watch tHe skies

One of the things that has blown me away in my studies of NLP is the sheer quality of information that people give away in their words. Putting aside the information on how people perceive their world that is given away in body language, and the information there to process in their eye movements, the content of their language is fascinating.

Now I can’t possibly tell you everything I’ve learnt in a blog post. However I am going to tell you a little, and for most of you out there with the exception of you cunning linguists, this is going to be a shock. A surprise. And, hopefully something to think about and play about.

Most people listen fairly passively. And then only to the content. The what. So if I’m telling you about something that happened to me, you are listening to the detail of that account and reconstructing it based on your own map of the world.

And you miss the how. Consequently you miss a whole bunch of stuff about how I represent and perceive the world, which is priceless information if you want to communicate with me, because with every sentence I am giving away clues about the type of person that I am, and therefore, how best to deal with me and persuade me to get you a drink. And the interesting thing is, if you listened to how I say things, and used my language back to me, I would have to be really listening too to recognise what you are doing and ignore it. So influential is the how.

Now I’m sure many of you have taken personality tests. Sure, most people have done one nowadays. Systems such as MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) attempt to categorise our behaviours in to archetypes, programs if you will, and I for one read my profiles on such tests with amazement - how can a bunch of questions define me so well?

Well they can’t. They generalise. Behaviour is all about context, so whilst personality tests are interesting indicators, they can’t possibly predict our behaviour in a given circumstance because we humans are real-time, we do things in any given situation because it’s the best decision at that time given the data we have. Underneath circumstance you could say that these meta-programs do affect our behaviour, we have preferred ways of behaving, and this is the information that we give out in our language.

There are many, many books detailing many, many metaprograms and how to spot them and connect to them in people. I live “Words That Change Minds” by Shelle Rose Charvet and suggest you get hold of it if this subject interests you. Here, I am going to talk about a group of metaprograms that you can easily spot in people and use to motivate them… these are so much fun you may find yourself laughing out loud when you start controlling your friends like robots!

The motivation traits are a group of metaprograms that give you a good idea on how a person is motivated in any specific context. Here, I’ll briefly describe them, how you can spot them and what lanugage to use to “run” them in a person.

1. Criteria. Ask someone what is important to them in their life, job etc., and listen carefully to the emotive words they use, and demonstrate in their answer. Words that are communicated both verbally and non-verbally (some people jump out of their seat when asked this question) are their “hot buttons”… if you can link whatever you want them to do to these words then you will see motivation.

2. Direction. People tend to be either motivated towards something or away from something. Towards people will say things like “achieve, goal, towards, succeed”, whilst away from people will say “avoid, bypass, prevent, no problems”, use the same language back to them because if you use the opposite type they just won’t get it. Remember that people can be towards one thing and away from another… listen carefully.

3. Source. Ask someone how they know they’ve done a good job at something and you’ll find out whether they have internal standards (”I know”), or external (”feedback”), using the same reference points back to them will be very motivating (”and i wonder whether you will feel good about buying me a pint” \ “Get me some pork scratchings and you’ll go up in my estimation!”)

4. Reason. Asking someone why they made a certain choice and you will get back information on how they make decisions, options people talk about opportunity, choices and possibilities, whilst procedural people will tell you a story of some kind, following a linear pattern. Use the same concept back to them, “which is the best way?” or “first we should do this, then, that, and finally this)

5. Decision factors. Asking them a question about the relationship between something now and in the past will give insight in to how they process the world. Some people see the world in terms of sameness, will talk about how things have remained the same, and probably only make big changes every 15-25 years. Sameness with exception people will talk about how things are better or worse, and evidence change every 5-7 years. Difference people will talk about transformation and may not even understand the word “relationship”, change occurs every 1-2 years. And somewhere in between there is people who process sameness with exception and difference, who really are hard to pin down.

6. Level. Finally this overarches all of them and considers whether people are proactive (”get to it, jump in”) or reactive (”consider, review”), I don’t need to explain this one too much I think!

So there you have it, your first 6 metaprograms. See how many you can notice in conversation… ask the questions and notice the responses, and see if you can use them to communicate more effectively.

I’ve even attached a chart that summarises it all for you… aren’t I kind?

This entry was posted on Friday, June 29th, 2007 at 8:54 am and is filed under nlp & hypnosis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.