Integrate!

Reflection is powerful when it is specific and directed at the future. People are often afraid to reflect on their experience because they confuse reflection with beating themselves up for what they did or didn't say or do. They're also afraid that recognizing what is good in the present will somehow stop them from making change. This is a reflex that keeps people stuck in old patterns. They may be thinking about the future, but they aren't building the bridge they need to get from here to there. The results are daydreams, wishes, and dissatisfaction without motivation. The group above is finishing up a process that began with connecting to their curiosity and energy and then moved through going deeply, vividly into their lived experience. They were reflecting not just when they were sitting and writing privately, but also when they were asking questions, remembering, and laughing together. The group experience drew them into a kind of reflection that is often ...

What do these words mean to you? The Meta Model classifies them as distortions and generalizations. But to the people who put them on these sticky notes, they represented a very specific shared experience. Part of the reputation of NLP was established by its approach to language. The Meta Model  promises to help you look beneath what people are saying to discover what they really mean. It's based on understanding language as a distortion of reality. Even if it were accurate (I wouldn't argue that), it's a framing that is almost bound to get you into trouble unless you remember one cardinal rule (most people don't). The rule is this: you can only dig deeper with permission and you can only tell you have permission when you are spending most of your attention building agreement. As a coach, I sometimes work with high performers on analyzing their patterns of thought or behaviour so that we can identify leverage points for change. This is stressful, but the...

I wonder if you've ever struggled to stay connected to someone as you were communicating something important to you? It often seems that connecting to someone is a distraction from our message, rather than the purpose for it.  It's hard to stay clear about what we want to say when we also have to be clear about what someone else will hear in our words. This is the central paradox of communication: for a message to be clear, the sender of that message must hold onto their own vision while connecting with someone else's. There's a benefit to this paradox. As we become less sure of what we want to say, we are more likely to engage in shared thinking. We come up with ideas together when we communicate in ways that are unclear enough to encourage participation. As you struggle to be both clear and connected, think about this. If you had to sacrifice either clarity or connection, which would be most important? Giving up clarity makes room for collaboration. Givin...