Integrate!

It's obvious to everyone that just before you drop, you should rest. Holidays are often seen as ways to ward off collapse from fatigue or burn out. When absolutely necessary, rest for a short time and then get back into the swing of things. This necessity arises at different times for different people in different kinds of work. For entrepreneurs, it arises just before they crash (if they're lucky). This isn't the best way to think productively. If we use the word "creative" lots of people feel they can sidestep the value of rest because they do not see themselves as "creative." For many years, I thought that having a research degree in a competitive field meant that I was an analytical thinker. I am, of course, an analytical thinker but it turns out that in no way also prevents me from being the kind of thinker who produces stuff: words and ideas and motivation and innovation. You might not be a creative person but it is likely that if you are readi...

I was inspired by Chris Brogan's post at Owner this morning . Chris got me thinking about how what we notice drives our behaviours which drives our results. What are you measuring when you try something new at work? We tend to move between two poles. At one extreme, we measure results. We know what we want and that's all we measure. At the other pole, we measure reassurance. Are we getting gold stars? Does someone who counts approve of our efforts? As employees, we tend to work for some form of gold stars although we are more engaged and more successful when we are able to see the results of our work and measure those instead. As entrepreneurs, we want to measure results but until we get them, we would like some gold stars. It's hard to work on your own and hope you're doing something worthwhile. It's nice to get a gold star. It's nice, but ultimately, your ability to continue to do what you want to do depends on your results. More than anything, as an ent...

I was watching a promo video for a program in leadership. The speaker said she taught the 'soft skills.' Hard skills, technical skills will get you a job, but soft skills, she said, would help you progress through your career. I've played contact sports and I've gone through labour twice (the second time without drugs). I would rather do that than be torn to shreds by the words of someone I trusted. So I am not sure that I can get on board with reading and responding to people being 'soft' and manipulating stuff that doesn't fight back as being 'hard.'  I think the hardest moments in the life of any leader are the ones where she has to make a decision without knowing what is right, when she has to stand in front of people and show more confidence than she feels so that they will have courage, when she has to back off and let people make their own mistakes.  It takes skill to navigate those kind of situations and that kind of skill takes a lifetime ...

I have been reading an NLP book. I won't say which one, only that it includes many instructions that include what I would call a false precision. Let me give you an example. Anchoring is a technique that associates a particular physical stimulus with a state, memory or behaviour. In NLP, anchoring is widely used to stabilize, modify or create states that are suitable for particular situations or tasks. Many instructions will tell you to set an anchor just before an experience peaks. This is nonsense. You only know the peak by the descent from it. You cannot set an anchor just before an experience peaks because you do not have access to that level of detail about the future, nor can you read someone else's state so accurately that you notice the difference between at the peak and just past the peak. You can pretend to accuracy, but not achieve it. I know that the people who write this stuff believe they have developed a meaningful level of precision. There is just a lot of...

What do you think it means to edit something? We are familiar with the term from writing where, to most people, it means fixing the language and formatting so that the message is clear and presentable. But we might also know, somehow, that the Oscars have categories for sound editing and for film editors. Do they also fix errors and clean things up so the message is clear and presentable? When we edit our experience, we are stuck with the content of our raw material in precisely the same way that editors are stuck with the story, image or sound they are editing.  While minor cuts might be made, with care and discretion, most of what counts has to stay.  The editor can change the format or the grammar, can pull some parts into focus and let others blur, but the content remains. This is roughly the same as what happens when we look back at our past experience and make an effort to understand it in a new way.  What happened in the past cannot be changed. That doesn't mea...

You want something more, a change in your thinking, an edge to motivate you. You've been exploring NLP because you heard something or read something. But it's complicated. It's almost overwhelming. There are so many different trainings with official-sounding names and long lists of techniques. How do you know what you need? Here is one hard truth: anyone can print a certificate. Anyone can make up techniques and then give you a certificate to say that you were in the course.  If you are pursuing a certification to "prove" yourself or to find the difference that finally wins you the job or promotion, you will probably be disappointed. This is not what certification does well. Here is what our certification in NLP does very well. It trains you in a set of techniques (sometimes called patterns in the NLP jargon) that allow you to change what you give your attention so that you can change the opportunities you see and the results you get. The certificate is not im...

I have been involved with NLP (neurolinguistic programming) for more than ten years, and have been training NLP for almost that long. In that time, I have used NLP as a window into developments in the evolution of coaching and the discoveries of neuroscience. I have developed long-term relationships with clients who return to me for training because they find that my teaching is both powerful and practical. There are many, many things I love about neurolinguistic programming and the gifts it has given me in a decade. There is a lot I do not love about NLP. I hate having to justify and explain that what I do is different than a lot of bad, hokey, undisciplined practice. I hate having to separate myself from trainers who spout a lot of pseudo-technical terms and teach "information" that is current in NLP circles and nowhere else. I hate that much of NLP has come to be represented by people who do not understand academic disciplines and so do not have any reference point for N...