Integrate!

Tyler Tang, Scop.io How do you feel about the title of this post? Some people love to go for a long walk. Many famous people have gone for long walks every day, just to think. Other people walk for exercise: it doesn't matter where they go as long as they keep moving. And some people walk because it's a good way to get where they want to go. Someone asked me today to talk about how to successfully be in a relationship with your partner or family while under quarantine. I am suspicious that what you are feeling now is what you feel when you go for a long walk together.  Humour me. Think of your partner or one person who is living with you in isolation from the rest of the world. Have you ever been for a walk with this person? What did you like about it and what was difficult? Did you get in sync and did you have the same need to talk or to walk in silence? Did you walk one behind another or side by side? What made this walk worth remembering (because you are rememb...

© Can Stock Photo / andreykuzmin Most people ask for help when they see no other choice. They ask when the price of helping is likely to be the highest, and when the skill of the helper needs to be the strongest. What happens is often that the help they find is too little, too late. That's hard on the person who needs the help and it's also hard on the helper. They might be reluctant to volunteer next time. People have three obstacles to overcome before they ask for help. One is the fear that no one will want to help them. Two is the fear that no one will be able to help them. Three is the fear that they will be judged (and there will be repercussions) as incapable or weak. Let's take these one at a time, from the point of view of the person you will ask for help. One: the fear that people won't want to help you.  The reality from the point of view of the people around you is likely to be that watching you struggle is painful. They might not want to help you,...

Do you meet people at events and wonder "so what's their story?" You might even ask. What you expect in return is not a fairy tale. It's not a presentation. It's an account of what matters to them and why it matters. "What's your story?" is how we say: "We see you have an emotional investment in something here. What matters to you and why?" Do you know how to answer the question. You can just tell people: "I'm here because this matters to me because. . ."  You might even say out loud "this matters to me and I think it should matter to you, too." But you might not. Because we want to be invested but we also want to be cool. We want to be passionate, but we also want to be inoffensive. It's hard to tell your story without caring about what the other person is thinking. That's the brilliance of telling a story instead of giving a speech. If you answer the question (real or implied) with a story ...

I used the phrases "Don't Miss It"  and " Don't start" in an ad, and someone made a comment about my "interesting" language. I don't know for sure that what interested that person was the use of negatives, but it made me think about the way people get hung up on a formula for what they should or should not say. photo by: canstockphoto.com/chrisdorney Once someone challenged me on the use of the word 'problem.' He felt that it was inappropriate in the work I was doing. I felt it was inappropriate to tell people that the things that troubled them were not problems or to hide from problems or to overlook them. In fact, "negatives" can be a strong opening. We all know that: it's not an unusual strategy to catch people's attention with a warning or to motivate people by giving them a problem to solve. They are strong because they connect with people where they live: that ad was written to catch the attention of the...

Brad Cheeseman Trio at The Steel City Jazz Festival, 2016 Most people think that having more influence means one of two things: either they can somehow eliminate resistance so people will do what they want or they can achieve enough status and power so that people will do what they want. There's nothing wrong with either of those as goals, but there are many things you might want people to do that won't come from choosing the right words or having the power to make people comply. I am a teacher, and I often teach adults who have more money and power than I do. I don't have a carrot or a stick to motivate them to do what I want them to do. Even if I did, carrots and sticks are not good motivators of self discovery, of reflection or of the pause that comes before a sound decision. The influence I want will not come from carrots or sticks. So I have to look for other models of influence and leadership. This is one of the reasons I listen to ...

In the work I do at NLP Canada Training , I teach people to notice the relationship between their own state (the combination of their thoughts, emotions and physiology), the states of people around them, and their behaviours. It's a complicated web: we are influenced by our own stuff, by the people around us, and by our situations and all of that gets processed by our brains and transformed into action. Our actions determine how our state changes, and what becomes possible as a next step. Our situations and other people influence us because we pay attention to them. Some of this attention is involuntary: it's part of how the human equipment works. Other human beings are especially important because they can both help and hurt us. Our brains track their expressions and behaviours in an ongoing effort to predict what they will do. There's a downside to this. Our brains track other people's states by reproducing them in us. That means that negativity is contagious and we...

As a teacher, I hear it quite often. "I didn't understand." It's hard not to be a little defensive, to buy into the idea that it was my fault. Somehow I didn't make the material clear enough. Sometimes that is true, but it's rarely the case when only one or two people "don't understand." It's important to test for resistance before changing the way I teach. After all, people go along with stuff they don't understand every day. Not understanding how cars work doesn't stop us from driving and not understanding electricity doesn't stop us from using lights and computers. Not understanding grammar doesn't stop people from talking. What "I don't understand" usually means is something more like: "I'd like to stay connected with you and I'd like to hold onto my own beliefs or limits." And that's a tough one. Because sometimes you can only invite people to the party if they're willing to agr...

