‘You both want to get this moving and off the agenda. So how about we all kick around the stumbling blocks for an hour in my office, reshape the problem, and finally put it to bed.’
One of our colleagues, Helen, was a touch sceptical about the language dif- ferences when she first became curious about NLP. Yet she experienced one of those wonderful light-bulb moments when she first discovered her own representational systems and decided to play with them at home before trying them out in her business life. She noticed how her husband, Peter, sometimes switched off and seemed uninterested when she wanted to talk about impor- tant decisions at home. She wondered whether changing the words she used would have any effect.
Helen says that: ‘I’d be ready to talk to him about pretty major issues such as which schools the girls should go to or whether we should go ahead and spend thousands of pounds on redesigning the kitchen, and all I’d get was a cursory “Yup, fine” or “No, not now.” I realised that having a strong kin- aesthetic preference, I often began a conversation with: “Peter, how do you feel about XYZ?” I also noticed that he used plenty of visual language. So I thought I’d give it a go and ask him: “Peter, how do you see XYZ?” The differ- ence, when I began playing with it and slipping more visual words into the conversation, was quite staggering. The change was so easy to make and, hey
NLP suggests that everyone has the capacity to develop their sensory repre- sentational systems, by simply moving their bodies or turning off the mobile phone to see what’s going on around them.
As with any system, making a change in one part causes an effect elsewhere, and that change begins by paying attention to what’s happening around you.
Acknowledging the Importance of the Eyes
Body language offers wonderful clues to people’s preferred representational systems. How they breathe, stand, move, their tone of voice, and tempo of speaking all tend to vary according to visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic styles. In particular, in the early days of NLP, Bandler and Grinder observed that people move their eyes in systematic directions depending on which modality they’re accessing. These movements are called eye-accessing cues.
Therefore, when people move their eyes in response to a question, you can pretty much guess whether they’re accessing pictures, sounds, or feelings.
Why is noticing these movements helpful, you may wonder? The answer is that you have a great chance of knowing, even without them uttering a word, which system they’re going to use and how you can talk to them in a way that makes them respond positively to you. Table 6-2 outlines what eye move- ments are associated with which modality.
Table 6-2 Accessing cues
Pattern Eyes move to the subject’s
What’s happening inside
Sample of language Visual
constructed
Top right Seeing new or dif- ferent images
Think of an elephant covered in pink icing Visual
remembered
Top left Seeing images seen before
Think of your partner’s face
Visual Blank stare
ahead
Seeing either new or old images
See what’s important Auditory
constructed
Centre right Hearing new or different sounds
Listen to the sound of your name backwards
(continued)
Table 6-2 (continued)
Pattern Eyes move to the subject’s
What’s happening inside
Sample of language Auditory
remembered
Centre left Remembering sounds heard before
Hear your own doorbell ring Auditory inter-
nal dialogue
Bottom left Talking to oneself Ask yourself what you want
Kinaesthetic Bottom right Feelings, emo- tions, sense of touch
Notice the tem- perature of your toes
Figure 6-1 shows the kind of processing that most people do when they move their eyes in a particular direction. A small percentage of the population, including about half of all left-handers, are reversed – their eye movements are the mirror image of those shown.
The illustration in Figure 6-1 is drawn as if you’re looking at someone else’s face and shows how you see their eyes move. So, for example, if they’re moving up and to your right into the visual remembered position, your own eyes would be shifting up and to your left if you’re trying it out on yourself in a mirror.
By developing your sensory awareness – spotting those little details – you can become more attuned to how people may be thinking at different times.
When you know this information, you can select your words so that they listen to you.
Figure 6-1:
Eye- accessing
cues.
Visual constructed
Auditory constructed Auditory remembered
Visual remembered
Kinaesthetic Auditory (internal) dialogue
Vc Vr
Ar Ac
K Ad
In this exercise, your aim is to notice how people’s eyes move so that you can calibrate them and decide whether they’re thinking in pictures, sounds, or feelings. Find a willing friend, and then use the instructions, questions, and diagrams on the Eye Movements Game sheet in Figure 6-2. Each statement on this game sheet is phrased to engage with the senses – in the past or future.
Follow these steps: