to get really good at anchoring, and even then, they rarely learn "real-world" real-time business uses, because most such trainers teach how to kinesthetically anchor emotional responses in changework.  In business and sales, you have scant seconds to anchor, and you'd better learn to get creative with anchoring, mostly auditory and visually.  I teach this; most do not.

Thanks for reading!  This entry was Part One of a series of blog entries on sales.  The next entry will list some specific examples of the skills we train in our NLP Sales Wizardry course, and how/where/why they should be learned and used.

author: Jonathan Altfeld

Do your emotions drive you?
Or do you drive your emotions?

by Jonathan Altfeld

One of the most impressive people I had the pleasure to meet was a consulting project manager at HP (Hewlett Packard).  At the time I was a senior Artificial Intelligence / IT consultant working for an AI consulting firm.  He and I (along with some others from still other companies) were collaborating on a proposal for a huge AI project being considered at a major credit bureau, a few years before I began doing NLP training in 1997.

During the 2 month proposal project, we encountered and brainstormed (an apt word) our way through multiple logistical problems, technical issues, and political storms (due to having so many different 3rd party companies involved in the proposal).  It was a mess – that we somehow eventually navigated from chaos into brilliant order.

Yet through it all, that HP project manager kept his cool.  Things could erupt in emotional turmoil, yet he never lost his cool. When he spoke, calmly, everyone listened.  He wasn't monotonous, but he was measured.  His words were well chosen, on target, and respectful of every view in the room. Everyone in turn respected him. And when he wasn't in the room, people repeatedly commented on how professional he was. We were all glad he was there.

He didn't let anything break his calm, cool demeanor.  He became a natural leader even though we were all roughly equal parties to the proposal.  No matter what was thrown at him, he remained eminently resourceful.  That, to me, to this day, makes up part of my ideal model for state management, and pre-dates my experiences in NLP. That's saying a lot, because I have even higher expectations for what constitutes great state management, today.

NLP State Management in Business
isn't limited to staying calm, though!

Sometimes a circumstance calls for finding and maintaining a certain level of passion for a task that would otherwise be boring. That's another form of state management.

Sometimes a manager irritates an employee (or vice-versa). NLP State Management in this case might mean remembering a circumstance when you appreciated them the most so far, thus allowing you to let the other person indulge their personality glitch without it damaging your relationship with them. Be the bigger person if you can (even better, once they're calm, find good ways to enable them to be an equally bigger person).

Sometimes even if you're not feeling 100% confident, you may need to go on an interview, where you'll need to find your confidence and maintain it. NLP State Management helps enormously here. Science backs you here, as well – Harvard Business School professor Amy Cuddy studied “Power Postures” and found that if you spend 2 minutes in a bathroom stall just before your interview, standing in a powerful victory posture, you WILL do better in the interview.  Act as if you feel confident, and you start feeling more confident.  True!

What Amy Cuddy did NOT yet study, however, is  how quickly a posture-induced state diminishes back to lower confidence, inside the interview itself, without NLP emotional state management skills.  And that is where NLP helps us excel measurably further than just relying on a 2-minute bathroom-stall victory posture.  It's not just about initiating a great state – it's about maintaining it for as long as you need it.  If you can't maintain confidence on your own even in low-confidence circumstances, for more than a few minutes, I assure you, this is something that a great 10+ day NLP Practitioner course WILL enable you to do, at will. Also, pair this skill with NLP Anchoring, and you'd never need to repeat the two minute victory posture in a stall again.

Sometimes you just don't like a client or vendor, but for whatever reason you continue to do business with them. Perhaps it's because they have the best product, or the best price, or they pay the most, or give you the most business, or the most referrals. In such cases, you may want to check in with your values, decide if maintaining the relationship is a price you're willing to pay, and if it is – then do what it takes to convince yourself you like them – for just the duration of time you need to spend with them.

Fortunately, that doesn't happen to me, except when I occasionally turn down a coaching client before working with them. In my coaching and training, I get to work with people who are ready to make their lives better and deeply value any progress they make, and any insights and techniques that get them closer to what they want. I have the privilege of working with fabulous high-quality people with great personalities, interesting backgrounds, unique skills, and in almost every case, a desire to live more congruently, manage change, or handle an issue. And when I help them do so, we both get to radiate deep gratitude.  It's very rewarding to inspire confidence in the likelihood of change, and to see it happen to good people!

Developing Flexibility, and Radiating Great States

Step One in emotional state management is that you'll want to be able to feel, and radiate great emotional states. I'm referring to states like credibility, openness, warmth, confidence, passion, curiosity, connectedness, and more. You'll want to use these (and others) as needed, developing the flexibility to jump into the most optimal emotional responses for any given situation. This is foundational NLP material – being able to learn to feel these states at will, trigger them in the perfect situations, and maintain them as needed.  One of the most common NLP exercises to develop Step One, is called "the Circle of Excellence."

Step Two in emotional state management is learning to redirect certain emotions (that are often but not always unresourceful), into more optimal emotional responses. Like redirecting “annoyance” into “calm, cool and collected.” Or from “worried” into “focused and passionate.” Or from “fear” into “bring it on!” Or any number of other emotional transitions that would be experienced by others as far more preferable.  Some of the more common NLP Techniques for developing Step Two, include "Swish", "Reframing", "Kinesthetic Squash", Emotional State Chaining (something I train in my "Creating the Automatic Yes" audio program), and more.

Step Three in emotional state management is learning how to maintain a state even with (or in spite of) the onslaught of efforts by others to pollute it.  After all, what good are steps One and Two if the slightest provocation by circumstances or other people derails your good intentions and throws you off your game?  I include this critical step in my courses.  Few do.  I can, because a 10 day certification course allows us the proper time to engage in these critical exercises.   There are some fascinating ways to develop this skill.

Remember that when feeling all of these states, these emotions give us access to (or cause) certain behaviors that might never be available to us in other states. Many behaviors are contextual to our emotional states. We would never yell at someone angrily when we're feeling calm, or generous, or nurturing. We would never congruently and gently smile widely at someone when we were feeling livid, or depressed. We would never give an employee a good review or a big raise or an ex employee a great referral, if we were feeling deep disappointment. We would never hire a new vendor if we felt deep distrust (and other options were available). We wouldn't show up late every day for work when we truly love what we do (unless you intentionally value and have permission for flexible hours!).

Whole areas of behavior can become possible or impossible depending on our emotions.

An Example of State-Based Business Coaching

I worked with a client (a professional insurance company executive) who was worried about his voice.  He said he wanted voice coaching to make his voice more compelling and influential.

Often when a client tells me a desired outcome, they're describing for me just one of the potential ways of solving their issue -- they're telling me just one means (to an implied end), but they may not be telling me the actual desired end.  So I like to investigate and unpack their outcome.  I asked him, "So you want to have a more compelling and influential voice.  What would that enable?"

He said "I'd be taken more seriously."  

So of course, I took him seriously, and asked for more information.  I asked, "Why don't people take you seriously enough, currently?"  (Note:  I could either ask more about being taken seriously, i.e. the solution state, which is one valuable direction.  By asking what I did, I was asking about the problem state, which helped me to build a map of what was actually not going well.)

He replied, "Well, sometimes, when I'm confident, my voice is great, and people take me seriously.  When I'm not confident, my voice gets all tinny and sounds whiny, and no one takes me seriously.  So I need voice coaching."  

If you, like me, were a voice coach AND an NLP Trainer, what you would be hearing in his words are the following:  Emotions are the cause.  The voice is the effect.  The effect causes a result.  He was assuming that because he believes he couldn't change his emotions, and he couldn't change the responses he was getting to a whiny voice, that he had to do voice coaching.

As a voice coach, I'm all for voice coaching!  Yet, my client had a nice voice when he sounded confident.  (It was his confidence that people enjoyed listening to, and charismatic personality that brought people closer).

I knew from experience it would be a difficult if not impossible battle to train him to sound good when feeling low confidence.  So instead, knowing that it's easier to train state-management (which for him was a short-cut to sounding great), I recommended some coaching that would help him manage his emotions more effectively.  And we did just that.  By enabling him to manage his emotions better, he learned to short-circuit the less-confident state, and the whiny, tinny voice, wouldn't be heard from again.

Remember, emotions drive the potential behaviors we can engage in.  Resourceful emotions lead to resourceful behavior.  Unresourceful emotions lead to unresourceful behavior.  This has both positive and negative implications, but all of the implications tell us...

More state management is better than less state management.

