Asking for Help and Other Differentiators that Support Success

If you learn a path through a forest, you have only one way to get to the other side. If you learn about the whole forest, you will have a thousand ways.

Asking for Help and Other Differentiators that Support Success

I won't go so far as to say that people are winners or losers or successes or failures. This would go against the NLP model that says that People work perfectly to produce the results they are getting and there is failure, only feedback. As a Certified Trainer of NLP, I look at what is working or not working; getting the results wanted or not.

Asking for help:
I had a meeting with a woman the other day who is looking for a coach. In our discourse over the hour she said something to me that caught my attention.

I ask for help early and often.

This woman is a renowned expert in her field with years of experience. In an age when people, especially but not exclusively women, are taught to be independent and stand on their own; that asking for help could be construed as a sign of weakness, I thought this was very telling.
My point: we do not live in a vacuum; we do not learn in a vacuum; we do not succeed in a vacuum. Everyone I know who became an expert, a leader, a president, etc. had the help of other people. The world and universe work in a system as does everything in it, people included.

We are not our behavior, what we do for a living, or what we have.
Here are some other documented things that successful people do than others do not:

Characteristics of a successful person:
By the way, people didn't start at the top and then start doing these things. These are the things they did to become successful.

Focus on solutions – instead to focusing on the problems, which intensify the problems, they set outcomes and work at achieving those instead of solving problems.

Take responsibility – they look at the choices they have and take appropriate action when something doesn't work instead of blaming others or situations, like the ECONOMY, for what is happening to them

Find opportunities in crises – there is a silver lining in every cloud. Often challenging situations gives rise to creative ways of doing things differently

Enjoy being in the present and what it has to offer instead of dwelling in the past. "If only it could be like it was 5 years ago. I'd like to get back to the way it was." OR If I had only taken that job at ABC company, things would be different today." are "whines" of the unsuccessful. In each moment we have available choices that are creating our future. The life you have today was created years ago. If you want something different and better years from now, today you will have to make different choices.

Make commitments and keep them no matter what. Whenever we make changes, those changes can challenge us to go back to the way things were – the pain we know is somehow better than the uncertainty of what we don't know. Making commitments and keeping them come out of our value systems. If we are unable to follow through on one commitment, it generally says we will falter on others. This doesn't foster reliability in people. Make it work, if you committed to it, if you want to be seen as an outstanding business person.

Focus on outcomes and what they can achieve – rather on excuses why they can't do something.

Focus on mastery rather than performance - Attending to doing things right without any failure leads to the imposter syndrome. Performance is key and it better be perfect. If it can't be done perfectly, it won't be tried. This goes back to the fear of failure. The only way to fail is to not do something. Take the time to learn something thoroughly. My trainer taught, "train as if you will never master training."

Make personal development a priority – I've never known a successful person who used money as an excuse not to do something. They think of things in terms of possibility, choice and how (process). If you focus on the possibility of how, it is amazing HOW things come about. Using time and money as an excuse is the hallmark of a person who is struggling and not getting what they want in life. When a successful person wants something, they find a way to do it.

Face fear, accept it and take the leap – qualify: educated leap. Gather information and talk to people who have already done what you want to do. Success leaves clues. Avoid missing any.

Expand your comfort zone – the wider your comfort zone, the more flexibility and choices you have. If all you have is a muddy dirt road to travel on, the more likely you will get stuck.

Respond to new ideas with curiosity. There is always something more to learn – success is built on curiosity. Belief in knowing it all is a dead end road.

Plan and take action – action without a plan is frantic activity; can mimic ADD. Plan without action mimics 'sitting ducks.'

Realize they have a choice in strategies if something isn't working – it is not if something doesn't work, it is when. This separates the 'wheat from the chaff'. Everything changes. We live in systems. Systems are dynamic. Changing with the times doesn't mean you have to have the "latest" technology but you probably need to make some effort to upgrade occasionally. Also, if you only have one choice, you are a robot.

