Ask yourself: ‘How is this different now? What’s changed?’
Although doing these exercises can seem very strange at first, do persist.
When you move physically into a different space, considering the different per- spectives is important. Simply by moving your body to another place in the room, you unlock the thinking of the previous position. You can also do these exercises by moving between different chairs.
In NLP circles, resistance is often cited as a lack of rapport. For example, somebody may resist your attempts to get to know them better by being stand-offish and excluding you from a conversation. Or, you may resist making the effort to connect with someone who appears different from you. If you find yourself in situations where you don’t always have the rapport with people that would be useful, you may need to try the following:
✓ Recognise that you’re unconsciously resisting the people or the situa- tion in which you find yourself, or that somebody else is resisting you.
✓ Consider what the reason for this may be, remembering that the uncon- scious mind is naturally protecting you (see Chapter 3).
✓ Refine your rapport building skills by deliberately matching, mirroring and pacing the other person until they are willing to connect with you.
Overcoming your resistance to developing rapport with someone can take some time, because you have to examine your past to understand your defensive behaviour. You may need the help of a coach or friend to gain this understanding: for example, you may have real justification for your doubts about getting too close to someone. When you discover the reason for your own resistance, you can give yourself permission to develop the rapport that you’re seeking.
Understanding to Be Understood:
Meta Programs
In This Chapter
▶ Discovering meta programs – your unconscious mental filters
▶ Eliciting other people’s meta programs
▶ Modelling the personality traits of people you admire
In 1956, George Miller carried out research on the millions of bits of data that bombard the senses of humans every second. He discovered that the conscious mind can handle only between five and nine pieces of information at any one time, which means that an awful lot of information is filtered out.
Meta programs are some of these unconscious filters that direct what you pay attention to, the way you process any information you receive, and how you then communicate it.
When you want to build rapport with someone quickly and you’re forearmed, you may choose to dress, behave, or at least speak like that person. And by the latter we don’t mean that you mimic someone’s accent, but instead that you use the person’s vocabulary. When you begin to hear other people’s meta programs, you have the choice of using the same words and phrases as the person with whom you’re interacting. Because people use meta programs mostly unconsciously, when you match their meta programs, what you say has the added dimension of communicating with their unconscious mind simultaneously with their conscious mind.
In this chapter we introduce you to seven meta programs that help you to communicate more effectively and more quickly; and as you experience the benefits of better communication, we hope that you’re motivated to discover more about other meta programs.
Getting to Grips with Meta-Program Basics
As children, you pick up meta programs from your parents, teachers, and the culture in which you’re raised. Your life experiences may change these learned programs as you get older. For instance, if you grow up being admon- ished for being too subjective, you may start practising detachment and learn to suppress your feelings. You can find that these attributes then affect your choice of career. Instead of entering a caring profession you may decide to use your intellect more. Your learning style may be influenced too, and you lean towards focusing more on facts and figures. If you deliver training, you may depend more on drier, chalk-and-talk systems than on getting students involved with touchy-feely experiments.
Of the many identified meta programs, we choose seven that we think are the most useful to get you started. For example, we select the global and detail meta program because we believe that it has great potential for conflict, and by recognising another’s capacity for operating at the global or detailed end of the scale, you may be able to avoid possible problems. By understand- ing the other six meta programs, you can develop a greater insight into the subtle ways in which people think, which gives you the tools to influence and facilitate change by motivating not only yourself but other people too.
In Chapter 5 you can find a discussion of the introvert and extrovert meta program. The meta programs discussed in this chapter are as follows:
✓ Proactive/reactive
✓ Options/procedures
✓ Toward/away from
✓ Internal/external
✓ Global/detail
✓ Sameness/difference
✓ Time perspective
As you think about meta programs, keep these things in mind:
✓ Meta programs aren’t an either/or choice. You operate meta programs all the time; however, depending on the context in which you find your- self, you focus more on one aspect of particular meta programs.
✓ Meta programs aren’t a means to pigeonhole people; they’re useful to expand your understanding of the variety of ways in which people think in order to improve communication.
✓ Meta programs aren’t right or wrong; you simply run various combina- tions of meta programs depending on the context of the communication and the environment in which you find yourself.
Looking at meta programs and language patterns
If you’re able to pick up on people’s language, you can discover their pat- terns of behaviour long before the behaviour becomes apparent. Leslie Cameron-Bandler, among others, conducted further research into the meta programs developed by Richard Bandler. She and her student, Rodger Bailey, established that people who use similar language patterns portray similar patterns of behaviour. For example, people with an entrepreneurial flare may have similar patterns – outgoing, good at persuading people, strong belief in themselves, and so on – even though they may work in very different fields.
Imagine a gathering of the heads of the United Nations without any transla- tors: very little communication would take place. A similar breakdown in communication can occur if you’re unaware of the meta programs being employed by the person with whom you’re trying to communicate. Learning about meta programs allows you to become proficient in translating the mental maps that people use to navigate their way around their experiences.
