Communication Excellence: Using NLP to Supercharge Your Business Skills

Ian R McLaren is a registered INLPTA trainer of NLP with a background in financial and general management. As Investment Controller and Planner with the Canada Life Assurance Company, he has worked in London, New York and Toronto, gaining a wide range of senior management experience. During his varied and successful career, Ian has also worked as a finance director, consultant, author, business coach and trainer.

(from Day One):Welcome to the first day of this course, everyone. Special thanks to the management of Whizzitts Ltd, who have allowed us to share in this course, and for agreeing that we can use some examples from their firm as illustrations. This course will include a series of suggestions and exercises using a number of tools to help you improve how you talk, listen or write to other people. At the end of each day, I want to leave you with some ideas and some things to practise as you go about your normal life at work, at home or at leisure.

This is what we are going to cover in this lesson:

Communicating Communicating is what we say to people, how we say it and how we listen, why it is we are talking to them. From a company’s point of view, the messages that we are putting out to staff, customers, financiers and the world, and the feedback we read or hear, is all part of corporate communication.

Pacing Yourself As we shall learn, the state you are in has a very powerful effect on the way that you think and believe. We shall learn a way of finding calm and concentration that can be useful when starting conversations.

Doing, Thinking and Feeling Just consider what happens when you are talking to someone. You are doing things speaking, gesturing, listening, sitting or standing. You are thinking of things what the other person is saying, what you are going to say, and possibly how to get away for your next appointment. You are also feeling things nervous about making the sale, angry because you are not being understood, happy about the news the other person is bringing you or wondering what will happen next. Technically, we can talk about External Behaviour what we are doing, how someone is standing, their expression, voice tones and actions. We will look at Internal Process how we think, believe, know and process information, and how we use language. You should also consider Internal State how you feel, what you value, people’s emotions, criteria and attitudes. We also need to be aware of the Environment the place, time and conditions in which or about which a conversation is taking place: who else is there and what else is going on. Each of these can affect the course and the outcome of a conversation.

Perceiving We don’t know ‘the truth’; we only know what we can perceive. We automatically fill in the gaps by guessing, extrapolating and reading between the lines. You can do this consciously to give yourself new insights by stepping into other people’s shoes. We will demonstrate and learn a formal way of doing this called the Meta-Mirror.

Time and Space Humans usually represent time in the form of pictures that seem to be located in space. We will find out how you see the past and the future in your Time Lines. Setting Objectives We all have a number of things that we want or intend to do. Some of them get done, many do not. The process of setting a Well-Formed Outcome will allow you to decide what your Positive and Measurable outcome is. Achieving it will depend on whether you have the Resources (time, money, skills, etc.) and Control (can you do it all yourself?), and whether you judge the Consequences to be acceptable. Then you can Plan and Timetable achieving it.