Learn from mistakes and take feedback as a way to adjust the next step to get results– A mistake is a miss take. Do learning in reverse and do a Retake. Being defeated by failure is the hallmark of a perfectionist. Learn to be imperfect. You'll be happier and learn more. Listen to what others are saying who know more than you (not necessarily your parents). If I had listened to my parents, I would have moved home when I lost my first job. They did give me some good suggestions also. When I wanted to quit college, my dad convinced me to stay in school. Good choice.

Persist until something works. If the outcome is achievable then all that remains is to take action and change what you are doing until it happens
Help others – share your knowledge with those who wouldn't ordinarily be exposed to it. There is great benefit from teaching others. It helps you learn at a deeper level.

Hang around people who are like minded and want success also – so many of my former NLP students are returning for 'brush ups.' Being around people who are learning and growing supports us in getting what we want. You speak a common language. With so much hopeless desperation that has infiltrated many people, it is nice to be around people who have an upbeat perspective on life. And it is a perspective. We are all in the same boat. Some of us looking at it as a yacht; some are looking at it as a row boat without a paddle.

By the way, research on optimism and pessimism shows that optimists, even though they may see things a little unrealistically good, are healthier physically and mentally than realists and pessimists.

The successful person is largely differentiated by their WAY OF THINKING! Humm…where have we heard that before? I'm talking about the way we perceive situations. It is all a perception anyway, choose one that makes you happy. Now THAT is a choice!

Life is Good.

Words are Important!

Your language is the software package that runs your brain. You are always influencing and being influenced. So not only are you influencing others by your words, you are affecting yourself.

Your surface communication (what comes out of your mouth) is the end result of multi-layer thought process that begins in the deepest levels of your mind. By the time a thought is formed and that thought is expressed, it has gone through many filtering processes and much of the communication has been deleted, distorted and generalized. Then you make meaning of an experience and it is the MEANING you remember, not the actual experience. In fact, Noam Chomsky, in Transformational Grammer, stated that people communicate about 1-1/2% of the total of any experience. That's not a whole lot of information. You can see why so much miscommunication happens.

Now, knowing how to transform little phrases is a start to transforming your communication to benefit yourself and your internal experience. Here are some examples:

Change: Try ..............to ...........Do my best
Change: Stupid .........to............ Interesting
Change: Pain............. to............ Discomfort
Change: Lost .............to............ Missplaced
Change: Hate............ to............ Dislike
Change: You can't miss it.. to....... You'll find it
Change: Please don't misunderstand me........ to......... Please understand what I am saying
Change: It is so hard to.... to........ I'll find a way
Change: You won't fail .... to ....You will succeed
Change: Don't forget ........to .....Remember
Change: Don't miss it .......to......You'll find it

These are a few examples that will clean up your communication so that the listener has a better understanding of what you are saying.

Remember that the words like don't and won't are not processed in the mind so when you tell someone "Don't miss it" you are actually telling them to "miss it." That is what they hear.

More on the deletion, distortion and generalizations later.

Take note, the the more you do delete, distort and generalize, the more we find ourselves stuck and missunderstood. That doesn't feel good.

Small changes can, through time, can create big results.

Here is a testimonial from a coach who has used NLP in her coaching business.
"NLP gave me with the foundational belief system and structure I needed to grow a bigger life and a successful coaching business. No other training has proven as valuable to me in terms of my personal/professional development".

All Change is good

For years, a friend of mine told me this and I would think, "Huh?" How could all change be good? It depends on how you look at CHANGE. Unfortunately, most people look and experience change as "loss."

Do this exercise. Go back through your personal history and look at all the major changes in your life. After the change, what happened next after everything settle down?

Change for me represents something "different" and something "better." Eventhough some changes have represented losses for me, the situations were always replaced by something better than what I had. If I were still in the same relationship I had when I was married I wouldn't be happy with the person I am with today, nor would I be the same unhappy person I was back then.

People make themselves miserable trying to hold on to what they have, when what they can get as a replacement would be 10x better.

