NLP Coaching Skills for Leaders ~ The Path to Excellence
Printed in African Leadership Magazine April 2004
Written by Sunny Stout Rostran and Min McLoughlin
Leaders today need to develop the uniqueness within each individual and still foster the spirit and commitment of the team. There is greater and greater demand for leaders who are exemplary managers and coaches, and who show respect for people from diverse cultural backgrounds. Neuro linguistic coaching skills help leaders and coaches alike to bring out the best in themselves, their teams and their organisations. In this article we look at what leadership actually is and how NLP coaching skills can help you to develop leadership competence.
Leadership To Inspire Performance
The exemplary leader is the one who can liberate the ‘leader’ within everyone. Leadership is about enabling your people to become more collaborative and cooperative. It’s no longer just about the content of the work to be done; it’s about the collective value of people who are committed to each other and are willing to work together collaboratively. It’s necessary for you as a leader to bring together hearts and minds to inspire performance that moves beyond the expected to the extraordinary.
There is also a quest for greater meaning in our lives today and a growing yearning for a sense of higher purpose professionally and personally. What can you as a leader do to provide a climate for people to bring their souls to work - not just their physical and mental capabilities? How can you as a leader balance the s pirit of the organisation with its need for profit? And how can you begin to make a difference, restoring hope and creating a sense of meaning in the life of people at work today?
Leaders transform:
- Values into action
- Vision into reality
- Obstacles into innovation
- Individuality into team work
- Risk into success
How can NLP develop leadership competency?
Leadership begins with personal mastery - discovering your own personal sense of direction and purpose. With NLP coaching skills, you as a leader will learn to expand your personal capacity to create the results that you desire. But, in order to do so, leaders need to develop self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and interpersonal skills.
There are six core leadership competencies that NLP helps you to develop:
1. Model the way forward
2. Inspire a shared vision
3. Become a pioneer
4. Learn from success and failure
5. Enable others
6. Encourage hearts and minds
So What Is NLP?
It has been defined in many ways. NLP is known as the art and science of excellence, and as the study of subjective experience. But essentially and more importantly for l eaders, NLP is about context, process and structure. In other words, it’s not the content of what you do or say that matters, it is how you do what you do as a leader. And finally, it’s how you model excellence and learn the lessons from what isn’t working.
Neuro (N)
Refers to the nervous system, or the mind, through which our experience is processed via five our senses: Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic, Olfactory and Gustatory.
Linguistic (L)
Refers to language and other non-verbal communication systems through which our neural representations are coded, ordered and given meaning. This includes: Pictures, Sounds, Feelings, Tastes, Smells and Words (Self Talk).
Programming (P)
This is our ability to understand and use the programmes that we run (i.e. our communication to ourselves and others) in our neurological systems to achieve our specific and desired outcomes. In other words, NLP is how to use the language of the mind to consistently achieve our specific and desired outcomes.
Understanding The Simple Power Of How You Think
One of my clients is a pro golfer with whom I work regularly to help him manage his thinking on the golf course. With the use of exercises such as the one below, he has learned how to cancel out the sound of the crowds, to visualise a putt successfully and move on to the next hole without thinking about a previous unsuccessful drive.
Try this exercise that we consistently use with leaders to help them understand not only the power of the mind, but also how to ‘run their own brain’:
1. Pleasant memory
Take a pleasant memory from your past and literally make the colours stronger and more intense. How does having a ‘colourful past’ change the intensity of your response to that memory?
If you don’t notice a difference in your feelings when you make your memory more colourful, try seeing that memory in black and white. As the image loses its colour, typically your response will be weaker.
2. Add sparkle to your life
Think of another pleasant experience, and literally sprinkle your image of it with little shining points of sparkling light, and notice how that affects your feeling response (TV and cinema advertisers know all about this!)
3. Put your past behind you
This is common advice for unpleasant events. Think of a memory that still makes you feel bad, and notice where you see it now. How far away is the picture? It’s probably pretty close in front of you. So take that picture and move it, physically, far behind you. Or, as you move it away from you, put a rocket launcher underneath it and rocket it into the sky. Know that you can get that memory back any time you want it, but for now it is no longer in your way. How does that change how you experience that memory?
Coaching To Develop Leadership Potential
For the past ten years there has been considerable interest in coaches and mentors - among human resource directors, organisation development consultants, management consultants, trainers and facilitators. The emphasis has been on accelerating performance for individuals and the organisation. Teamwork, empowerment and improved business performance have been the focus within organisations. However, if organisations are going to make long lasting changes, the individuals within them must change first.
Coaching came onto the work scene in the 80s and today we see a shift taking place within the workplace. Stability and certainty have given way to technological change, economic, educational and community crises - and people at work are affected in every aspect of their personal and professional lives. One resource that has increased the ability to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty is that of the personal or professional coach. Coaching is a skill now required of all leaders.