After all, you might not want to bark at a customer out of anger from an inappropriate accusation on their part, when you could instead calmly inform them of the facts, tell them you don't appreciate the insult, share with them something generous you're willing to do to make them feel better, and give them a way to save face instead of responding in kind.

On the other hand, if a customer repeatedly demeans people, you might not want to operate out of fear, because it may be that they would only respect or hear someone communicating similarly. This does happen on occasion, that meeting someone where they're at, emotionally, and then dialing it down to feeling calm again, can be brilliantly effective.

All of this speaks to behavioral and emotional state flexibility -- which is ever so valuable and useful!  So I hope you've learned some great ideas above.  Take them into your life and play with them!

Want to go further with NLP State Management in Business?

Great NLP training should provide this (and if it doesn't – it flat-out isn't great NLP training). It definitely takes time and active practicing, ideally with trainer observation and feedback, to develop the requisite reflexive emotional awareness, so this is yet another reason for avoiding short NLP certification courses.

Alternatively, if you took a short certification course already, and you'd like to acquire the depth of skills described above, I'm happy to invite you to take an NLP Business Practitioner course with me.  It won't be "repeating the course" because I assure you, my course won't look, sound or feel anything like a 5 or 7-day Practitioner course.  I focus on enabling students to acquire integrated skills, not book knowledge, and it will be more experiential and applied; less theoretical and academic.

author: Jonathan Altfeld

NLP has enabled people just like you to discover that actively building, deepening, and maintaining Rapport creates stronger and more desirable results in communication settings of any kind.  We know that Rapport is not something that has to be left to chance, and it is utterly untrue that we click with some people and just don't click with others, and that nothing can be done about that.  Instead, Rapport can be created where it does not yet exist.  It can be magnified, strengthened, and harnessed -- for everyone's benefit.

Since its widespread dissemination into the self-improvement marketplace, the idea of Rapport is everywhere now.   Virtually every executive knows about mirroring, for example.  Mirror neuron research has finally proven what NLP has been saying for decades.  

Unfortunately, thanks to self-improvement "fast-food-style" sound-bytes, many people now think of Rapport as equivalent to mirroring, or equivalent to feeling warm & fuzzy.  While these are sometimes the case, they're truly not the case in all situations, and  things get really interesting when you move far past these simple assumptions and sound bytes about Rapport, and begin exploring what's possible. 

Rapport is about being in tune with people, and if two people are arguing at top volume, that's one form of being in rapport.  If both people are stubbornly refusing to say anything, both with arms crossed, they're in rapport.  If two people are both too shy to say anything to each other, even if they're not mirroring, they're very much in rapport.

Also, although mirroring skills are important, because mirroring can be experienced as mocking, nowadays its essential to learn how to move past basic mirroring and matching, into cross-mirroring and cross-matching, which requires some real nuances, behavioral demonstrations, and many hours of practice.  This is next to impossible for other people to identify, so they won't ever feel like you're mocking or manipulating them.  Yet it produces the same desirable result in terms of deeper rapport (presumably -- and this is just conjecture -- firing off the same mirror neurons, without mirror-image behavior).

People who are really good at rapport skills will need to have developed enough sensory awareness skills and behavioral flexibility to shift their behavior and communication to more closely match aspects of other people's behavior and communication, indirectly (ideally, via cross-mirroring and cross-matching).  As it pertains to Small Business, this lets us attract and keep clients or customers more effectively, make business partners feel more warmth around us, invite employees to feel more connected with us and our vision, and more.  Rapport ought to be an automatic effort by all of us.

Some would describe rapport as pacing (or mirroring), but pacing is just one specific skill.  Leading is another skill.  Temporarily breaking rapport is yet another.

Rapport is the overall ability to manage and deepen connections, including the ability to be able to disconnect a connection temporarily without the other person feeling like there's any disconnection.  This is valuable for optimally ending conversations, or putting an end to an interview, or a sales presentation.   For example, you may get interrupted during an important call, and need to end the call in a way where the other party can feel perfectly fine about it.  Or you could be having a conversation with one potential prospect at a trade-show, and be called in to another conversation by a manager or supervisor.

It's possible to go even further than this to achieve success in circumstances most would describe as difficult to impossible, e.g., for an NLP Practitioner to enable rapport indirectly (or unconsciously) between other parties who frequently argue.  Or for a skilled NLP artist to gain rapport between multiple members of a committee.  Even to get an entire audience to breathe all together at the same rate, indirectly.  These are pretty easy results for skilled NLP Practitioners – truly using basic skills -- if they were trained well to begin with.  

Do you think these sorts of indirect rapport skills could be useful for situations like a sales context where a couple comes into your store or business and can't make up their mind?  What if you could get both members of a couple back in rapport with each other, and with you, enabling you to lead the sale nearer to a successful closing.  I've done this countless times, and you can too.

It's also exceptionally valuable to spend days learning rapport skills in every major sensory modality, so you're not limited to the simplest rules of visual mirroring.  You'll want to be able to get rapport nonverbally from across a room (essential for conferences and trade-shows), which uses Kinesthetic and Visual.  You'll want to be able to get rapport over the phone, which is mostly auditory but has a kinesthetic starting point for you, and a kinesthetic ending for both you and the other person.  You see?  Rapport is far more than just mirroring.

Rapport with just a Belief?

Finally, I'll share a story with you about a Knowledge Engineering (KE) student with whom I initially shared very little “obvious” rapport.  Our ages and life circumstances were very different when I first met him.  His preferred rate of speech and my own, were very different (I shifted mine more towards his, than he shifted his towards mine).  And we found we respectfully disagreed about a number of things.  We got along fine, and he was a good student and enjoyed the material, even though we didn't agree on everything.

Because I was teaching KE (which is all about identifying and working with beliefs and belief systems), however, there was one moment in the course where I had discovered we shared an unusual belief about sales:  “That once a buyer has been led to feel passionately about a product or service, then no closing techniques are ever needed.”  For someone who believes passionately in what they're selling, and enjoys sharing that passion with others in an inspirational way, pressure sales tactics become utterly unnecessary.

Once we both knew the other of us held these related beliefs as deeply accurate, our rapport for the rest of the course was set in concrete.  We weren't aware of mirroring much of anything around that time -- except some important beliefs we both shared.  And we did continue to disagree on things, but the disagreements paled in comparison to knowing about our mirrored beliefs.  And I don't know if he knew it, but even later on when we disagreed on things, we were mirroring each other's posture more, and voice rate.

I hope this expands your beliefs about what rapport is, and how many things you can mirror!

If you're interested in achieving the levels of rapport-building I've been talking about, feel free to connect with me.  Call my office at 813-991-8888, or contact us through the site.

author: Jonathan Altfeld

NLP Insights from Animal-Training helps you learn and teach more effectively!

Whenever you're looking to learn something (or train others in something), chances are you're interested in minimizing time required for learning and training, without sacrificing quality, while still maximizing ROI (return on investment -- whether time or money or both).

Towards that end, the purpose of today's blog is to share ideas that are essential and relevant in the valuable pursuit of training people in a way that maximizes retention and depth of development, while minimizing time required to acquire new skill and knowledge.

NLP is centrally built around the idea of creating desired changes through accelerated learning (whether an NLP-trained Therapist or Coach is training a client on a new mental process that helps them achieve a change, or an NLP-trained Speaker or Trainer (cough, cough) is training audiences on how to do something more effectively.

Not every innovation for accelerated or optimal learning and training comes from the field of NLP (though many do). In some cases, fascinating insights can be gleaned from the field of animal training, and by exploring these from an NLP perspective, we can establish a new way of thinking about training people.

Let's Review “Don't Shoot the Dog” by Karen Pryor

Karen Pryor writes about animal training in a way that I believe is also aimed also at helping us learn how to train people more effectively. As an aside, in my opinion, she's also written one of the closest things to using NLP while training Animals, in her book, Don't Shoot the Dog!: The New Art of Teaching and Training

I'll begin this blog entry by reminding readers of the most basic understandings of classical and operant conditioning (and we'll discuss anchoring later on). I do this because both classical AND operant conditioning can be a critically important aspect of training. By contrast, operant condition is usually absent from just presentations, and classical conditioning typically can only play a minor role in just presentations.

Classical Conditioning is when some reasonably-neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) is presented alongside any biologically powerful unconditioned stimulus (UC). The aim is to cause a subject to associate the normal response to the UC, now also to the CS. Like Dogs, salivating after hearing a bell ring. Like if we use a certain song for our cellphone ringtone, exclusively for someone specific we really want to hear from. Then if we hear that tune on the radio, we'd feel anticipation for connecting with that special someone.