There's a lot of misleading information about how to use language to make the kind of suggestions that get carried out without resistance. The first step, the one on which everything else depends, is to understand that anything you say is only a suggestion. The Oxford online dictionary defines a suggestion as an idea or plan put forward for consideration. If you keep reading, it adds what seem to be paradoxical dimensions to this word. In psychology (and hypnosis), a suggestion is not supposed to trigger conscious consideration. This is true whenever suggestion involves talking about one thing to call up another. We can resolve this paradox if we add an element of playfulness to a suggestion. Playfulness is never mistaken for either commands or appeals for help. When we are playful, we suggest (meaning imply, meaning make a connection) that we are doing something together, something that will engage us both. Whatever is being suggested is part of an interaction designed so tha...

Have you ever known that you were absolutely in the wrong mood for what you had to do next? You know that your attitude changes your effectiveness.  The question becomes how you can change your own attitude. Your current attitude colours all your perceptions. That makes it very hard to perceive the differences that would allow you to build a different attitude.  Many people don't even try. They just wait it out, hoping that the next mood that hits will be more useful. Or they pretend that attitude is something that only happens to other people. A more useful approach has three steps: 1) Move your body. 2) Connect with a new rhythm. 3) Borrow the best available attitude. It's hard to change your own mind. It's easier to change your body.  If you want to signal yourself to get moving, try moving.  A walk, a run, a climb up stairs: any of them will get the blood flowing, adjust your breathing and rhythms, and suggest to your whole brain that it look for ways o...

It is the way our brains are made. We fixate on problems and danger and obstacles. Ask anyone about their pet peeves and you will unleash a flood of words. Ask someone what they want, and you are liable to hear about all the reasons that what they want doesn't matter. It is easy for a conversation to grind to a halt when it is carrying the weight of so much that is wrong. If you want to move forward, you need the word instead. Repeat some of the troubles you hear (to show that you are listening) and then ask: what would you like instead? Instead means in the place now occupied by the trouble. To answer the question, the speaker has to imagine a world where the trouble no longer exists. It has been replaced by something else. The something else may, of course, be accompanied by new troubles.  Once again, repeat what you are hearing and then ask: what would you like instead? After two or three repetitions, the speaker will pick up the pattern and begin to automatically replace ...

It seems to me that the people I know who are effective influencers are also people who are willing to own their influence. They don't pretend that they are disinterested. Sometimes they don't even pretend that they are particularly interested in you or your well being. They own that one thing that they want to change in you. I recently read a comment in a Linked In group by a coach who believed that he could not change anyone's perceptions, he could only open up possibilities.  This is nonsense. You cannot change anyone else's conscious choices but it is a relatively easy thing to change their perceptions and thereby to influence the choices they make unconsciously.  If you are not sure that this is true, stand on a busy corner and point up at a building as though you were seeing something really interesting. Then watch what happens. You will find that some people stop walking, change their posture, and become curious. You have effectively changed their perspective. ...

If you google "matching and mirroring" you will find page after page of articles and videos mostly explaining that the practice of matching and mirroring someone else's physiology or language will allow you to build rapport. I am no longer sure that's entirely accurate. Here's what I have come to believe after almost ten years of teaching NLP and observing rapport as it develops: mirroring and matching is a sign of rapport. Working at mirroring and matching (doing it deliberately) signals that you are interested in entering into rapport. Paying attention to someone else is always a good way to start a relationship. The most productive way to think about matching and mirroring is to notice that it gives you the ability to be much more perceptive about the person with whom you want to connect.  When you are matching them, you do not have to rely on external observation of their state. You can notice how you change as you move into their movements, mannerisms a...

Silence is an interesting phenomenon in a conversation. It's a sort of keystone: everything else leans on the silence and changes according to its quality.  We teach people something of how to talk and sometimes even something of how to listen, but there is no teaching on how to be silent together. Silence is either the most excruciatingly awkward thing that can happen to a conversation or the sign that the conversation is deep and wide and wonderful. And we shy away from both. We shy away from the wonderful conversations because we are not sure what can measure up to the moments of full, rich silence or because we are afraid that the silence will ring so clear that we will reveal something, somehow, that we didn't mean to reveal. We are afraid because change happens in the silence. And yet, it's the fear at the top of the roller coaster, the fear of taking the first step onto stage, the fear before the whistle blows and the game begins. The fear that is also a hope tha...