Coaches look for shifting advantages within the change process. They facilitate behavioural change and self-responsibility in their clients, and ultimately they help improve performance, visioning, teamwork and the ability to take risks.
Coaches help leaders to:
- focus on what they want rather than what they don’t want
- define their outcomes and ensure that they do happen
- achieve goals that are currently eluding them and their teams
- build self-esteem, integrity and experience
- deal with complexity and diversity of thinking
- achieve personal and professional mastery
Visualisation techniques
In order to develop leadership competency, NLP coaches train leaders in visualisation techniques to focus, problem solve, make complex decisions and use different thinking systems (visual, kinesthetic, auditory or auditory digital) in order to gain a different perspective on an individual issue, conflict or problem. For example, one of my clients came to me asking to help her create ’structure’. What we learned was that she thought only in ‘words’ and in ‘feelings’. She could not ’see’ her day, let alone see the way forward with her team. We have been working on her ability to visualise; it has transformed her capacity to structure and organise herself, her time and her business.
The Six Success Factors
Rapport is the first of six success factors we use in NLP to develop leaders to help them to accelerate and improve performance individually and in their teams. When you begin to pay attention to how you meet the other person you can refine your rapport skills and thus enhance your relationship with them. This requires sensitivity on your part. So use your sensory acuity to see, hear, sense, and then match, the other person’s: posture, gestures, breathing, energy level, speech patterns, tonality, rhythm and speed of speech, beliefs and values. Rapport helps you to find common ground when none seems available in a diverse team or organisation.
1. Developing rapport:
Rapport is a natural part of communication. We do it easily and unconsciously with those with whom we share common goals and values. It’s not so easy with people with whom we feel slightly uncomfortable or ill at ease. To achieve rapport means to be in sync with, to concur simultaneously. If we are out of rapport, we are acting differently to them. For example, if we speak in a loud voice, and they in a soft one, it will be very difficult to create rapport. If they lean forward in excitement, and we are so laid back we nearly fall backwards in our chair, it will be tricky to remain on a similar wavelength. For effective communication you need to meet other people in their model of the world. In this way, they will feel that they are being acknowledged. Rapport integrates verbal and non-verbal communication.
2. Know your outcome: Know what you want
In NLP we use well-formed conditions to check that you know what you are going for, and to ensure that your behaviour is appropriate and ecological. You may need to check out what the other people involved want, and dovetail your outcomes. Without a well-formed outcome you are more likely to be blown off course by external factors.
3. Take action: Just do it!
Model your own excellence and learn from what’s not working. There is no such thing as failure, only feedback for what’s working and what’s not working.
4. Have sensory acuity: how will you know you’re getting what you want?
Become more curious, and become more aware of the effects of what you do. These will become apparent within yourself (your internal state) and will also be discernible in other people. This information comes to you through your five senses: seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling and tasting (VAKOG). Notice what is different as a result of your action or thinking. You may choose to see the world as a mirror which is reflecting back the results of your thoughts and behaviours. Notice if you are getting what you want. In our culture it is not normal to notice this kind of information. It is more a case of regaining these skills, rather than of doing anything new.
5. Have behavioural flexibility: If what you are doing isn’t working, do something different.
Remember that you always have a choice of action. You may find it useful to examine the world from a number of different perceptual positions, perspectives and points of view. The more flexible you are at examining your situation, the more information you will be able to gather and the more choices you will discover. It is useful to give yourself at least three possibilities (your position, their position and a meta position).
With clients we work with third position thinking to encourage seeing a problem or conflict situation from another point of view. One client (an editor of a woman’s magazine) who came to work with me said she just couldn’t understand her boss; they were constantly arguing. By using third position thinking she was able to put herself in her own shoes, her boss’s shoes, and get the learning she needed from a ‘meta’ or ‘umbrellia’ position. Only then was she able to change her behaviour, and ultimately affect change in her boss’s behaviour.
6. Operate from a physiology & psychology of excellence:
You can do whatever you want. One of the presuppositions of NLP is that you already have all the resources you need available to you, and that these resources are accessible to you at any time. Learn how to access these resources, at appropriate times and places so that you can achieve excellence in everything that you do.
How To Be In Rapport
To move into rapport, notice how others move, how they sit, how they speak. Begin to slowly adjust your body movements to match theirs. It’s important not to mimic their rhythm, just move in accordance with it. Slowly begin to adjust your actions, your voice and your posture to be more in sync with them.
This conscious initiation of rapport will create harmony with others, but at the level of ‘unconscious’ behaviour. They won’t be consciously aware of what you are doing, unless you mirror them exactly. Notice how friends, who are naturally in rapport, literally move together, matching words, gestures and tone of voice. It’s like watching a dance.
