Much is being made at the moment about reading body language. You can see TV shows to this effect and some of them have great insights it seems.
The NLP approach, at least as I see it, is very different.
The key lies in reading the association – through language, metaphors, gestures, movements and eye patterns usually – to the person’s filters (metaprograms) and sensory processing.
In any given situation, whether a person is predominantly visual or auditory or kinesthetic etc is extremely important and revealing to an NLP Practitioner. Are they fast, can they operate on instinct, do they need set procedures and protocols in place, are they trapped – even for a moment – in self talk, how do they change this under stress and so forth.
All this can be read in micro-seconds by noticing every nuance of movement. What does it mean that they moved their right hand instead of their left hand, how does that change if it is a higher gesture or a lower one? What about tapping their foot – which one, when. Can you detect 5 different movement patterns in 2 seconds and make sense of them – I demand that of my NLP Practitioners. It forms, or should form, the basis of any NLP intervention.
I often challenge my students to ‘build a life’ out of a few seconds or minutes of video from interviews. How does this person deal with stress? An emergency? What are their strengths and weaknesses? How would you interest them in something – or confuse them? What would you hire them for?
Interestingly my students can do this with remarkably consistent accuracy. All it takes is knowing how to read and interpret the patterns before you and then extrapolate them out into various aspects of life. How do you do this?
I guess that is what we train for.
Popular Posts