Planning Your Communication

Later on in this post, I'm going to tell you what really effective communicators do to make their listeners sit up and pay attention. I'm going to tell you what they do to ensure their listeners respond as they are intended to. And you'll be surprised at how obvious it is.

Really effective communicators plan their communication.

That's it? Yes, but that doesn't mean that they sit down and write a script, it means they tell their audience what they are supposed to do with the communication. Here's an example. I'm going to ask you a question. In a moment, I want you to make a choice. Here's something you need to decide on. You may have found that paragraph a little confusing, as it directed your attention in many different directions without closing any of the opening statements.

Before you say what you want to say, tell your audience what you want them to do. This is really just another way of directing people's attention, and it's very effective for managing the way people respond to what you say.

Here are a few more examples of this simple yet effective tool:

“I'm going to ask you a question now that I want you to think very carefully about before you answer”

“In a moment, I'm going to ask you to stand up”

“Here's a really important point for you to consider”

“This is what I want you to do”

“Before you fill out your feedback forms, I'm going to ask you a question”

“When we get back from lunch, I'm going to have you do some really creative group work”

“Before you finish reading your handbook, I would like you to think of at least three new ways you'll use all the great stuff you're learning.”

If you tie this simple concept in with the goal setting exercises that you'll read about later on, you will quickly become a very powerful and congruent communicator, because the people you speak to will be able to understand easily and quickly what you want from them. It may be agreement, it may be an answer, or it may just be their attention. Whatever you want, you're more likely to get it if you tell people what it is!

In organisations, people often launch into transmission mode during meetings and then wonder why their colleagues pull their project updates apart. Sometimes, decisions go round in circles forever and never quite get made. We have come to learn what to expect from meetings, and if you are invited to a meeting then there may be an implicit expectation that you'll contribute. Meetings everywhere would be far more productive if people applied this simple principle. For example, saying “Here is an update on my project, I don't need any advice or feedback at this stage, it's for your information only” tells people exactly what is expected of them. Conversely, presenting a huge volume of facts and figures and only then asking people to make a decision is simply asking for trouble. If you tell people up front what you expect, they will pay attention in the right places and be able to make a decision when you need them to, instead of saying they need more time to think.

So, this is what I'm suggesting you do. Whenever you want a specific response to what you tell people, first tell them what you want them to do.


This post is an extract from my book NLP - Skills for Learning which you can download for FREE from Bookboon. How marvellous!

Would You Buy a Used Car From This Man?

I've seen a lot of talk recently about the use of NLP language in advertising and marketing. Personally, I find it awkward and embarrassing. What works in conversation just seems silly on paper. And yet, 'hypnotic marketing gurus' still maintain that they know the secrets of unconscious influence that will have customers beating a path to your door.

I've felt for many years that hypnotic language such as Milton Model patterns or Sleight of Mouth patterns may work in a therapeutic conversation, but they don't necessarily work on paper, for many reasons. But it was just the other day, in a conversation about cultural alignment, that I realised what the root cause of the problem might be.

When Bandler and Grinder modelled therapeutic language patterns to create the Milton Model and Meta Model, they modelled therapists.

Now, would you hire a therapist to sell a car?

Maybe if you were giving free phobia cures as an incentive. But generally, no, you wouldn't. Their goals and beliefs are different to those of car sales people. Not better or worse, just different.

Would you go to a car salesman for relationship therapy?

So if you wouldn't buy a car from a therapist, why would you copy a therapist's language patterns to sell a car?

Wouldn't you model successful sales people?

This is the fundamental problem with NLP when used outside of a therapeutic context. NLP, as you'll see in my books Genius at Work and The NLP Master Practitioner Handbook, is the modelling toolkit from which we define and code excellence. When that was used to code the work of therapists, the set of scripts that we know as 'NLP Practitioner techniques' were created. But most people stopped their NLP studies there and went out swishing and squashing and modal operating on their customers.

Even those that went on to study Master Practitioner were mostly given a dreadful mis-service by their trainers who just taught them more techniques. What a waste of time. At Master Practitioner level you're supposed to be learning how to create custom techniques of your own, not just learning more scripts.

When you learn modelling, and I mean real modelling, not just strategy elicitation and TOTE, you can model great sales people, or doctors, or project managers, or drivers, or musicians, or therapists, and you can create unique, custom techniques that are specifically aligned with that cultural environment.







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Outcomes

You'd be surprised how many people don't have a clear idea of what they want. They're not too fussed, just get them anything, they don't mind. Until you get back from the sandwich shop and then they suddenly know exactly what they want - and it isn't what you bought for them. And some people know exactly what they don't want, yet excel in achieving exactly that. When you have a very clear set of outcomes, every action and thought reinforces those outcomes and takes you a step closer to achieving them.

When you don't have clear outcomes, your thoughts and actions tend to be more random, so you have to think consciously about what you do, and you have to waste time correcting actions that take you in the wrong direction.

Frequently, people have a very clear idea of what they don't want, and they only know when things are going wrong for them. They tend to bounce from one wrong course of action to the next, never settling on a clear direction.

Most people think that they set clear goals, yet mostly these goals are not phrased in a way that your brain understands, so they're actually quite useless.

A goal like "To complete my project by September 1st" sounds very specific, but it really doesn't mean much to your brain. For a start, different people each have a different definition of 'complete'. Although we use dates and times as fixed, absolute markers, your brain treats them as very elastic concepts because we all have a different way of coding and representing time. In particular, the concept of 'now' is different for each of us.

You may have come across SMART objectives at work. With SMART, you make sure that every goal you set is:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Realistic

Timebound

In NLP, we have a different way of setting goals. We call a goal an 'outcome' because it is the result of behaviour, and we apply four simple criteria to the outcome. When an outcome meets those criteria, it is said to be 'well formed', so in NLP, goals are called 'Well Formed Outcomes'.

Well Formed Outcomes are designed to adapt to a changing world as you move towards your goal, and they are designed to get you to take action, continually, in pursuit of your goal.

With a Well Formed Outcome, you always move forwards. You may or may not end up where you first thought, but that's always a good thing when the territory is changing so quickly.

We are goal directed animals, and we act in pursuit of goals, both large and small. NLP offers a way to access those natural resources so that you can achieve goals that lead you more directly to the life you want.

As Louis Pasteur said, "Chance favours the prepared mind".