Operant Conditioning is when the likelihood of a specific behavior or response is either strengthened or weakened, depending on setting specific consequences (i.e., reward or punishment). This would be like giving salespeople a higher bonus and a better shift schedule, vs giving them an unwanted work schedule, entirely based on positive or negative sales performance.

There typically are NO feedback loops in Classical Conditioning. But there are feedback loops in Operant Conditioning,  and great training absolutely requires feedback loops. 

Let's jump into “Don't Shoot the Dog.” Karen's sections in the book cover...

• REINFORCEMENT: Better Than Rewards
• SHAPING: Developing Super Performance
• STIMULUS CONTROL: Cooperation Without Coercion
• UN TRAINING: Using Reinforcement

Let's look at Reinforcement

Reinforcing is about adjusting ongoing behaviors. Shaping is about creating new ones. We're going to focus on reinforcing for the moment.

There are a lot of NLP Trainers and NLP Master Practitioners who've done some dog training in the past. It seems to be a commonly shared history. What dog-training has taught us is that with animals (and we are animals!), reinforcement requires INSTANT response. Any positive desired result or behavior must be reinforced instantly.

Karen states that "Reinforcement only with Positive means" works better than both positive & negative Reinforcement, because it saves one decision. Therefore it can be unconsciously acted on. We should begin by providing a small reward at or after every positive desired result or behavior. Negative results should be ignored, not punished, and then the relationship between subject and trainer requires less justification.

This means that even if someone has a negative response to something, we shouldn't ignore them, we should simply pick anything about what they are doing that is positive, to compliment or notice. If someone's negative response persists, then keep reminding them of verifiable positive facts and results (rather than on opinions where their stubborn focus on the negative can flourish). Begin with fact-based compliments and chunk up to the higher value of those compliments.

For example: Let's say your co-worker manages to complete an extremely complicated research project, culling together and effectively organizing the material into a format that's easy to digest. You're happy with it, and you use it to make smart decisions for moving forward that increases earnings, and reduces costs. What if they know they could have done better, and they complain that they didn't do that good a job. You can then say “While I know you're not as happy as you could be (Pace), some great evidence is already in (Pace), we've saved Four Million Dollars this quarter (Pace), you bumped sales up by 22% (Pace), and the higher-ups and shareholders are all obviously happy (Pace). We can build further on that again in the next quarter (Lead). How good does it feel to have this many people thanking you (Lead)?

Let's Look at Shaping Desired Behavior

Ms. Pryor describes Shaping being based on 10 high-level rules, with 3 'short cuts' to Shaping being : Targeting, Mimicry, & Modeling.

Targeting is about building a behavior with piecemeal elements... that string together bit by bit. NLP'ers might accurately consider this to be like chaining states. (I have an audio program available on chaining-emotional-states, called “Creating the Automatic Yes”).

Mimicry is something some animals do easily & well, so if you demonstrate, they follow. Mimicry can be like mirroring in Rapport, but in this case with Mimicry, we're referring not to rapport, but to learning. Mimicry actually has parallels to NLP Modeling, whereby we use mirroring and unconscious uptake intentionally not for rapport, but to physically mimic another person's skill so as to acquire it.

(Clarification): the term “Modeling” is used by Ms. Pryor to refer to pushing a subject through something. Like, showing someone how to make a copy at the copy machine, or like showing someone how to complete a form on paper or on screen. Or like handing your husband the garbage can and pushing him down the driveway. So Ms. Pryor is suggesting that in training animals, she uses the word modeling to help intentionally show a desired behavior to others. In NLP, we refer to modeling as what a subject does in trying to acquire a model of something from an exemplar. A minor distinction – but an important one. We can model our own behaviors for others to pick up (Karen Pryor's usage), AND, we can unconsciously model others' behavior (NLP's usage).

Targeting could start with when the wife smiles every time her husband offered to do the dishes, and then another bigger smile if he offered to massage her feet. Targeting could be used anytime a manager gives a retail salesperson a “thumbs-up” when they actively walk out to greet a customer, and another “thumbs-up” when the salesperson steers a customer towards a certain product or area, and another “thumbs-up” when a sale is made, and another “thumbs-up” when the salesperson hands the customer their card, to encourage return business with a specific helpful person.

To do targeting, reinforce any behavior that comes close to what you want, and provide some small reward within a half-second of what you want to reinforce – this is about building instant and unconscious associations. We don't want much conscious thinking here.

Some years ago, because a student asked a question about this book, I then replied by using some of Pryor's techniques to demonstrate training a specific NLP behavior at a workshop.  I brought another student up, and demonstrated shaping a totally new behavior for the trainee in under 5 minutes, in the context of an NLP exercise (this is something I've been doing regularly for years at courses without necessarily telling students I'm demonstrating behavioral shaping). I wanted the student to visually mirror my behaviors real-time, instead of afterwards.  When they didn't display what I was looking for, I didn't respond.  When they did, I offered positive verbal feedback.  One of Karen Pryor's rules of thumb is to minimize the size of the reward -- and slowly make the reinforcement less easy to acquire.  The demo worked like a charm, because these training methods work beautifully and reliably.

While training any technique, language model, behavior, or skill, naturally I make active use of targeting, mimicry, and modeling to help shape the behaviors and language of students. It's another reason why my students get so effective with these wonderful NLP skills!

Here's an example with using food to train dogs. I used tiny sliced hotdogs. I had a spot on the ground, marked with a penny or bottle-top. You don't need to use food -- you can use a "clicker" too (or instead) -- which is like auditory and/or gustatory reinforcement. I put the spot on the ground, and gave my dog a tiny piece of hotdog after she touched her nose to the spot. The 2nd time, she hit the spot faster. The 3rd time it was instant, but I was already on to building the next step. I moved the spot to another location. My dog went for the new location, and didn't get anything, but rapidly went back to the 1st place and then looked at me. She didn't get anything, so then she went to the new place and I did give her a hotdog (rewarding the behavior of touching both spots. We repeated that experience a few times, and then by the 4th round of practicing this new pair of behaviors, she was touching both spots, and getting the reward consistently. I helped my dog build a totally new sequence of behavioral choices that led to the reward.  What I liked about this technique was the way in which it involved the reverse of the usual paradigms for learning. 

My dog moved from certainty to uncertainty. The trainee moves from the certainty of getting a small reward, to the uncertainty of whether they understood what was suggested or asked for. When every positive response is instantly rewarded there is a certainty in that for the trainee. It is ONLY when it is time to move on to a new behavior that the rewards become less certain.

Another way of saying this is that inducing confusion in a contrived, controlled space, is an incredible paradigm for enabling cognitive leaps from one stuck state to a more resourceful and creative response. I like creating these moments repeatedly for students. Yes, mild confusion is an extraordinarily useful training tool. Deep confusion – not so much.

In the last chapter Karen Pryor discusses UN-TRAINING behaviors. I think her entire book, can be thought of “at a process level” as being about UN-TRAINING old ideas about how best to train, to learn, and to condition, while she talks in entertaining and interesting ways about how much more elegantly and quickly people can learn.

So, I invite you to wonder: is Ms. Pryor discussing learning how to train animals from what we've learned about human learning? Or is she talking of learning how to train people from what we've learned about animal learning?

Essentially, I think she's talking about training people to train... anything.

So naturally, I think every educator on the planet should read this book.

Let's Look at Un-Training
(before looking at Stimulus Control)

Ms. Pryor details eight methods of getting rid of a desired behavior (either in favor of a preferred behavior, or just getting rid of it). I won't go into all of these (read her book!), but I will say that there are pros and cons with each method. There is no one tried and true method that always works with eliminating every type of behavior, and there are situations where one method may be more or less effective than another.

I often encounter situations where people arrive at NLP courses having either trained themselves ineffectively, or, worse, were trained badly by certain other trainers. I do a lot of cleanup work. To help them improve on a badly-or-insufficiently-trained skill, it's usually useful to find indirect ways to un-train old behaviors or skills where they're clearly not getting good results for those students.

One of my favorite ways when training people to untrain less useful behavior, is to tap into students' own values, and get them dissatisfied ENOUGH with their old, less-effective way of doing something. Then I can get them to want to learn a newer, better way. When people are motivated to eliminate an undesirable behavior, they will. If they're not motivated to learn a better approach, they won't really absorb the new training content as thoroughly or be as motivated to try a different approach.