The other thing to think about is that even though change may represent something that isn't useful, it at least let's us get clear about where our boundaries are and what we don't want. Change, then affords us the opportunity to develop a viable replacement. The replacement still represents a change but it is about moving towards something better rather than moving away from something that is painful. When we move away from something painful, we can never get what we want because moving away from something painful doesn't specify where we are going.

If we don't know exactly where we are going, we will end up somewhere - the same place as we were before.

Flexibility in thinking towards possibilites of what CAN happen is the hallmark of genius.

Biggest Misconception of Communication – Verbal vs. Nonverbal

Have you ever sat in a seminar or talk about communication and heard the speaker use the statistics about communication?:

· 7% are the words,

· 38% is the way the words are said (paraverbals) and

· 55% of the communication is non-verbal (body language)

WRONG!

In fact, just this week, after imparting the misconception with my Level 1 class, one of my students heard a talk where the speaker cited these statistics. When I hear them, I immediately become suspect of this person’s ability to teach communication.

Not so Simple

Let me set the record straight for all you speakers out there and listeners. These often yet misquoted, out-of-context figures came out of the work of Albert Mehrabian, specifically, “Silent Messages.” Beginning the in 1960’s Mehrabian, a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at UCLA, has been known for his pioneering work in the field of nonverbal communication (body language).

His experiments helped identify nonverbal and subtle ways in which a person conveys like-dislike, power and leadership, discomfort and insecurity, social attractiveness, or persuasiveness. Mehrabian's research provides the basis for the widely misquoted and often much over-simplified statistic for the effectiveness of spoken communications.

Feelings, Ambiguity and Conflict

It is important to understand the context of Mehrabian findings. At a minimum, the formula applies to communications of feelings and attitudes (like-dislike) , not simple communication, ambiguity or incongruence.

Here is the oversimplification of the true statistics:

· 7% of meaning in the words that are spoken.

· 38% of meaning is paralinguistic (the way that the words are said).

· 55% of meaning is in facial expression.

Mehrabian did not intend the statistic to be used or applied freely to all communications and meaning.

From Professors Mehrabian’s website:

“Total Liking = 7% Verbal Liking + 38% Vocal Liking + 55% Facial Liking

Please note that this and other equations regarding relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages were derived from experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes (i.e., like-dislike). Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable. Also see references 286 and 305 in Silent Messages -- these are the original sources of my findings”

For example, the spoken instruction,

"Fire! Evacuate the building!”

has 100% meaning in the words alone: “There is a fire and get out now!”

The tone and body language might additionally convey urgency in meaning. You don’t need a body language expert to give you the full meaning of the communication. You have it all in the words.

In autocratic environments, such as the armed forces, there is no need to discuss emotional attitudes and feelings. Mehrabian's theory and its implications are not especially applicable The soldier does as the officer dictates without any discussion.

The value of Mehrabian's theory relates to communications where emotional content is significant, and the need to understand it properly is great. Or where the words are ambiguous or where there is a conflict (incongruity) between the words a person uses and the non-verbals and tone (one of a class known as paraverbals). Example, saying “yes” and shaking your head “no.” People tend to rely more on the non-verbals to evaluate the emotional state of the person speaking when there is ambiguity or conflilct between the channels

This is applicable in management and business, where motivation and attitude have a crucial effect on outcomes.

Meaning and Spoken Communication.

When interpreting meaning as the listener or convey meaning as a speaker, the Mehrabian model is important but context of the communication needs to be considered. In Meharbian’s model, 93% of the meaning is inferred by nonverbal language but you cannot use it in as a general communication rule. Also take into consideration that the research involved only spoken communication.

In many instances, 100% of the words are used to convey meaning, such as in contracts, deeds and legal documents or signs, such as NO SMOKING or RESTROOMS. No attitude or emotional content is present. Books also rely on words for 100% of the communication.

So the next time you hear a speaker misquote these statistics, you can do a number of things.

1. Do nothing; just consider them ignorant and they didn’t do their homework. When I hear this from a speaker I know they heard or read about it without doing any research and thought it was impactful and decided to use it.

2. Mention to them privately that they might want to check out Mehrabian’s studies before using the statistics again. Or send them to my blog off my website.

