X-Ray Listening
minds, metaphors and (ethical) manipulation
All I Want For Christmas…
Dec 22nd
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I had an inspiring conversation yesterday with Caitlin Walker, one of the world’s most experienced Clean Language facilitators. Among the things we talked about was her approach to selling her consulting services… without “selling”.
She’s an expert in using Clean Language with groups and organisations.
And she described how, instead of “pitching” for work, she’s devised a way of using the Clean Language questions in the sales process itself, by using them to find out what key people in the organisation really want.
Luckily the whole conversation was recorded for a podcast series I’ll be unveiling in the new year. (Make sure you’re signed up to my newsletter to be kept informed.)
And meanwhile, it got me thinking about a lesson I keep having to re-learn.
There’s not much point in trying to sell people stuff that they don’t want. It’s much more effective to find out what they want and offer them that.
The snag is that people often don’t know what they want. They know what they don’t want – but that’s as likely to bring success as heading out to More >
The Magic Wand Mindset
Dec 20th
A lot of people come to NLP, hypnosis or Clean Language looking for an instant fix to all their problems. Most of them don’t get one.
The truth is that life change, like pretty much everything else, takes longer than you think.
I love Hofstadter’s Law: “Everything takes longer than you think, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.”
Richard Wiseman affirms this in his book 59 Seconds. He says: ”Research shows that people have a strong tendency to underestimate how long a project will take… Even when they are trying to be realistic, people tend to assume that everything will go to plan, and do not consider the inevitable unexpected delays and unforeseen problems.”
Changing a habitual behaviour can, of course, be instant. It’s perfectly possible for a moment of insight in a coaching or therapy session, or a workshop, to transform someone’s thinking.
It can look and feel very dramatic. The world has changed: what is now known can never be un-known again. We’re not in Kansas any more.
But keeping a behaviour changed is usually a different matter. What happens when we leave the safe workshop environment and rejoin the real world? Will the client fall off the wagon – and what will More >
How Flexible Is Your Time?
Dec 19th
The way you think about time can transform your reality. That’s essentially the claim of a book I’ve been avidly reading this weekend, The Time Paradox by Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd.
It’s one of those books that draws you in and keeps you turning the pages. While all about were up to their necks in pre-Christmas preparation, I was immersed in the joy of learning something new.
In the authors’ terms, I was adopting a “present-hedonistic” time perspective, while the scurrying shoppers were taking a “future” perspective.
If I’d spent my time on the phone to my birth family, reminiscing about the good old days, I’d be in “past-positive”; ruminating on how I’d messed up, “past-negative”; meditating and praying for salvation after death, “transcendental-future”; or gritting my teeth for inevitable trouble, “present-fatalistic”.
(By the way, Zimbardo is the chap who supervised the famous Stanford Prison Experiment. He’s no lightweight – but the book is an easy read.)
In NLP terms, these time perspectives would probably be equivalent to meta-programs: people can have the flexibility to adopt any of these perspectives, but tend to have strong habitual preferences. Those preferences will profoundly affect the way you behave and your overall life outcomes – for example strong More >
Did I Screw Up With Clean Language?
Dec 13th
I’ve just done an interview that might cause offence.
It contains strong language – and some Clean Language heresy.
It also contains the truth about what was really happening during the launch of my Intelligent Influence products this time last year – information I’ve never shared publicly before.
Not to mention a Clean Language demonstration… and a bunch of tips for covertly using Clean principles in conversational hypnosis.
You might find it useful – or you might just find it hilarious.
Check it out here – and many thanks to interviewer Antonio Perez of Hawaii Hypnosis.
Did I screw up? Feel free to comment below.
What Do They Want At Christmas?
Dec 12th
Do you ever struggle to work out what your nearest and dearest would like? It’s not that surprising, really. Because lots of people don’t know what they want themselves – at Christmas or at any time of year.
It’s a constant theme in my coaching work. For example, one of the things I most love to do is to help coaches and other people-helpers to find their “Sweet Spot” – the place where their unique skills, experience, knowledge and passion coincide with the needs of people who want to pay them.
A few of these clients start by knowing exactly what they want to do, and are only wondering how to make it pay. But the majority have just a hazy sense of not wanting to continue doing what they are doing, and of wanting to help people somehow… until the coaching process brings their ideal future to life.
Getting clear about what you really want seems to be one of the things that Clean Language coaching is particularly useful for. That’s probably because of a model created by Penny Tompkins and James Lawley, the Framework for Change.
The model starts by acknowledging how tricky it can be to get someone to state their More >