As a result, if I see people in a course demonstrating an unwanted behavior or communications skills strategy, I may want to enable them to make better choices in the future. So, without telling them what I saw or heard, I'll sometimes briefly train what I saw or heard them doing, and demonstrate reasons as to how and why that approach was ineffective. Then I can describe a better way, and describe the results I get with it, then they find themselves motivated to want to learn it. This is like creating a “propulsion system,” for those of you who know that NLP phrase. Essentially, I often won't train a better alternative until I've shown them how ineffective that behavior can be (in a different context).

Animal Training, Anchoring, & Stimulus Control

Anchoring, in NLP, enables us to associate certain stimuli, with the onset of a behavior, or a choice, or an emotional response or state, or thinking, or language. We use anchors to help direct attention and call forth responses and resourceful results in others. Anchoring also occurs constantly, all around us, whether we know it or not. And many examples of anchoring that weren't intended, end up causing undesirable responses. Anchoring with intention is all about setting up stimulus-response mechanisms.

In her book, Karen Pryor had a lot to say about anchoring (using different wording). She defines 4 rules for perfect stimulus control.

1. Desired behavior is immediate in response to stimuli
2. Behavior is reserved for whenever ONLY the stimuli occurs.
3. Behavior never occurs in response to other stimuli
4. No other behavior occurs when that stimuli is presented

For those of you who many not know,  the above conditions are extremely close to what we in NLP refer to as “Well-formedness characteristics of effective anchors,”  where following these principles will make for stronger, more effective, and longer-lasting anchors.

1. The Intensity and Clarity of the original experience, will make for stronger anchors. If you're anchoring a set of emotions or experiences that have been polluted with irrelevant details or information, that can reduce the anchor's effectiveness. One stimuli, one response only.
2. UNIQUE Anchors maintain longer. Ideally, use a unique sensory stimuli that won't be used commonly elsewhere, by ourselves, or others.
3. The Timing of the Anchor needs to be very precise, consistent, and immediate.
4. Context plays a very important role. An anchor set in a kitchen will not be as strong when fired (recalled) outside in a yard. Contextual triggers act as additional components to an anchor.
5. The more sensory systems used in concert, the stronger the anchor. Making a certain sound can be an effective anchor, but if you wave your hand in a unique way while you're making the sound, that's better. Even stronger if you add touch or some kind of kinesthetic experience to the anchor. These combined sensory systems create synesthesias, and that will lead to strong anchors (if they're done well with precision, consistency & effective timing.

What does THAT set of conditions sound like to you?

If you're an NLP enthusiast, and Stimulus Control sounds to you like Anchoring, you're in good company.

The value of the NLP Presupposition:
"There is no Failure, only Feedback."

This presupposition is primarily used in and meant for NLP training and learning contexts, but students are invited to apply this throughout their lives, because it helps free us from self-deprecation and negative reinforcement. Mistakes are only tragic when and if we don't learn from them. Self improvement material is awash with infographics and great quotes from people like basketball great Michael Jordan, who said:

“I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

If you disallow a negative emotional response to mistakes and instead adopt a curious attitude about what can be learned from a mistake, and what can be done differently next time, your body remains in a resourceful state and your mind remains in a positive and creative place.

So, of course, in NLP courses, we train this presupposition, and it doesn't end there. Every time I notice a student having a self-deprecating response to a poor result, I remind them that we're looking for positive states, cognitive and emotional state flexibility (such as a laugh and a curiosity about the next attempt), and a resourceful response overall. I don't 'let' students get upset about mistakes without offering a more positive interruption.  If you attempt to learn NLP at home or without trainer mentorship, you're unlikely to catch yourself during these less resourceful responses.

It's not that errors or mistakes don't have costs. They do. In the real world, mistakes can cost enormously. What costs even more, though, is spending even a second wallowing in those mistakes, and getting angry or upset at yourself (or others), instead of not only turning them into fabulous opportunities to learn and grow, but instead, having mistakes instantly trigger resourceful responses. It's not just a nice-sounding daydream – it's a reality for NLP students attending good quality training.

The difference between
Learning, using only Positive Reinforcement, and
Motivating, using both positive and negative consequences

Every time I discuss the value of positive reinforcement only for training purposes, someone reminds me that people are more motivated by pain. I hear this both from NLP-trained people, and people who've never heard about NLP.

And yes, that's true:  More people are more motivated by moving away from pain, than they are by moving towards a desired result (towards pleasure).

The largest number of people are most motivated by a combination of pain and pleasure, and again, in NLP circles we call this a Propulsion System.

And while motivation is centrally important to learning... the actual learning process occurs most deeply and effectively, with positive reinforcement only.

So what's the difference and why is this critically important?

We need to motivate human beings with a combination of (1) a desired result for moving forward with one choice, and (2) an unwanted result from moving forward with a different choice (or of not choosing at all). This creates a desire to move forward in some directed way.

At that point, it's best to discard the negative reference, and teach or train, using only positive reinforcement.

So, use pain to motivate, but once someone is motivated to learn something, stay away from negative reinforcement while they're actively learning and acquiring new skills and knowledge.

What if you find that you've been doing things the wrong way in the past?

You are an amazing learning machine.  You have the capacity to learn things and build habits that may have served you well in one context, but perhaps you've carried those habits over into contexts where it can be a rude awakening to discover they're not serving you well.  

In considering the possibility you may have trained other people to have unwanted responses to you -- some of you may want to review your past behavior with friends, loved ones, and professional contacts. Maybe you've been unknowingly training employees to continue doing unwanted things. Maybe you've been unintentionally conditioning your spouse to dread conversing with you. Maybe you've been making it increasingly difficult for people to do new things, even while you were intending to help them.

While none of those potential concerns are easy to swallow, they are, fortunately, easy to fix!

The most basic "do-it-yourself" advice you can use... is essentially to stop doing what wasn't working well, and start doing what's known to work more effectively. For some of you, that will be easy and natural to do differently, now that you recognize certain past behaviors as less useful.

If doing the above is not solving the problem overnight, then you may be finding old less-useful habits to be deeply ingrained, and not yet know the best way to move forward on changing these unconscious unwanted habits. For people like yourself, it would be valuable and useful to either acquire private NLP-based coaching (with one of our very experienced coaches and trainers), or, attend NLP courses that will help you to change old habits, build new ones, and become a far more flexible, effective communicator, with the latest techniques and approaches to aid you in your future efforts.

In particular, to help unwind old habits, learn new ones, expand your awareness to pick up on (and start to circumvent) every circumstance where you've been practicing the less-useful behaviors... here are a list of NLP skills that may be critically useful to solve your particular dilemma:

Anchoring, Calibrating, the Meta Model, the Milton Model, Sensory Acuity, State Management, Strategies, Meta-Programs, Circle-of-Excellence, Timeline work, Distance-based Swish, Visual (or Kinesthetic) Squash, Time Distortion, and more.

Remember, any of the above have been found by thousands of people before you to be highly effective at creating change easily!  Let us know how we can help!

author: Jonathan Altfeld

Relax; we're not talking about getting brain implants or strapping you into a big computer.  We're talking about how you can become a better communicator, thinker, decider, learner, and speaker -- today -- with some advantages offered from an amazing field of study. 

Let's clear up some A.I. Misconceptions.

I'm Jonathan (the author behind this blog entry & website; the other guy in the picture is a photographer's model).  

Most of you already know me (thanks for visiting again to read this blog entry!).  For those who don't, I've been training applications of NLP since 1997 (~17 years, now).  My first career was in Artificial Intelligence, specifically, expert systems (building intelligent decision-making software).

Most of us know A.I. has been madly misrepresented in the media and film industry. Many have been exposed to a version of AI like that in films, like "Transcendence", or the "Terminator" movies, "I, Robot", Spielberg's ridiculous "A.I.", or even "Wargames."  

I'm more interested (& trained) in the AI that makes Google a bit smarter when it searches for what you want, instead of what you asked for.  Or the AI that helps drive Google driverless cars, and fly airplanes, and schedule transportation amidst a constantly fluctuating chaotic world with moving parts.  Like the AI that's behind Siri on your iPhone.  Like the AI behind massive CGI battle scenes where computer-generated armies are filmed without requiring animators to make individual character movements.  Like the AI in video games.  Like the AI that figures out when its time to offer you a specific additional service on top of existing services.  Like the AI that approves your mortgage or ascertains your insurance application (no, not science fiction, I helped build some of these systems over 15 years ago).  Possibly also a little like the AI-based ad-retargeting systems that see you click on an organic food website and know that an ad for "non-GMO products" will be more likely to work with you than with someone else.

The field of A.I. can make you a more effective NLP student and communicator; indeed, a more successful professional.

In 1997, I began learning and then later training NLP.  I noticed early on that many other trainers were gifted at multi-channel congruent communication (words that are aligned with behavior, multiple messages that coordinated well, and very compelling communication that made me listen more closely).  I also noticed that many were not that compelling or congruent, or capable of demonstrating nonverbally what they were talking about verbally at the same time.  

At the time, I borrowed another computer metaphor for this, and labelled this for myself as the difference between serial communication (one skill described or demonstrated at a time) and parallel (many demonstrated at a time, well integrated and congruent).

Serial training rapidly became a turn-off.  Parallel training attracted me.

For me, 'Serial' trainers provide minimal more value in person than we get from a book or dvd.

Parallel trainers are amazing to observe and listen to, and are always worth the live training experience (& CDs/books pale by comparison).

Simply put, serial trainers bored me.  I wanted to learn to use these skills in an integrated, natural, massively parallel fashion, without having to consciously manage it all.  In keeping with the concept of NLP Modeling, if you want to get good at something, its best to model the skills and behaviors of, and learn from, people who are demonstrably good at what you want to achieve. So if you want to get good at using a wide range of NLP skills together, real-time, as I did, then you're going to want to choose to learn from trainers who are known for multi-channel communication.  

I learned early on that serial trainers weren't going to get me there, and don't seem to me to be good exemplars for getting really good at multi-channel communication - especially in the faster paced world of business.  So I sought out trainers who were clearly skilled at multi-level communication, and augmented it with supportive written, audio and video material from other wonderful trainers (even a few serial trainers who do great work, but just wouldn't be able to maintain my attention in a classroom).

As I was learning and attending courses with these amazing communicators (like Richard Bandler, and Rex Sikes), I found that my background was enabling me to absorb NLP skills and knowledge much faster than those I was learning alongside.  Further, I found that arguably the most important skill for an NLP trainer -- NLP Modeling -- was getting a lot of lip service, but not a lot of action, and not a lot of clarity.  Many people were talking about it, but not doing it, and couldn't seem to explain it to me.  Yet I was already doing a form of modeling from my years in A.I. -- I was paid to interview experts, and replicate their thinking and decision making in computers.

So when it became clear that A.I. offered benefits to NLP'ers, I started offering courses called "Knowledge Engineering" for modeling and belief system mapping.  And then later "Belief Craft" with Doug O'Brien, combining KE with Sleight of Mouth."  And over the years, I've designed learning exercises that help people develop the creative use of deeply integrated skills, for natural, parallel multi-channel communication.  In more recent months, it's become obvious to me that some of the exercise-drill designs that have gotten enormous attention and student praise, all come at least partly from my years in A.I.  This distinction that is impossible to find from other NLP trainers (whether serial OR parallel).

Shortsightedness in NLP is rampant.

Once in a while someone says "But AI was meant to emulate the mind, not the other way around."

This can be translated to "why should people interested in NLP study how computers have been taught to think like people?"  Or "shouldn't AI folks be studying us, instead of us exploring or studying AI?"

Avoid that very costly short-sighted perspective, and become a far more effective student of NLP.

Another field of study apart from NLP spent decades prior to and concurrently with NLP, learning to 'unpack' and optimally emulate how people think... and coming up with reflections of how people learn and make decisions, that were then tested and refined in measurable ways.

NLP students should want to glean everything they can from discoveries and representations created by such a field.

My perspective is that an A.I. background (even exposure to one), leads people to greater depth of skills, as well as more natural use of more than one skill at a time, faster than many other methods or backgrounds can.

Let's look at Neural Networks.

Once you get a sense of how neural networks learn, you'll likely find yourself more easily willing and able to immerse yourself in unusual non-rational learning experiences (as opposed to always needing rational explanations before determining if you've actually learned anything). Many people give the idea of "unconscious learning" lip service, and then still demand only conscious understanding and explanations -- and if they don't get it, they ignore any potential value experienced/learned. A willingness to learn in a 'variety of ways' (to quote Milton Erickson) is a critical factor to truly gettting the most from NLP. 

If you'd like to become better at (1) learning anything, (2) learning unconsciously, (3) unconscious uptake (what we like to call learning by osmosis!), (4) allowing yourself to reap the benefits of more than just conscious acquisition of understanding, then study Neural Networks.

In studying Neural Networks, focus on the evidence that explains how we draw conclusions and make decisions without any rational basis, entirely mathematically as a result of strengthening some neural traces and weakening some others.  From an NLP perspective, this could help free you from analysis paralysis and may even lead you to greater emotional intelligence. For those who are deeply stuck in ruts, this could just free you... from yourself.

Let's look at Expert Systems
(my prior domain of expertise).

The subfield of A.I. that deals with expert decision-making is called "Knowledge Engineering."  Knowledge Engineers interview experts, find out what they know, and then build pseudo-intelligent (not sentient) Expert Systems.  These have been in use for 30+ years.  I've built many financial expert systems currently being used by companies like Equifax, Chase Manhattan Bank, Ernst & Young, GTE (now Verizon), and contributed in some way to many more.  

When I arrived at the field of NLP, it became obvious fast that Knowledge Engineering would be valuable for NLP students.  So I created a course to train these skills.  Knowledge Engineering actually provides a conscious way of mapping entire areas of cognitive expertise, of decision systems, of belief systems, including kinesthetic information and values, etc. It offered a thorough and flexible decision and belief mapping system -- before NLP ever came along.

This is useful for doing actual (explicit/analytical) modeling, knowledge mining & transfer, business process re-engineering, consulting, coaching, and so much more.

From an NLP perspective, my KE (& Belief Craft) students often tell me that after they learn KE, they can literally see how people's decision systems and belief systems get them into trouble (or success), predictably. And when they turn that same skillset on themselves, it's transformational. People start cleaning up whole areas of their lives -- and not just magically/unconsciously thanks to some silly external provocation, but in a way they can easily understand and explain afterwards.  My expertise from this career covers cognitive modeling, mapping beliefs, unpacking belief systems, and reprogramming/rewiring belief systems.  For businesses looking to gain from that, I help people make smarter (sometimes seemingly impossible) choices, acquire and optimize and then share/retrain expertise to others.

KE explains how, when, why, where, and what you do, in a visual mapping system.  When KE is used to map a small piece of someone's mind, it becomes crystal clear why they're successful and why they're stuck.  More importantly, it provides perfect clues as to how to get them unstuck, or optimize what they're doing.  And it helps us to clarify someone's thinking, and get them from confused to clear, or from conflicted to congruent, or from hesitant to go for it.

And this is important:  most people trained in NLP, when presented with a real-world difficult situation, will not do the same things the same way.  NLP is not a consistent system.  But KE... is.  When properly trained in KE, people would go about unpacking beliefs and choices in very similar ways, and would result in very similar if not identical maps of what they're modeling.

Let's look at Hybrid Systems:

The intentional combination of multiple learning and deciding methodologies. This is where things get even more interesting. Allowing the parts of a larger system to do their jobs where they're most optimal. You shouldn't trust key decisions to unconscious feelings. But you also shouldn't trust learning to the conscious mind alone.

If you'd like to become better at complex marriages of very different skillsets, Study Hybrid Systems. From an NLP perspective, You can think of your own brain as a hybrid system, and check to see if you're using the right or wrong skill for each job, or perhaps the right or wrong MOOD (yes, emotional states matter). You can think of an entire team of people as a hybrid system. Where do they need to communicate? Where is communication bogging things down?

Let's look at Genetic Algorithms:

This is a search or exploration heuristic that mimics the process of natural selection in decision making and other areas of thinking. Often used in population studies in science, or in predictions of species intermingling, WE might want to learn more from this area of thinking to learn more about where teams become inefficient, and how to optimize them. Or what kinds of communication patterns take us from resourceful to unresourceful, or vice-versa.

If you'd like to become better at identifying inefficient or less optimal choices and replacing those with more resourceful choices, study genetic algorithms. From an NLP perspective, this is extraordinary useful for pattern-matching skills, developing a lower tolerance for inefficiency, and an awareness of when habits get stale.

Let's look at Organic Systems:

Organic Systems are an effort to represent and reproduce human cognition and organic thinking/computing. The truth continues to emerge that while we still don't have a crystal clear idea of how it all works together in our minds -- we do continue to progress towards an increasingly accurate understanding of the complex massively parallel operation of our minds. If you want to be on the forefront of learning about improving human cognition and optimizing human communication skills, there is a high cost to ignoring this area of study.