3. Challenge them in front of their audience. Make them look foolish.

I suggest using number 2. You’ll be doing them a favor.

The Lies about how to tell if a person is lying to you

This is a second of a series of articles on misconceptions about “reading” people.

I hear this often on TV shows and from what I understand, it is generally taught to policemen. What I hear is that if a person looks up to right, they are lying. This is another myth (see November’s blog on Body Language) that originated from NLP and was taken out of context and taught wholesale to people without having the entire understanding of what they were saying.

I think what happens (I’m only guessing) that someone takes a class or read something and they extract information out the class to teach to others. This information is usually something they find relevant in their own lives or it makes sense to them. It doesn’t have anything to do with truth. In the past, I have been guilty of the same thing. Early on in my NLP career, I became a victim to this type of information extraction so that I could impress audiences or build my expertise and authority. Today, knowing what I know about speakers and trainers in general, I want to check out any information before imparting it to others. Disseminating bad information will do more harm to ones’ credibility than good. You never know who is in the audience.

NLP was originally developed to help people model excellence in human communication, learning and behavior. It helped us understand how people operated as systems. Early on in NLP, eye patterns (or eye cues) were taught to people as part of understanding internal computation (the sequence of patterning, Strategy, a person uses to do things or think, like how they make decisions). Strategies are programs that run in the mind to do everything we do. Discerning the Internal Computation was part of strategy elicitation. Eye patterns were taught to therapists to so that they would pay attention to the internal processing of the client and/or match that processing to develop rapport. NLP was also developed as a MODEL, not a theory. Models are about what works, not necessarily what is true. Theories tend to espouse truths, even though they are only theories.

When eyes go up and to the left, a person was accessing remembered information (edipic) and when eyes go up and to the right, a person was accessing constructed information. Somehow, over the years “constructed information” meant a person was making it up and therefore lying. BUT many right handed, normally organized people construct out of recall. The images are extracted out of a remembered memory. In FROGS INTO PRINCES by Richard Bandler and John Grinder (page 21), you’ll find that when Bandler and Grinder asked a number of the same questions to various participants, they go similar but not entirely the same eye movements. Some people would do one thing and another would do something else. To enhance rapport and understanding, a person would then match the words with the eye movements: visual eye movements with visual “see” predicate words and phrases. In fact, on a biochemical level, all memories are 'constructed. (1) The Psychobiology of Mind-Body Healing, Ernest Lawrence Rossi, 1986, W.W. Norton & Company, page 69. How 'constructed' a memory has to be to trigger that eye-accessing pattern isn't clear.

Then somewhere someone got the idea that if you asked a person a question and they got the answer out of visual construct that meant that they were lying. NO, NO, NO. it means nothing of the kind. The whole idea of NLP was to get people to stop generalizing about people. In fact, as I recall, someone close to Richard Bandler once stated that they were sorry that they ever taught that information to people because it was so distorted and misused.

Stever Robbins wrote a great article about NLP and Lying. He said that just because you ask a question to elicit certain eye cues doesn’t mean you are going to get them. He says, As part of the experiment, I asked, "How many chairs do you have in your living room?" expecting them to access visual information. They would have a KINESTHETIC eye-accessing cue. That counted as a non-correlation. During the debrief, the subject said, "Remember when you asked about the chairs? I suddenly remembered how wonderful it felt when my mother rocked me to sleep in those chairs." (He went on about the wonderful FEELING for a few more seconds.) Just because I wanted him to access certain information didn't mean he did. In police interrogation, I can imagine anyone--innocent or not--worrying about how their answers will be taken. If they worry by constructing scenarios in their mind, that could produce a 'constructed' accessing cue.”Accessing eye cues may also be a reference to where information is stored spatially in submodalities. Therefore, accessing memories is only the first step in using the information.