Powerful ways of matching include posture, tone of voice, body and facial expressions, and even your rate of breathing. Notice the rhythm of their language, the pitch and pace of their speech. Pay attention to their physical movements. Do they sit still, or express themselves with their hand gestures and facial expressions? To get into physical rapport with each other, begin to align your voice, facial expression, body movement and posture.
To build rapport, it’s important to:
- Create physical and emotional empathy.
- Build relationships based on shared values and goals.
- Encourage positive, reflective communication and a feeling of safety.
- Be authentic and sincere in your communication.
- Match the others sensory acuity and way of seeing the world.
Visual thinkers
Use words like: see, picture, sight, looks, view, overview, focus, clear, looks right. Remember events and experiences by the songs they were listening to at the time at the world through visual images and understands by making pictures of the meaning. Need graphics and illustrations and loves to read, watch TV, see movies, daydream.
Auditory thinkers
Use words like: sound, hear, sounds like, tune, harmony, loud, tell me. Listen to what people have to say and accept it if it sounds right, or they like the tone of voice the person used. Sing while they work or listen to music while studying.
Kinesthetic thinkers
Use words like: feels, handle, cool, touch, heavy, hard, pressure, grasp. Get a feel for things and people. Want to touch people and things, strokes animals, picks things up and plays with them. Use whole body movements or hands when describing something.
Logic & Common Sense thinkers
Use words like: logic, common sense, reason, system, understand, make sense of, analyse, know. Need to understand why something is important, instructions have to make sense, everything must be ordered and logical. Enjoy printed details and flow charts.
New Light Through Old Windows
What can you learn from past experiences? How can you look at the past from a different perspective, from a perspective of learning? This exercise is to develop performance. It helps leaders to see something they’ve experienced in the past that they were unhappy with or that has remained unresolved. ‘New Light Through Old Windows’ offers a new way of seeing.
Use this strategy to obtain new learning from a past experience in life. Do not, however, use this exercise for an experience that was traumatic, or caused great pain or sadness to the person. That experience would require counselling.
New light exercise
1. Think of an experience that holds negative connotations for you, but not something that is traumatic.
Ask your clients to really get in touch with that experience. They may wish to close their eyes.
When one of my entrepreneurial clients first did this exercise, she thought of the day she was made redundant from a very prestigious leadership. She was unaware that she was to be dismissed, and was shocked at the insensitive way it was handled.
2. Check they are associated.
Have a look at their face, hands, feet. Are they physiologically in tune with that past experience?
When she thought of this experience, her body went into a kind of automatic shock. Her jaw tensed, her body tensed. She could not think clearly. Her feelings felt raw. The situation seemed unreal.
3. Run the movie
Ask your clients to run a movie, in their mind’s eye, of that experience. Suggest that they put up a cinema screen (in their mind’s eye) in front of them, perhaps twenty feet away. Suggest they start the memory reels rolling. Have them run the movie, from start to finish, of that experience. It’s important that you tell them to: “See yourself in the film, as if you are looking at it back there, then.” Ask them to: “Have a look at your younger self, back there, then.”
This helps them to keep their distance between where they are now, in their present life, and back there at a younger them, at a past experience. Give them time.
When my client did this, she turned her head to the left, looked up and slightly to the left. She put up a movie screen and ran the movie, from the beginningright until the end of that experience. She could see herself looking somewhat understandably distraught and frustrated.
4. What is the learning?
Say to them, “As you stay with me here, today, look back on that experience. What learning can you gain from watching you back there, then”? Once they have acknowledged that they know, ask them to slowly become conscious of themselves back in the room, with you.
When she runs this movie, it occurs to her, each time, to be prepared for anything. The biggest learning for her is that there is no such thing as failure. She wasn’t made redundant because she was a failure. In fact, she had done very well. She just didn’t fit the mould with the management. Her learning came later. At the time, though, the experience was shocking. In fact, they were trying to get her to go on a pretence, which did not set well with mher values. Fortunately she handled it well. She has grown since that event, which she now feels has enhanced her skills and expertise.
5. Future vision
It’s important to take this learning into a future experience, where it may be useful. Ask your client to think of a future event where this learning may be useful, given that you know you can now behave differently.
For her, she learned the lesson well. She now uses this to envision working with her new team. It helps her to remember that she is good at what she does, but that there is learning from every interaction. It also reminds her to learn from every experience, positive and negative.
In conclusion
As a leader, NLP coaching skills can help you to harness the creativity and innovation within yourself, your team and your organisation. Leadership is not about being in a leadership position. It’s about having the courage and the spirit to make a difference - developing the leader in everyone.
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