From an NLP perspective, when I consider group dynamics, I'm typically thinking in terms of organic systems. In small groups, Virginia Satir's family constellation work can be extremely helpful. But in larger groups, taking her approach makes things infinitely difficult to unravel. Organic systems help provide greater awareness of forces at play in larger groups, and help us choose good ways to navigate these choppy waters.

It usually only takes one profound unexpected learning experience, one powerful Eureka moment, to free hyper-analytical minds from their own limitations.  Put differently, one cannot 'understand' the pieces of organic systems easily.  However, one can experience organic systems, holistically, and then drill down to the dynamics at play.

Why would Exposure to A.I. Experience be a Valuable Criteria for NLP Training?

It's important for NLP professionals to do more than just think and wax poetic about "how" people think, and also do more to study these things, than just read articles about language, neurology, and behavior, on the web.  

It's important for all of us to test assumptions thoroughly, in the contexts where the results of those tests would be most valuable.  

A.I. taught me to make and constantly test refinements in long-standing models of learning, cognition, and decision-making.  In turn, this means my courses and home-study materials are designed for maximum acquisition and retention.  They're designed to reach the widest range of types of potential learners.

I've also always been deeply fascinated by unconscious learning and accelerated learning, and have been exploring (for two decades) what is required of me, to help people take that critical leap of faith into "learning to learn differently."  As well as to both demonstrate and explain, concurrently.

There is quite a bit more I learned and accomplished through A.I., and hopefully the above examples share with you how my experience in A.I. translates to some of the benefits you'll have enjoyed from my material and courses.

How Else can you Benefit?

My perspective is that NLP'ers can gain immense value from established and constantly-refining models of how people think.  Seems useful, doesn't it?

If you want to learn about specific areas of study above, search the web for resources on the above named areas, like Neural Networks, or Hybrid Systems, etc.

If you'd like exposure to AI -influenced NLP material, you can invest in some home-study materials.  My "Knowledge Engineering" course is the closest detailed home-study course.  Also, "Belief Craft" is a blending of "Knowledge Engineering" and "Sleight of Mouth."  Indirectly, all of my other NLP home-study recordings represent my approach to training and learning NLP, so, of course, I'm biased to think you'll benefit, no matter which titles you pick.

And if you'd like to learn either Knowledge Engineering or Belief Craft, these courses will be scheduled again soon.

Additionally, I'm working on a course currently called "The Refined Mind: AI Inspired Breakthroughs..." which aims to combine some of my most popular multi-channel learning experiences designed to help you become a more gifted thinker and communicator.  Coming soon!

To open a discussion here -- feel free to include comments below -- what area of your thinking and communicating skills, do you think you want or need the most help with?

author: Jonathan Altfeld

You are hereby invited to harness a natural mental process that you've probably never controlled in your past, learn techniques that utilize that process, and then become more effective and influential in every area of your life.

Perhaps in your past you thought improving your influence or changing minds or habits would have been a hard thing to do.   There is an area of study in hypnosis and NLP that explores this very topic and process, and has developed a range of techniques for harnessing it for improved human achievement.  We call it "time distortion."  Milton Erickson studied and utilized it, so Richard Bandler and John Grinder and many other NLP developers explored its use as well.

I have spent a decade and a half exploring, developing, and mastering a range of refinements with time distortion, to the point where I can confidently say... very little of this work gets explained or published on the web.  I use it during training, during coaching, and in a wide variety of business contexts.  And it can be very, very effective.

NLP Time Distortion techniques help lock in changes, expand perceptions, create new possibilities, and change the way the past and/or the future is experienced.  I'm sharing just the tip of the iceberg with this blog post.

Why is Time Distortion such a Potentially Powerful technique for Great Results?

Time Distortion is a profoundly useful set of techniques for consciously affecting how people think, because it makes adjustments to something we all already do naturally and unconsciously, frequently.  We can't not distort time.  And this leads us to experience both positive and negative results from these effects.

We can't not distort time, because our brains are wired to do this automatically.  As poet Arthur O'Shaughnessy wrote, and Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka quoted, "We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."  Essentially, we are all meaning-makers, every one of us, and how we distort time is often at the roots of how we create and assign meaning.

It's Time Distortion that makes...

• that 3-hour dinner with a loved one feel like it lasted only a split second, and it's over too soon.
• that 3 minute wait at the bank or at an airline counter feel like it takes an hour. 
• those whole 20 years were wasted
• that one single day seem like the most amazing day or moment of our lives.

NLP Practitioners know that we do not have to be at the mercy of this effect, but instead, can harness it and use it more with intention, for ourselves — and others.

How does Time Distortion work?

Here are just some of the principles involved (there are more than just these):

• We assign meaning to all experience.
• Emotion colors our memory of experience.
• When we review experiences, and assign and review meaning drawn from that, it changes our perceptions of those time periods, which enables us to amplify some aspects of memories, and downplay or delete other aspects of memories.
• How we feel when we are doing the above, colors the process further.

NLP Practitioners learn techniques and language patterns for shifting how people distort time from being "at effect" to "at cause."  And in doing so, we change meaning — we change experience — and we can change values, beliefs, habits, and meaning.

One of the most important factors to understand is...

We encode memories differently between a "Future Possibility" and a "Past Experience."

We 'encode' or create sensory representations of these, neurologically, very differently.  We know this thanks to our work with submodalities.  As a result, people draw meaning from these distinctions, differently.

Future Possibilities have no momentum yet, sometimes have less meaning attached to them, and sometimes encounter greater resistance (to name just a few differences).

Past Experiences have momentum as a result of sense-memory and muscle-memory, are easier to repeat, and sometimes have stronger meaning and emotions attached to them (to name just a few differences).

How you refer to these distinctions is usually automatic.  How you store them in your mind is usually automatic.  But this doesn't have to be automatic!

One example of intentional time distortion would be to have you experience some of these things, differently, which may change how you feel and think about them.  Let's show you two ways to do this!

Change A Negative Memory

"Think of something you did in the past that you're not proud of."  This is stated in the present, looking back at the past.  Minimal time distortion.

Now let's add in some time distortion:

"If you went back to some time before that event, knowing then what you know now, you would be about to make a different choice today, wouldn't you?" 

This may sound like it's stated in the present, but there is ample time distortion here.  It takes the occurrence from a negative memory, and puts you back before it, looking forward towards making a better choice in the future.  Diagramatically...

Chances are, you're already feeling better about that memory, knowing you'd choose differently today.  Now, granted, this by itself usually isn't enough time distortion to completely clear a negative memory, but it's a start.  Why?  Because instead of treating something as a "done deal" in the past, it changes your relationship to the memory, reminding you that if a similar choice were to occur in the future, you'd make a more empowering choice then.  It re-enables greater hope.

Build a More Empowered Future

"Think of something you'd love to do in the future but have kept putting off, perhaps because you haven't prioritized it, or have hesitated too long, or don't believe in yourself enough, yet."  This is stated in the present, looking forward at the future.  Minimal time distortion.

Now let's add in some time distortion:

"If you were to fly forwards 6 months, having already done that thing you were hesitating to do in your past, looking back at how wonderful a time you enjoyed getting that accomplished, doesn't it now seem like something you absolutely loved doing, thoroughly benefited from, and can't wait to have done again?"

That way of framing a description involves a lot of time distortion.  It takes a future possibility and encodes it as a past occurrence, playing up the positive meaning of the newly chosen future activity.  It does this by taking the listener out past the choice to have done something, and look back at it as if it's already done.  Diagramatically...

This makes doing it in the future much more likely, and makes it feel much more real, because it's no longer encoded as only a possibility; it's encoded as something to "repeat" (for the first time).  And again, this by itself usually isn't enough time distortion to guarantee taking action in the future on something that someone's been putting off or avoiding beginning, but it's a start.  These are just baby steps with time-distortion techniques.

There is Far, FAR More to explore and use...

This area of NLP skills becomes even more fascinating when you begin to combine these approaches, thereby changing the perception of the past and the future in single sentences.  Your results begin to accelerate when you start to combine them strategically with other Ericksonian language patterns, and with congruent use of vocal tonality and rhythm.  And when you learn to engage your inner editor as well... you can take what speakers like Anthony Robbins take a whopping 20 minutes to accomplish in front of a group... and do it all in a single sentence, with conciseness, elegance, and conversationally hypnotic language.  Y' know. Only if you want to have gotten that good at this.