A better approach to lie detection is to learn to notice unconscious physiological responses: pupil dilation, pore size, skin flush, muscle tone changes, breathing, etc. Calibrate carefully. Ask lots of questions that you know the answers to, until you are sure you can tell what combinations of nonverbal responses correspond to truth. If they happen to lie to one of your questions and you know they're lying, you'll also have the chance to calibrate a lie. Good poker players do this when they look for a "tell" in the other players. Often times a person’s voice pitch and tone will change when they are not telling the truth or there will be voice stress. Even that isn’t accurate.

Also, unless you know someone REALLY, REALLY well, the chances that you can tell they are lying are small. The bottom line on lie detection is that you simply can't tell from any of the simply NLP observations whether or not someone's lying. You may have said something or asked a question which triggered the person thinking about a childhood trauma or a memory of a heated conversation. Or the eye movement may have had nothing whatsoever to do with your words. A person could have had an unrelated sudden thought.

Robbins says, Sometimes if I think someone's lying, I'll simply re-ask the question a couple dozen times in a couple dozen different ways. Or I'll ask, "Really? Are you sure?" Or I'll ask for details. Those aren't NLP By the way, if you really thought that they were lying with that eye movement, your suspicions may have caused you to have a pronounced nonverbal reaction. Hopefully, they interpreted that correctly.

Stever's (and Susan’s) sage advice: don't hang around with people you think lie to you. It makes life much easier.

DEBUNKING THE MYTHS ABOUT BODY LANGUAGE

Well, I’ve had enough!


The Body Language Experts are coming out of the woodwork. They are blogging; they are on TV, they are giving talks. And there are still more people out there who are pretending to be body language experts. There is no end to the misinformation about body language in the media these days. So much so that certain myths have now become so widely spread that regardless of what a particular movement means, it is now accepted by the general public as truth even though it isn’t.


So I am setting the record straight at least for my corner of the world. If you are so inclined you can send this on to some of your wayward brethren who have been caught in the mythical fray. I’ll give you the most effective way to handle any body language. See below on how to handle any body language.


I got started on this one morning when one of my master practitioners sent me a link to some coach’s blog (is a coach necessarily a body language expert?). Most of them work over the phone. They don’t even get visual cues unless they have Skyp. In this person’s defense, her bringing up to awareness some of the inappropriate body language that can be used in interviews allows a person to become aware of their own body language.


So this woman, the coach says:

Leaning Back in Your Chair
When in an interview, it’s not a good idea to lean back in your chair. This gives the impression that you’re overly relaxed and disinterested in the job. It can also make you appear untidy. To remedy this, sit a little bit forward in your chair. This helps you present yourself as alert and eager to answer any questions thrown your way.


Now I agree that leaning back in your chair during a job interview is probably not the best strategy for showing interest BUT leaning back in the chair could also mean that the person is thinking about what the speaker is saying (processing, if you will). It is a dissociation. It is a backing away from the conversation while processing. The person can also be disagreeing with the speaker. They’ve heard something that doesn’t resonate with one of their values or heard something they don’t like. They may be commenting (internal dialog) inside and comparing what is being said with their own beliefs. But I’ve never heard that a person is relaxed or disinterested.


Folding Your Arms
Did you know that folding your arms in any situation sends a message that you’re closing yourself off from the person you’re communicating with? This means, if you fold your arms in an interview, you’re sending the interviewer the message that you’re not inviting him or her in. In other words, you can appear to be an unfriendly person, which could potentially X you out of the job.


OH, PLEASE! NOT AGAIN!!!! This is one of the myths that have been so perpetuated by the media and so called experts that it is now accepted as fact. We fold our arms for dozens a reasons: we are cold, we listening to the speaker are a few. This myth is so wide spread that I actually uncross my arms on purpose when I am conversing with a person I don’t know because of their perception of what it means.


Crossing Your Legs
While crossing your legs during an interview seems to be a polite and professional gesture, some experts beg to differ. In fact, this action actually sends a message of complacency, which is not what you want to communicate to your interviewer. This is why it is advised that you instead plant both feet firmly on the floor. It demonstrates confidence in who you are.


