If you learn to work with it, you can be an incredibly effective communicator and persuader.
If one works against it, they might find it can foil the efforts of even the most determined and capable masters of language and negotiation.
Curious about what this might be? If understanding and being understood by others is important to you, I imagine you are!
The principal in question was most recently brought to mind as I watched a interchange between a friend of mine and another fellow. They were having a discussion about learning styles, which could use a little elaboration to help make things clear. I'm going to leave out names because this isn't about this particular incident but rather what lay beneath it...
The fellow on the one side of the discussion is someone who seems to me to be a really nice guy who had, at that time, spent about a year intellectually chasing his own tail in trying to learn something, which is what provoked my friend’s intervention.
And to understand the other side, let me tell you a little about my friend. He is a master of both communication and persuasive language. He is sought out by people wishing to learn the art of influencing others. He's an acknowledged expert in the field and commands a high fee for his consulting and training services and, I think, deservedly so.
It was clear to both my friend, myself and many others that there was a simple, basic problem in that this other fellow seemed to be running into. His approach to learning was clearly and demonstrably hindering his ability to learn what he was trying to learn.
You see, this other fellow seemed to have a strong preference for how he chose to look at things he didn't yet understand. His basic strategy seemed to involve comparing every new thing to everything he had previously learned or understood.He would, it seemed, find the closest equivalent in his experience to the new thing and would then equate them. So, ‘this is like that, therefore this essentially is that’.
Of course, sometimes things are sufficiently similar that one can successfully learn by drawing comparison. Even things that are dissimilar can have similarities on certain points which can help us along the process of understanding.
However, like all things, this is a tool which works best in the proper balance and in the correct context. If one finds oneself turning into a contortionist in an effort to equate one thing with another, chances are that forced equivalence might be less useful in the learning process than the ones which appear more easily.
Also, when people are trying to learn things which have very subtle distinctions from one another, creating an equivalence between them might also mean never learning or even being able to recognise the distinctions between the two things!
So, after yet another example of this fellow running the same cognitive pattern and, as a direct result, missing out on some valuable learning as a result, my friend decided to intervene.
This began a discussion which went on for days (let me clarify something now, to avoid some interesting mental imagery. This was a discussion on a public forum, not a physical conversation!).
My friend used every applicable tool of logic and reason. He used his language admirably well, working like the craftsman that he is. He used his communication to clearly both demonstrate and explain the ideas he was working to get across. He varied his approach whenever it became clear that his communication wasn't getting across. He came from many different angles and many different emotional states. It was a masterful performance, I think, the work of someone who is clearly an exemplary teacher and a skilled negotiator.
And in the end, the other fellow stuck to his position, seemingly unpersuaded and unconvinced. Further, he seemed offended and more entrenched in his position than ever!
I won't say that he wasn't affected by the discussion, and at the same time it doesn't seem that any of my friend’s arguments were taken to heart. Instead, this other fellow simply felt put upon and singled out for attack.
Now admittedly there were a lot of other issues here in this particular communication which were important factors in the outcome. But I think that there was one key issue which made this a very difficult uphill battle for my friend, spite of all of his prowess as a communicator and as a persuader.
People tend to have certain concepts or ideas which serve as perceptual filters for how they view things at certain times and in certain situations.
In NLP, we refer to these perceptual filters as metaprograms.
The most common metaprogram and the one that most of us are familiar with is the 'polarity response'. I think we've all been in a situation with someone who seems to expressly contradict anything that is said to them.
The classic example...
'Don't you think this is nice?'or
‘I've seen better.'
'This restaurant is excellent!'
'I've had better.'
We've even coined the phrase 'reverse psychology' to refer to a method of dealing with people when they're evidencing that kind of mental program in the way that they communicate.
(And yes, those of you familiar with the concept may notice more than one metaprogram in these two exchanges.)
A skilled communicator will notice metaprograms and will tailor his communication to work within them.
So, in dealing with a polarity responder, for example, a persuasive speaker will begin to subtly begin to move his conversational position in a different direction so that the other person can begin to use this contrarian position to reach the desired conclusion.
'Now that you mention it, it probably isn't very nice...'or
'I don't know, it's not that bad!'
'Maybe you're right, maybe this place isn't all it's cracked up to be...'But my friend wasn't having this discussion in order to play into this other fellow’s metaprograms. In fact, he was working to get this fellow to realize and understand that his own basic metaprogram for dealing with the subject at hand (in this case, learning) would need to be changed in order to allow him to learn optimally.
'Aw, it's all right!'
And therein lay, I think, the most difficult part of the discussion. Effectively, my friend was having to work to get this person to fundamentally change the way that they thought about things in order to enable them to see his point. And since that very change in thinking was the subject of the discussion, it was a difficult point to argue on the face of it!
In fairness to my friend, he also had to work through the problems of distance and written language. Somehow, I think that if the discussion had been face to face, my friend probably could have gotten his point across much more easily and effectively.
And in spite of all that, my friend still managed to deeply affect this other fellow and the way that he thought, even if in the end he didn't achieve the desired outcome in the exchange. He also achieved an important secondary outcome by laying the concept for anyone with 'ears to hear' as clear as day. Skilled communicators will almost always work with more than one outcome in mind, and this is a good example of that, I think.
In the modern world, we don't always have the luxury of speaking to someone face to face or even being able to use our voices. So, as communicators and persuaders, we are faced even greater challenges.
So, as you begin to think more about metaprograms and the way that they work in human thought, it might also be interesting to think about recognizing the need to change metaprograms in ourselves and in others to allow us to see things in a way that works to our advantage.
And learning to recognize these perceptual filters and utilise them in our communications with others and in the way we think about things ourselves can be the first step towards changing them in a way that's useful in the experience of our lives.
So I wonder just how different things can be the next time you have a really challenging discussion with someone now that you've begun to notice that you're not only taking the content of what they're saying into account but also their perceptual filters and metaprograms at a deeper level? I have the feeling that you might just start to experience not only greater understanding but also greater ability to create opportunities for influence.
We'll talk more about this in the days to come...
Be Well,
Michael Perez
Labels: Communication, dialogue, metaprograms, NLP