NLP pioneers, Bandler and Grinder, realised that people who use similar lan- guage patterns develop deeper rapport more quickly than people who use dissimilar ones. No doubt you’ve heard some non-French speakers complain that the French are unfriendly. Others who can speak French refute this opin- ion. Meta programs are a powerful way to establish rapport verbally by hear- ing the patterns that people are running and then responding with language that they can understand easily.
To help you understand the type of language that’s characteristic of the vari- ous meta programs, we include in the following sections phrases that you’re likely to hear with each meta program.
Exploring meta programs and behaviour
In the Encyclopedia of Systemic NLP and NLP New Coding, Robert Dilts and Judith DeLozier explain meta programs in terms of two people with the same decision-making strategies getting different results when presented with the same information. For example, although both people may make a picture of the data in their heads, one person may become completely over- whelmed with the amount of information while the other reaches a quick decision based on the feelings the pictures produce. (You can find out more about how people process the information they receive through their senses in Chapters 6 and 10). The difference lies in the meta programs that each person is running, which impacts their decision-making strategy.
Suppose that you want to emulate Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin group of companies. You can do so the hard way by trying to imple- ment the processes that you think he uses. Or, with his help, you can do so more quickly and easily by modelling him; and part of the modelling process requires that you understand and use his meta programs.
The later sections in this chapter describe the behaviours and preferences associated with the different meta programs that we offer you in this chap- ter. By being able to recognise the meta program that people are prone to operating in a given setting, you can begin to match people’s meta programs in order to become more like them and get your message heard more easily.
By trying on someone else’s model of the world you may gain a different per- spective and add to the options available to you in other areas of your life – an added bonus.
A short history of meta programs
Humans have been trying to understand personality types since time immemorial.
Hippocrates defined four temperaments based on his observations of fluids in the human body as long ago as 400 BC. He called these tem- peraments melancholic, sanguine, choleric, and phlegmatic. Although the Hippocratic clas- sifications fell by the wayside, others are used a great deal.
In 1921, Carl Jung published Psychological Types. This book was based on his work with several hundred psychiatric patients and was his attempt to categorise his patients in order to be able to predict their behaviour from their personality. Jung defined three pairs of catego- ries in which one of each pair would be used in preference to the other:
✓ An extrovert is energised by interacting with the outside world, whereas an intro- vert recharges their batteries by taking time to be on their own.
✓ A sensor takes in information through the five senses, whereas an intuitor relies more on instincts and intuition to collect information.
✓ A thinker makes decisions based on logic and objective thinking, whereas a feeler makes decisions based on subjective values.
Jung’s personality types form the basis of the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator, which is one of the most widely used profiling tools today. In the early 1940s, a mother (Katherine Briggs) and daughter (Isabel Briggs Myers) team added a fourth category: a judger attempts to make their environment adapt to suit themselves, whereas a perceiver tries to gain an understanding of the external world and adapt to fit into the world.
As George Bernard Shaw said, ‘Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world.
Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.’
Being Proactive/Reactive
If you’re more inclined to take action and get things moving, you operate at the proactive end of the scale. If, however, you’re inclined to take stock and wait for things to happen, you’re probably more reactive. Some more in-depth descriptions follow:
✓ Proactive: If you’re proactive you take charge and get things done.
You’re good at spotting solutions to situations that require constant fire-fighting. You may find yourself drawn to jobs in sales or working for yourself. You find yourself upsetting some people, especially if they’re more reactive, because they liken you to a bulldozer.
✓ Reactive: If you’re more reactive you may be quite fatalistic. You wait for others to take the lead or you take action only when you consider the time to be right. You may need to be careful not to analyse yourself into a paralysis.
You can exhibit proactive or reactive tendencies, depending on the context within which you’re working. Robert, although very good at his job, is quite reactive about asserting himself as regards requesting promotion and pay rises. He waits for his boss to offer, rather than ask for them. He prefers to wait for instructions before working on projects, rather than initiating work.
However, he loves his holidays and is extremely proactive in visiting travel agents, talking to people, and surfing the Internet when planning his holidays.
You can spot the difference between a proactive and a reactive person by the body language. A proactive person is likely to have quicker movements, showing signs of impatience. These people are likely to hold themselves erect in a ‘shoulders back, chest out’ posture that’s ready to take on the world. A reactive person displays slower movements and may keep their head down and shoulders slouched.
According to Shelle Rose Charvet, in her book Words That Change Minds, when advertising for a person who you want to be proactive, you should ask the candidate to telephone instead of sending a CV. As a general rule, reactive people are less likely to call.
To discover whether someone’s proactive or reactive, you can ask: ‘Do you find it easy to take action when you find yourself in a new situation, or do you need to study and understand what’s going on first?’
✓ A proactive person uses phrases such as ‘just do it’, ‘jump to it’, ‘go for it’, ‘run with it’, ‘take control’, and ‘hit the tarmac running’.
✓ A reactive person is more likely to use phrases such as, ‘mull it over’,
‘take your time’, ‘study the data’, ‘weigh the pros and cons’, and ‘look before you leap’.