Actually crossing your legs is an incongruency as is standing with the weight of the body on one leg. I agree that planting both feet on the floor is a better way of sitting because it is more balanced. Where this person got that it meant complacency, I don’t know. I have dozens of people who take training from me every month. If they are sitting crossed legged does it mean they are all complacent? For the kind of money they are paying and time they are investing, I don’t think any of them are complacent. Their hindend may be uncomfortable from the hotel chairs, but based on the skill level of the participants that come out of my trainings, I don’t think complacency is a word that I would use to describe any of them. Sitting balanced actually is not only beneficial for your body, it is also very good for your mind. It actually helps the thinking/learning process. Standing and sitting with the body weight evenly distributed on both legs helps the person with energy and accessing neurological information.

There are 6 billion people on the face of earth. There are countless cultures. And all of them (people) place meaning on everything thing that happens to them, their friends, family, city, country, world. With so many minds taking in so much information the chance that two people see or experience the same event exactly the same is almost impossible. If you have 10 eye witnesses to an accident, you will get 10 individual and different interpretations of what happened.


So take the fact that no two people experience the world alike and make their own meaning of experience and then add this to the fact that the meaning we place on experience drives our emotions, and then add the fact that emotions drive our behavior, of which our body language is derived. So is it accurate to say that when all human beings do something in their behavior (body language) that it all means the same thing? How can it? Everyone perceives the world differently so each person’s movements will have different, individual meaning. The meaning of the movement may change over time as the individual learns, grows, evolves or grows older.


Jules Collingwood, an NLP Trainer Assessor, says,
” As humans we can modify our gestures consciously, making voluntary movements as well as displaying unconscious breathing shifts, skin tone changes and micro-muscle movements. We use our bodies to convey interest or disinterest, to establish rapport with others or to stop them in their tracks. We learn cultural norms about appropriate body language for people of our gender, age and status in our daily lives and sometimes find our habitual presentations elicit markedly different responses in other parts of the world.


So what can body language teach us about other people? With sufficient exposure to another culture we can learn to recognize its members by their body language, the way they move and gesture, how close they stand to other people and how much eye contact they make and with whom. We can learn to recognize HOW the individual, whatever their origin, is thinking by watching their eye movements, breathing and posture as they interact. This will not tell us WHAT they are thinking. The subject matter of someone's thoughts remains private until they describe it.”


Until you know someone and can calibrate them through time, you don’t know when a particular person is passionate about something, bored, closed off, annoyed. They might be trying to take an insect off of their shirt or need to go to the bathroom. They may be angry but you are not necessarily the object of their wrath. Calibration is the act of observing a particular person and asking them for meaning which we can use for future reference. Just because the person does something that means _________ , doesn’t mean that everyone has the same meaning.


In NLP, making interpretations or assumptions about other people’s behavior or movements is called MIND READING. We may have some degree of accuracy when mind reading but if you miss read someone, you may have lost rapport with an important part of your future. If you use body language to calibrate someone you can use that information to form questions and calibrate for the future.


HOW TO HANDLE BODY LANGUAGE


The best way to handle body language is to look at the larger frame of what you want to accomplish. Establishing rapport by matching and pacing body language will help you succeed in accomplishing your communication outcome/goal. Making meaning about what they are doing will not. The latter seems such a waste of time. Take the fact that no communication takes place without rapport, matching and pacing any movement will help you establish a relationship of trust and comprehensive understanding.


If you are interviewing for a job, it is much preferred to match your interviewer. Your brain makes thousands of decisions every second about the person in front of you by making comparisons of similarity and differences. The more similar a person is to you or you are to a person, the more familiar you seem to them, the more comfortable you will be with each other. Respectfully aligned with another person is the most effective way to understand each other. People like people who are like themselves. But it isn’t even about liking; it is about UNDERSTANDING. YOU WILL LEARN MORE ABOUT A PERSON BY MATCHING THEIR BODY LANGUAGE THAN FIGURING OUT WHAT IT MEANS. Being conscious or unconscious (you do this anyway) about aligning with others is the key to communication success.

Stay tuned for Myths about Lying and the 7%-38%-55% Myth about what is important in communication.