Posted on: 24th November 2007
Ben and I were in a meeting room a few months ago amusing ourselves with a sign on the wall entitled, "Rules of Engagement for Meetings" - There’s an interesting presupposition in there about the dynamics of a meeting - I said, "I wonder what kind of meetings they have here?"
The third point on the list read, "All participants must demonstrate integrity." I think we would all agree that integrity is a good value for meetings and indeed any human interaction; but there’s an interesting problem that happens when we attempt to communicate or observe a value. For example, if someone were sitting with you right now demonstrating integrity, what would they be doing?
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Posted on: 17th November 2007
In my experience one of the most destructive atmospheres that you can create in a business is fear of consequence. Under such conditions the psychological attention direction of the individual is toward the avoidance of screwing up rather than toward doing something great. If a business penalises negative results more that it celebrates positive results it�s fairly obvious that avoiding negatives is a safer strategy than going after the positives. How is this fear instilled? - Through the informal communication in the organisation; the working environment, corridor conversations and the behaviour of your line manager.
I was recently working in a company where I visited the toilet and was greeted with a sign stating that an individual had left graffiti in that toilet, it was unacceptable and if the culprit is caught they will INSTANTLY DISMISSED! It was signed by the CEO. As I read it I felt like I was back a school, or like I was being told off. That business probably had 1,000 people working in that building. The sign was for the benefit of one person - how do the other 999 feel about being confronted with that threatening tone and BLOCK CAPITALS at least once a day? What is this communicating to them? Is threatening one person worth creating a negative environment for 999 people? Just a thought�
Posted on: 10th November 2007
I hugely enjoyed the recently published by Derren Brown entitled ‘Trick of the Mind’ (Channel 4 Books, 2006)
Apart from a fundamental misunderstanding about NLP Modeling, he raises some very reasonable and legitimate questions about the patterns and techniques of NLP and provides some well-earned criticism of the NLP community.
By his account, he attended an NLP Practitioner training course with a company that trains hundreds of people in one room at one time with little or no individual attention from the trainers � more of a seminar than a training course.
I was pleased that he did distinguish John Grinder from this criticism as John�s approach to the science is far more serious, legitimate, realistic, academic and responsible than some other people.
I would recommend that anyone involved with NLP read this book. If NLP is to survive as the powerful methodology conceived by Bandler and Grinder in the 1970�s, these criticisms need to be acknowledged and intelligently addressed.
Posted on: 3rd November 2007
I fint The Apprentice a very watchable programme and the behaviour of the participants is fascinating to me. There is a particular dynamic that Sir Alan Sugar creates in his boardroom that makes great telly. He gathers the contestants together at the end of their task and provokes defensive reactions. This is achieved by making provocative statements rather than asking open questions. For example, he may say, "You didn’t think about this at all!" or, "You’re not a very good salesman!"
If you tell someone about themselves by making a statement about them, their knee-jerk reaction will be to defend themselves from direct statement that is likely to be perceived as accusation, confrontation, aggression or a variety of other similarly negative meanings. This is certainly not a productive dynamic for a frank and open discussion. Consider the difference between the following two sentences:
1: "You have been late six times this month!"
2. "I’m wondering if you are aware how many times you have been late this month?"
Option 2 may open the door for a conversation - Option 1 will certainly provoke a defensive reaction. I laughed out loud when, in the semi-final episode of the recent series of The Apprentice, one of the contestants was told (without a hint of irony), "You need to be less defensive."
