Integrate!

In an NLP training this weekend, we were talking about the problem of getting people in a particular profession to own up to mistake. Within moments, we realized it wasn't about a particular profession. Most people find it really hard to admit they've made a mistake. If you don't own up to making mistakes, it's hard to learn from them. That's like paying for something and walking out of the store with empty hands. You have the pain of the mistake without the gain of learning from it. This is even more true for organizations. If people won't own up to mistakes, the whole organization misses out on the learning that should come from them. Making a mistake is like losing one piece to your puzzle.  If you don't own up to the mistake, no one is going to know that what they just picked up in the the piece you need to complete your puzzle. So as an individual and as an organization, you face the same choice. Am I okay with a puzzle that looks like this...

The easiest way for me to limit registration in a course or workshop is to put the word "learn" in the title. I've struggled with this for a long time: learning means acquiring the skills or information we need to do things we have never done before. It's hugely important in both innovating and adapting to change around us. But people cringe a little when they see it. It's like offering a course on flossing your teeth or giving up sugar. I should not really be surprised. I was a full-time student from grade one through dissertation. I had some wonderful teachers and I loved to learn. But when I think about my earliest memories of school, this is what comes up for me. The class had behaved badly in some way (not me!) and the teacher made us sit on our hands until they hurt. And I was asked to be the demonstrator student for some new standardized tests, which meant I did all my tests in front of a room full of teachers. I don't really remember that part: I rem...

Have you played this game before? If you could choose one superpower what would it be? Would you predict the future (awkward!) or fly without a plane? Would you move faster than light or would you be able to stretch to meet every requirement? © Can Stock Photo / yarruta I would learn.  If I could choose a superpower, I would choose learning. Learning drives everything. Test it out.  Can you be learning and be unmotivated? If you are learning, curiosity has kicked in and curiosity is the best form of motivation. Curiosity keeps you trying one more solution to that problem or turning one more page or walking to the next turn in the road. And don't even try to be depressed while you are learning. You can't be focused on the next page, the next answer, the next turn and be stuck. Can you be learning and not be creative? I don't think so. Learning thrives on novelty and connection and those are the two ingredients of innovation. When you are learning, you're will...

It is interesting to me that most of the NLP (neurolinguistic programming) conferences of which I am aware run exactly like other conferences: they put experts talking at the front of the room (usually with powerpoint) in unremarkable hotel rooms. This seems to me unfortunate. Why not use the practices and principles of NLP to create format that satisfies people's goals for attending a conference? While it is certainly true that people go to conferences to learn new things, it is more true that most people go to conferences to learn while making new connections and planting seeds for further development and networking. Most NLP conferences do no better or no worse than other mainstream conferences in giving participants opportunities to meet those goals. People sit and listen, and then mingle and make small talk during breaks. Whether or not the speakers are good is not really the point. The point is that the framing doesn't really facilitate meeting the outcomes. At NL...

It all started with a marketing exercise on search terms that would lead someone to my website at www.nlpcanada.com . I dutifully made a list of the kinds of keywords Google suggests and realized that they didn't fit the way I write on the site and they didn't fit the way people talk when they first connect with me on the phone or at a program. So I made a list of what I think is really going on when people say, "I heard about NLP and I've been interested for a long time. . ." I’m stuck I want to know me better I wonder where (else) I fit I need my kids/partner/employees to understand my priorities  I have to learn more/better/faster I need to make adjustments I need to get it together Could I communicate more clearly? Could I get other people to do what I want them to do? How do I help other people without suffocating their independence? How do I teach people to “get it” faster? What do I really believe about success? What should ...

In the middle ages, craftsmen learned for many years before they became masters of a craft.  It's likely that by the time they did become masters, the habits of practice and improvement were so deeply ingrained that they continued.  Our most famous writers and artists have also continued to work to get better throughout the whole of their careers.  Do you know this quote, attributed to Michelangelo at 87 years of age? I am still learning. Somewhere, the idea that we should practice to get better got lost along the way. Continuing education came to mean sitting in a room while someone did their best to make an entertaining presentation of techniques and ideas, almost all of which would be forgotten or abandoned within weeks (or hours). We came to accept that if we were being paid we should already be our best: practicing would somehow suggest that what we had been selling to that point was not our best.  Who wants to go into surgery with a surgeon who is still l...

One of the most effective tips I have learned after decades in post-secondary teaching and adult education is this: encourage people to applaud for one another.  The form of the applause will change depending on the situation, but the effectiveness of applause will be constant across different ages and different circumstances.  Applause is contagious. What happens when people clap?  It doesn't take long before they begin to smile. And not long after that, they begin to suspect that there's something worth applauding. This is true whether they offer genuine applause or whether they applaud because the leader tells them it is required. I have watched many different people under the influence of applause. Most of them look embarrassed, at first. They look like they are not sure that the applause is really for them. And then, after it starts to become clear that applause is non-negotiable, something lovely begins to happen. Although people might still squirm a little, the...

There are lots of sexy gifts that we wish we had: wisdom, charisma, strength or acuity.  They are characteristics of the successful and powerful, the characteristics we associate with being better and doing better.  Persistence is not sexy. Courage is sexier than persistence. We admire courage although if we are wise and honest, we hope that we won't need courage very much or very often. Courage is a gift that means you're in big trouble and it will probably hurt before it gets better. Courage is sometimes so like persistence that they might be twins. Persistence is the quiet twin, the one who knows how to make herself inconspicuous when the company arrives. She is often found with her equally undesirable cousin, Patience.  The two are hard to notice and yet, when we look we find them both wherever people are able to maintain success. You might be lucky once, but if you are lucky repeatedly, it's because you have made room for persistence. I think if I were a fairy ...

Bad stuff happens to good, smart people. There are lots of good ways to think about life, but there is no way to out-think life.  Stuff happens. In my life right now, stuff is happening in my back. I've had significant back pain for two full months now, and I have to say that pain sucks. Given the choice, I would definitely wake up tomorrow pain free and able to move comfortably. I have tried rest, pills, chiropractic care, massage, nlp, hypnosis and EFT.  I still experience pain whenever I try to move: getting up or down or walking or standing. All hurt. So, you might wonder, what's the good of NLP if it first allowed me to make the choices that got me here and second has not fixed me yet? 1) Reframing.  I am not happy about what is happening and I recognize that I have an opportunity to understand differently and make new choices.  Going back to the patterns that got me here is literally not an option at the moment, and that's a good thing. 2) Relating. I k...

In his recent book, To Sell is Human , Dan Pink argues that everyone now spends part of their work day trying to persuade other people to do stuff. He says we are all in sales now. He might also have said that we are all teachers. Teachers all believe they are in sales, but not all sales people believe they have to teach.  And managers are as likely to regret having to train as they to see themselves as teachers. Yet none of us makes it through a day without giving instructions of one kind or another. Yesterday, I watched a group of great young people give quite dull presentations. They were trying to do what they have been taught to do: to present information they found somewhere else about contexts about which they know almost nothing. When people think of education, this is the kind of experience that comes to mind. I read the text book. I repeated what I thought I found there. I got marks and moved to the next textbook. No wonder people do not want to see themselves as teac...