NLP is a vast body of knowledge of tools and skills about human behavior and communication and about creating and maintaining change. It can be used to personally self-develop and to increase compassion, motivation, and persuasion within any area of life. It was called by New York times in the 80s “new age psychology” however it is so much more than that. NLP can be usefully applied in any profession, work or job. Here some examples.
I can vividly remember training my first batch in Customer Service and Sales in a BPO in Mumbai I had trained before in the U.S.A. I took this job as their American trainer as I thought this was a new challenge in my first time in India. I came into the classroom with great hopes and expectations of breakthroughs and gains for my new batch. I would develop these learners with NLP techniques in my toolkit as they would be my instruments to build personal and professional excellence.
During the 1st sessions we would discuss the NLP perceptual positions and how they would benefit them in interacting with the customers. We discussed how to step from first position, Self, into Other, the customers shoe’s (the 2nd position or the Other). Applied toward communicating by interacting with the customers from the “other” position was such a revelation for everyone and brought them fastly and easily into understanding and implementing the further principles within customer service.
I then discussed the 3rd position (the We) position and how this positions relates to perceiving and acting as a group, for example, a collective team. This turned out to functions as an important aspect of bonding and working toward at achieving a common goal together for this group. I discussed with the team leads and Operations Manager how to operate and make decisions from the Meta position. Making decisions on what’s best for the organization and remaining impartial and not brining emotion or personal favoritism in their actions and instructions.
One of the things NLP describes so wonderfully is the comfort zone and how humans are challenged to perform well and excel. In one of my job orientation sessions everyone understood in their body that in order to consciously leave one’s comfort zone and gain new skills we have to stretch, just like stretching in yoga and embrace the “autch” point to expand from their base knowledge and grow. My learners would stretch themselves to learn more and gain knowledge that they had not acquired but to do this they would have to get off the island of their current frame rand travel across a sea to acquire new skills and become a professional.
With great delight during our training sessions with NLP we engaged each and everyone into a questionnaire on what are their personal bigger outcomes within their job here and what was important for them about this. An exercise in pairs helped them to discuss their career choices, and what would be possible if they excelled the job. I did not mention the word NLP – however my knowledge in asking the questions precisely in a way everyone could answer and in the most helpful fashion was NLP based.
In almost every occupation there will be some form of stress and anxiety about performing well or fear of losing the job. These emotions require coping mechanisms. To best help with that I taught the batch the NLP Swish technique and how it could be used in moments of the elevated heartbeats and raised adrenals that come with any anxiety or form of stress. The simple NLP Swish technique helps you to put the past into the past and bring the future forward and toward you by enriching the future self with resources in a form called anchoring, which simply means creating a memory point. The Swish is a NLP change technique to change unresourceful beliefs or states of mind into resourceful and positive beliefs and states of mind. Everyone was able to follow this simple 15 min exercise with great results and they left much more hopeful and positive toward their responsibilities and job obligations than before.
My batch completed their two weeks of training with me and would go on to the floor to engage customer’s in such an empowered way that not only did I receive fabulous feedback from most of them but even more from the HR manager up to the VP and AVP. Five of them stayed in contact with me until today still praising my trainings and saying they would have learn not only customer service but how to communicate much better contributing to their own and their family’s wellbeing.
They did not know that their results and new abilities was subject to my NLP knowledge and skills, but I knew it and I was more thankful for having been exposed to NLP than ever before. In my opinion NLP should be acknowledge and implemented to make every employee and every leader’s work more effective and impactful. I am convinced that NLP makes a significant difference for any job in which people word with people. NLP helps on the job.