What will you have needed to have learned, to have turned around that collective set of ineffective communication experiences in your past, back then, into something you'll have done brilliantly, soon?

Study the above example... and then study it more deeply.

Here are just some of the things you can accomplish with time distortion...

• reprogram emotional responses to triggers, both in terms of remembering the past, and in terms of re-encountering past triggers in the future
• define for others in advance what meaning they're going to draw from a future experience, instead of just leaving future interpretations of events up to luck or chance.
• diminish unwanted emotional responses to past or future situations
• amplify desired emotional responses to past or future situations
• cause people to create increasing doubt and uncertainty about a topic or choice moving into the future
• cause people to create increasing certainty and confidence about a topic or choice moving into the future
• reverse old decisions people were certain about, take them back to before the decision, reopen the choice, help them make a better decision, make them more confident about it, and then condition them to be incredibly happy with that choice moving into the future
• and much, much more.

When you finally become ready to step things up further... give us a call!

Author: Jonathan Altfeld

This blog post is dedicated to anyone and everyone looking to measurably improve their business careers, and the date of its publishing marks a major transition for the Mastery InSight Institute towards focusing primarily on helping people become measurably more effective in business, with NLP.

Don't Read This Unless You're Not Yet Getting The Results You Want.

Most people who hear about NLP aren't interested in NLP for its own sake. You're interested in results. There's something you want, that you don't yet have, and you're hungry for it. You're looking for resources that will help you get it. Ideally, these resources must be proven successful, or you won't waste your time or money investing in it.

Yet the world isn't quite so black and white. If they sold promotions in a pill, everyone would be buying them. Your success in business is by its very nature going to be a more sophisticated result of a more nuanced development over time. You cannot escape that fact, so don't try. Instead, your best results will come from experimenting with things other people have found effective.

What's holding you back?

What's been holding you back is either Risk-Aversion, Oversimplification, Confusion, Poor Decision Strategies, or Fear of the Unknown.

1. Risk Aversion: If you try to develop yourself only by reading books, that's a good start, but then you'll be 60 when you make it from your entry level job to a middle management position. If you try to do it by doing what the guy or gal next to you is doing, then you're still not distinguishing yourself from the pack. You can only do it by choosing to invest in yourself, and take managed risks. The most successful people on the planet are voracious students for life, and are notorious for experimenting, taking risks, and learning from failures. If you catch yourself not taking small risks because you're afraid of failure, you've already lost the game. Being smart about evaluating and managing larger risks is important. But if that's caused you to be risk-averse at the lowest levels... then there's no point reading further. You're not ready for this.

2. Oversimplification:  Oversimplification happens when someone can't make sense of complexity on their own without generalizing beyond what's useful.   In other words... how comfortable with complexity are you?  Human beings love their "top 5 lists" and "top 7 lists."  If you regularly need the complexity of the world oversimplified for you, then you're definitely not at the top of your game, yet.  But if you can whittle complex situations down to "top 5 lists" for other people's consumption, that's evidence of the valuable ability to create order from chaos.  That's a valuable leadership trait; the world needs people who can simplify complexity.  The point here... is that if you're complexity-averse... you may as well sign a contract to receive the same salary for the rest of your life with no opportunity for advancement.

3. Confusion:  This nearly always boils down to poor information gathering and/or not having the expertise to evaluate that information (whether the expertise is yours, or consulted externally).  Solving this is easy when and if you're willing to hire someone who does have the expertise and knows what information to gather, or if you know where to go to get that information.  Failure to recognize the symptom of confusion and know what to do with it... is what NLP would refer to as a lack of behavioral flexibility.

4. Poor Decision Strategies:  Chances are if your business career is already moving forward, you've already got at least one if not several good decision strategies, and they probably serve you well in some circumstances.  The more you find yourself in unfamiliar territories, though, the more uncertain most people become about how and when to make decisions.  This sort of uncertainty and lack of direction can lead to career problems.

5. Fear of the Unknown: You need to develop, exercise, and keep exercising, your ability to embrace the unknown, step into what it is that you don't yet know, and explore. Play. Attach a sense of adventure and fun into the process. Because if you only stay inside your “comfort zone”, and aren't open to constantly challenging your own assumptions, then you'll remain stuck inside a lie of gargantuan proportions. “So, keep telling yourself you know it all, or that your position is the right one! That'll do wonders for your career.”

The Top 3 Skillsets You Must Keep Sharpening

Regardless of your Job title or your working environment – whether CEO, Manager, Customer Service Representative, Bank Teller, Entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist, Salesperson, Financial Strategist, Attorney, Doctor, or Lemonade Stand Businesskid – your success and growth always depends upon all of these three skills:

1. The ability to enter a situation and rapidly gather more than enough high quality information to make the best possible decision about an optimal result, moving forward.

2. The ability to (a) determine a strategy or course of action, or (b) identify or gather choices, and then make a decision about how to move forward.

3. The ability to execute steps towards the action or decision you've made, which may include leading, communicating, acting, and more.

The most successful businesspeople in the world – if that group doesn't yet include you – are all better at some or all the above, than you are. Every single one of these... are considered “Soft Skills.”

“Hard Skills” may have taken you from resume to interview, or from phone call to client visit, or from college degree to 1st job. The lists of hard skills are conscious check-lists. But always remember that its the “Soft Skills” that got you the offer letter, or the client, or the raise, or the promotion. It's the “Soft Skills” that led to the other decision maker's “impression” of you. And the factors that contributed to their impression are far more numerous than 7 +/- 2. Hundreds of pieces of information went into that impression, and the most important were your soft skills.

All three of these soft skills can be used to prevent or avoid or eliminate any of the above 5 areas:  Risk-Aversion, Oversimplification, Confusion, Poor Decision Strategies, or Fear of the Unknown.

Yet, amazingly, for the most part, they don't teach “Soft Skills” in college or graduate school.

An entire field of personal and professional development outside of academia has sprung up to help people improve themselves. Some call it the Self-Improvement field, which of course, is ill-named, since when you explore that field, you're still seeking advice from others about how you can help yourself.

If it were truly self-improvement, people wouldn't be quoting authors, reading books, listening to CDs, or attending training courses, to learn from other people.  Call it what it is -- learning from experts to enable growth.  And the better the teacher, the longer the mentorship relationship, the faster and more effectively you grow.

So throw away the myth of self improvement.  Find experts you align with, and learn from them in whatever ways you can.

Naturally, NLP provides profoundly effective tools, techniques and abilities for All Three Skill-sets.

There's not a person on the planet that wouldn't benefit from being able to more quickly and effectively connect with another human being. 

Everyone would become more effective in their careers if they understood themselves more accurately, and could understand more accurately how others think, what drives them, how to communicate with them, and how to motivate and influence them in ethical ways.

NLP in Business – Lessons for the USA from the UK.

I began training NLP in 1997 and rapidly began travelling overseas to the UK, Europe, Canada and Australia. In particular I visited and ran courses in the UK 20 times from 1997 to 2008, and have spoken in London, Richmond, Southampton, Oxford, Milton Keynes, Manchester, Leeds, & Glasgow (just to mention UK cities).

During these training visits, I noticed that there was widespread and increasing acceptance and fascination in the UK for using NLP in business. With the people and groups I met with in the UK, the emphasis was on developing emotional state-management, creative problem-solving, team development, personal excellence, and on effective communication skills. People exhibited an openness to accepting that their unconscious minds were as or more important than their conscious minds.... there was an openness to investing in their own development, and a willingness to play.

Perhaps equally important, the culture of business life in the UK and Europe allowed for and encouraged far more “vacation time” for just about every employee, than those employees' counterparts in the USA enjoy. In the UK, they call it “holiday” time. Employees in the UK can expect 3-6 weeks of holiday per year. Employees in the USA can expect 1-3 weeks of holiday per year, usually no more than 2 until they've become an executive or have been with a company for at least 10 years. Obviously, with less time to spare, people feel pressure to use that free time for relaxing or re-charging. In response, many NLP trainers have felt a need to keep shortening their courses in order to keep getting people in the door. They're short-changing their students – and the field.

The history lesson is only important for the purposes of reminding readers that the “Jedi-like” results written about during the early years of NLP, were mostly achieved by people who'd been trained for months, not from people who attended a 3-5 day workshop and got a piece of paper lying about their supposed abilities. The field is now chock full of people who suck at NLP and who’ve been told they're as good or effective as people who were trained 20 years ago. They're not.  The false idea that a person can get good at these skills in just a handful of days, and somehow magically transport their career into the stratosphere with that low a commitment is unrealistic at best.

I also noticed that in the UK, there are NLP study groups all over the place. In every major UK city, there are multiple NLP study groups. People make a long-term commitment to exercising and developing their skills. That only rarely happens in the USA. There's a catch-phrase in the field that says “the training begins when the training ends.” This is well exemplified in the UK. In the USA, it's ignored. If you want to get damn good at using NLP in any area – especially in business, you should actively seek out post-workshop local study groups that meet a minimum of once a month, preferably once every couple of weeks, for 2-3 hours of active exercises and/or evening presentations from visiting trainers.

By contrast with the emphasis on applying NLP to relationship-building in the UK, in the USA, the emphases has been on being pushy... on influence... on hypnotizing prospects... on 'getting a leg up over someone else...' and on getting one's own way.  That win-lose frame will leak in your communication.  And this, I believe, is why here in the USA... NLP got a bad rap, from some unsavory characters using it badly.

So that stands in stark contrast to the UK, where mentioning NLP on a business card or resume is widely valued and accepted.  It's a badge of honor -- for the right reasons.

Science vs. NLP ?

Academics and social scientists have criticized NLP for years, suggesting that many tenets of NLP are either false or unproven.  Yet in fact, science is increasingly supportive of claims made by NLP as much as 35 years ago.  Visit this blog entry to learn more about this issue (as well as how and why science does support NLP).

The Direct Response Marketing crowd are ALL aware of NLP. Many of them are NLP Practitioners, Master Practitioners, or NLP trainers.

There's an enormous direct response copywriting world out there. Years ago there were just a handful of major names in the business -- Dan Kennedy, Jay Abraham, Gary Halbert, John Carlton, Gary Bencivenga and others.

Now there are hordes of effective Direct Response Copywriters, and they ALL know about NLP, because so many NLP-trained people have been going to their bootcamps and conferences for years. Some use it more effectively than others. Some use it more or less honorably than others.

Additionally, most of the major information product (& internet marketing courses) launches over the past decade have intentionally used NLP to help cause specific emotional response chains in their mailing list readers, leading to increased 'conversion rates' and of course, sales.

Effective use of certain skills, does not necessarily equate to honorable use. Both effectiveness and integrity are what contribute to improving the reputation of NLP in the marketplace.

Real Estate Professionals

Real Estate agencies across the country have studied aspects of NLP -- though it's often done in tiny piecemeal bits (like studying “Sleight of Mouth” for 1 to 2 days). Many real estate agency owners are notoriously cheap when investing in external training; they'll try to get their agents to pay for their own training wherever possible (it's extremely short-sighted of them!).

That said, extremely smart Real Estate Agents will do whatever they must, to place themselves head and shoulders above and beyond their competition.  NLP is an extraordinary tool for enabling that result. 

Competition in the real estate marketplace is often extreme.  Many people today can't earn a living doing just real estate, which is a problem, because to do it well, a realtor often has to be "on-call" 24/7.  But taking another job can make a realtor unavailable to serve their buyers and sellers.  NLP helps you get inside the minds of your clients, connect them to you strongly, and create loyalty and referrals, for all the right reasons.

Attorneys

There are a select few attorneys using NLP in a variety of ways, including making a persuasive court presentation, voir dire, discovery, and more.

However, it is difficult to get attorneys to realize the value of NLP to their practice, because:

• Many attorneys are know-it-alls. When you believe you know it all, or at least, you know better than most other people, why would you ever perceive a course outside your field to be valuable?
• Most attorneys are extremely busy, working 60-70 hours per week, with very little vacation time. How much free time for training can a lawyer take for themselves, when they're that busy?
• It's near impossible to offer them a targeted course on applying NLP to law, because every attorney has a different schedule.  Trying to get multiple attorneys to sit in a room together, long enough to get them really good at NLP, is a virtual impossibility.  This is why most attorneys will never get good at NLP unless or until they can take the time to invest in learning how to do it well.  (and remember, 3-5 days isn't remotely enough time, and home study on one's own isn't remotely effective enough). 
• Most of the attorneys I know who are great at NLP learned it before starting their practice, or over 20+ years, or by making it such a high priority, that they could devote a couple of weeks per year to NLP courses.

Now, all that said, law may be one of the best professions around for using the skills provided by NLP.  But only a select few attorneys will ever get good enough at NLP to realize that potential!

Salespeople:

This is one of the best possible areas where NLP can become extremely useful. 

There are some truly wonderful salespeople out there, and some utter frauds.  Most are on the ethical side, but not yet high performers.  Many less-than-ethical sales people have been forced into certain sales behaviors by demanding and cold-blooded sales managers who've taught them despicable tactics.  We wonder if those tactics evolved entirely because people didn't know there was a better way.

Recently, when shopping for a car, I walked out of 8 dealerships when faced with clear-cut examples of fraudulent sales tactics. That series of unfortunate experiences was fortunately overshadowed after I found the right dealer at the right dealership.

Finding honorable salespeople can be a challenge.  Why did I encounter so many negative sales experiences before finding a positive one?  What if every salesperson refused to work for an unethical sales manager -- and had the skills to identify that during their interview? What if every salesperson were so good at connecting with people and helping them make the best decision possible, that they all earned commissions for the right reasons at the right time? 

If all those things were true... what if that would enable them to (1) take better advantage of every opportunity, (2) cause their happy customers to rabidly send them more future business, and then (3) actually earn far more than they would have done, if they'd adopted a sales process with less integrity?

NLP helps you convey a sense of higher value, that people will attach... to you.

Executives:

Executives need to lead.  They need to be able to influence minds both gently and strongly.  They need insightful and incisive minds.  They need to radiate charisma, listen profoundly well, and effectively communicate a strong shared vision.   They need to be able to establish, simplify and streamline a company culture, a mission, and a public message.  They need to attract the best people to their teams, and retain them by challenging and rewarding those people properly.  They need to find and project confidence in their choices and in their strategic planning.  In short, there's very little in NLP that isn't extremely helpful to executives, because NLP teaches incredibly useful skills for all of the above areas.

Politicians:

Most politicians don't need any reminders of the value of NLP for influencing the masses.  It's been said that Al Gore has had NLP training.  President Clinton got coaching from Anthony Robbins.  NLP books have been seen laying on tables at No. 10 Downing Street (the office of the British Prime Minister).  Many politicians actively study the more hypnotic aspects of NLP, such as the Milton Model hypnotic language patterns, and rhythmic cadence to minimize resistance, and tonal shifts during key moments of a speech.

If you're a politician or planning to run for office soon, and you don't yet know NLP, rest assured:  You're way, WAY behind.  Get yourself registered for as many NLP courses as you can, ASAP.  Your competition probably already has.

Our 2014 Course Line-Up Serves All of the Above.

Our 2014 Business NLP training schedule meets a wide range of business needs, and aims to enable you to exceed others' expectations!  Go ahead and give us a call to ask any questions you may have, and/or register online when you're ready to make plans for your own rewarding professional development!

NLP Sales Wizardry - a 2-day course exploring NLP for Selling Effectively.  You'll learn how to improve in 5 areas:  Generating Leads, Qualifying Prospects, Selling/Convincing, Getting Past or Around Objections, and Closing the Deal.

Speaking Ingeniously - a 5-day course for Compelling and Memorable Presentation Skills.  Need to craft a profoundly powerful message for your audiences?  Want to become more effective from the stage?  There's no better preparation, anywhere.

Own the Interview - a 2-day NLP course for people running interviews, and for people taking interviews.  Got interviews coming up?  Limited time and money to prepare?  This is the course for you.

NLP Business Practitioner - a 10-day course teaching not only all of the foundational skills of NLP, but giving you active practice and preparation using it in a wide array of business contexts.  This is the basis for getting ridiculously good at NLP.  If you're serious about propelling your career, this is the first longer course to take.

NLP Business Master Practitioner (Link is coming soon) - an 11-day course teaching how to use NLP to become the undisputed leader of any situation.  You'll learn how to unpack & rewire beliefs and belief systems.  You'll learn Sleight of Mouth for extremely influential reframing skills, you'll learn advanced metaprograms (personality patterns and preferences) so that you can tune your communication to every listener's unique personality and communication style, and develop an operational real-time creative flexibility for entering, owning, and leading any situation from wherever you found it, to wherever you want to take it.

author: Jonathan Altfeld