Moving Towards/Away From
People invest time, energy, and resources moving towards or away from something that they find enjoyable or something they want to avoid. They use their values to judge whether an action is good or bad and whether the result they get gives them pleasure or pain.
Can you remember the last time you started an exercise regime or began a new diet? Perhaps you were all fired up and eager to start, and consequently you made terrific progress: your weight began to come down and you felt so much better because of the exercise. Suddenly, though, you lost your momentum, the weight stopped going down, or worse still, started creep- ing up. The visits to the gym became more sporadic. As things started to go downhill you got all fired up again until. . . . You were caught in a roller coaster of being motivated and losing your focus.
‘What happened?’ you cry in despair. Chances are that where your health is concerned you have an away from meta program, which means that you’re propelled to take action to get away from something, in this case weight or perhaps lethargy. Figure 8-1 illustrates how someone whose motivation to health is primarily away from may have their weight loss yo-yo over a period of time.
Proactive reaction to a reactive department
The information technology (IT) department at a university in south-east England was always fire-fighting, trying to provide a service for the bursar’s and registrar’s departments. The two departments that used the computer systems had no communication and the IT department didn’t trust the users enough to train them in the use of their systems. No documentation existed for which programs needed to be run and when. This situation had been in place for several years and was accepted as the norm. Guess what preference the staff in the IT department had? If you guessed reactive, you’re right. Then a relative newcomer, with a more proactive bent, came to the depart- ment and instigated the following three simple steps:
✓ Created and maintained a list of tasks, con- taining operating instructions and when they were needed.
✓ Organised regular meetings between the registrar’s and bursar’s departments.
✓ Trained the administrative staff to produce their own reports.
These changes reduced the considerable stress that the staff of all three departments experienced, especially at peak times, and opened communication channels between the two departments using the computer systems.
The self-esteem of the administrative staff really soared as they took some responsibility for running their own systems.
Figure 8-1:
An example of how hav- ing an away from meta program regarding health can affect your plans for weight loss.
Kg
Time Loss of focus
Panic
On the other hand, if you’re drawn towards a goal, in a particular context, and are able to keep your eye on the ball, you’re showing more of a towards propensity.
As a general rule, people move either away from or towards things.
According to Sigmund Freud, your id, which represents your instinctive urges, moves you towards pleasure or away from pain.
Interestingly, different professions and cultures exhibit a bias for running towards or away from meta programs. Take the example of conventional medicine as opposed to alternative practices. Which preference do you think practitioners from the two camps may have? To give you a hint, conventional doctors refer to alternative medicine as ‘preventative medicine’. In Romilla’s assessment, conventional medicine is more prone to having an away from tendency with regards to health, the emphasis being more on curing the ill- ness after it happens rather than on focusing on creating and maintaining good health.
People with away from patterns appear quite negative to those who run towards patterns.
Away from people have a tendency to notice what can go wrong and are very useful to employ for maintaining production plants and aircrafts, managing crises, or conducting critical analysis. These people are motivated more by the stick than the carrot. You can motivate away from people by threats of job losses and the negative consequences of not meeting financial targets.
People with towards meta programs may be seen as nạve by the away from people because the former don’t always think about and cater for potential problems in the pursuit of their goals.
Towards people are motivated by the promise of the carrot. Tell them about the benefits of improving revenue and receiving a bonus and watch their eyes light up. This reaction isn’t necessarily down to greed, but instead because they’re excited by positive benefits.
You can find out whether a person has a preference for moving towards or away from something by a series of questions, as in the following example:
Person A: ‘What’s important to you about your work?’
Person B: ‘I know I have security.’
Person A: ‘So what’s important to you about security?’
Person B: ‘I don’t have to worry about paying my bills.’
Person A: ‘And what’s important to you about paying your bills?’
Person B: ‘It means I’m not in debt.’
Going to at least three levels of questions is useful because initially people may have a tendency to respond with something positive, which can hide their away from patterns. In the example above, the initial answer is towards security, although subsequent answers reveal an away from preference.
When selling a product, research the customer’s language patterns. You can then elicit whether the person wants to buy the product in order to gain a benefit – such as buying a sports car in which they can have fun and feel the excitement of whizzing along with the sun roof down and the wind blowing through their hair – or to avoid a problem – for example, when buying a safe, solid family car with a focus on keeping their family safe from harm. Modify your language accordingly to save time and get results.
You move away from or towards your values. If moving away from values are not serving you, you may decide to change them. If sports at school were a painful experience and consequently sports days a humiliation, you may have problems keeping up an exercise routine. One way of releasing the emo- tions invested in negative memories is through Time Line Therapy® (which we discuss more in Chapter 13).
✓ A person with more of a towards meta program uses words such as
‘accomplish’, ‘get’, ‘obtain’, ‘have’, ‘achieve’, ‘attain’, and ‘include’.
✓ A person who operates a more away from meta program uses words such as ‘avoid’, ‘remove’, ‘prevent’, ‘get rid of’, and ‘solution’.