by Tom Hoobyar
Second Position
Second position is what my client was talking about. That’s the position where you’re very, very simpatico to another person. You feel someone else’s pain. If you’re in second position, you might get someone a glass of water before they even know they’re thirsty. It’s a position of great solicitation and understanding of others. When we go too far with second position, we tend to be oversolicitous and overdependent, and that’s often referred to as codependency. In NLP, some people refer to this position as other.
Third Position
In NLP, the third position is often called the observer position. That’s where you’re outside a situation and you just sort of record what’s happening. You see what’s going on, completely separate from yourself, like an objective reporter might. It’s a position where you can evaluate yourself and options. (That’s what you did when you played with stepping out of your picture or mental movie in Chapter 2.)
Scientists frequently operate from third position, as do surgeons, engineers, and professional performers. People who work in these professions benefit from stepping outside themselves to judge what’s going on. And because there’s not a lot of emotion in third position, they can effectively determine what’s working and what changes might be helpful. What’s the drawback? Well, if someone gets stuck in third position, they’re sort of habitually detached, and people feel like they can’t ever really connect with them.
Again, the goal is to take advantage of these different options. Go into first position to get clarity about how you feel. To try something on from someone else’s point of view, briefly go into second position. To evaluate a situation and solutions, go into third position for objectivity.
A Case in Point: Intentional Use of Perceptual Positions
Let’s take an example of something that happened to me during the early days of studying NLP that beautifully illustrates the usefulness of shifting between perceptual positions.
Back then, I had a girlfriend who wasn’t sure what to make of NLP, how it was changing me, and how passionate I was about it. In an effort to put her at ease and maybe even get her excited about it, I said, “I’d really like you to come to this introductory talk about NLP and just hear about it. In my enthusiasm, I don’t think I’ve done a good job describing it to you. Maybe my favorite teacher, Robert McDonald, will.”
She agreed to come. And, during the activities, we got separated. It was quite a large room and we were all engaged in activities with other people. I thought it would be useful to her to see several processes without having her experience influenced or contaminated by me.
At the lunch break, she came over to me and said, “I’m going home. I feel terrible.”
I said, “Wow, what happened?”
She said, “Oh, I went up to talk to the trainer. I just asked him a simple question and he bit my head off.”
I thought, “That doesn’t sound likely to me.” But I gave her the car keys and told her to head on home and I would get a ride from somebody at the end of the day.
Later that afternoon, I went up to the trainer and discussed it with him. I said, “I brought a guest and you kind of fried her. She was feeling bad enough that she actually left.”
He said, “Oh, I remember. She did come up and ask me a question,” and then he did an interesting thing. He went through his memory of the interaction with my girlfriend, using all three perceptual positions. He went through it first as himself and said, “Let’s see, I was in the middle of talking with somebody else and she came up and asked a question. I said, ‘Hang on a moment. I want to answer that, but I need to finish this process.’ “
I said, “You know, she’s really shy and it wasn’t easy to even get her to join me today. It probably took a hell of a lot for her to come and approach you.” Then he went into second position. He became her, and he thought, “Well, yeah, I can see if I were shy, and hesitant about being here, if I came up to the trainer and he put me off like that, it might have felt a little abrupt to me.”
Then he went to third position and, from outside, he saw the two of them interacting and thought, “You know, that really wasn’t beyond the pale. I asked her very kindly if she would just wait a moment, but I understand how she might have taken it the wrong way. Can I apologize to her?” I said, “I don’t know. I don’t think she’s ever coming back. I just don’t know.”
He asked for her phone number and he called her that afternoon to apologize. It was very interesting how he did it. He apologized for any part he might have played in how she was feeling, but he made clear to her that her feelings were her creation and not his.
He let her know that it was not his intent to make her uncomfortable, and that he was not angry with her or irritated. He told her that he just needed to complete a conversation he was having with the first person who had approached him with a question. He explained that he was treating that first person the way my girlfriend wanted to be treated. I think she got it, because she came back the next day.
This story shows the value of each perceptual position. If you’re feeling a little too sucked into somebody or into a situation, get back in to your body. The anchor that you created in Chapter 1 can help you do that, because it’s an anchor of power, and it’s a first position anchor. When you touch that place on your middle finger, it should return you to yourself.
In industrialized societies, we are not encouraged to stay in first position. We’re encouraged to get out of it. Girls are taught not to be selfish; they’re pushed into second position. They hear “Be polite, be nice, be helpful, don’t be outspoken.”
And boys are taught not to cry. They’re kicked out of first position into third: “Don’t be a baby; this is the way things are. Be a man.” In business and in sports, even though there’s a lot of emotion, males are taught not to take it personally. It’s like the Mafia. A guy shoots his friend and he says, “It’s just business.”
I remember when I was in sixth grade, I was playing football with a friend of mine for the first time. He actually hit me below the waist. He said he was sorry and that it wasn’t personal. What he did took me out of the lineup and I was kind of brokenhearted that my friend would deliberately hurt me just to get past me in a game. But I learned the code, “It’s nothing personal, buddy. It’s just business or it’s just a game.”
I know how I feel when I’m in my body. I know exactly how I feel. I have no clue about how you feel because I’m in my body. I know how I do it. But I don’t know how you do it. How can I find out how you do it? I can find out how you do it by stepping outside myself and empathizing with you.
As we go into opportunities of dealing with another person, I want to be clear that many of these activities encourage the second position. It’s a useful place to visit, but you can’t really live there. You go there to gain information; you don’t stay there. It’s only your place to gather information about how other people really are. You want to live in first position—and briefly visit the other two.
Instant Processing: What Your Filters Process First
When we first meet someone, our brains begin to instantly process information about what we see, hear, and feel. To help people understand and remember this process, Rick Middleton, the founder of Executive Expression in Los Angeles, created an acronym—GGNEE. In a first meeting, here’s what we’d initially notice about someone. In this order, we notice that person’s:
Gender. It’s not because of how they’re dressed, it’s because we’re biological critters that come in two versions, so the first thing we notice is what version the other person is.
Generation or age. Are they children? Are they of reproductive age? Are they older? Are they wise? Are they a dependent?
Nationality or ethnicity. Basically what color, what type of person they are.
Educational level. As we talk to them or as we see how they’re dressed, we’ll draw some conclusions about their educational level, which is sort of socioeconomic.
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sp; Emotions. After taking in and processing these other details, then we sort of fantasize about their emotions. What do they seem to be feeling?
This processing happens incredibly quickly—bam! It’s so fast that our receiver turns off and now we’re no longer open to receiving any real or original information from these people. We’re just stuck in the efficiency of generalization.
So how do people geniuses handle it?
Although people who are masterful at understanding and connecting with others also have these filters, they understand and are aware of how their brain works. When they notice they’re getting stereotypes or generalized impressions, they set those filters aside. They don’t go there anymore; they open themselves up to another person. Instead of being self-concerned, they manage to turn down the inner noise and focus on the other person.
This conscious habit is one I’m hoping you’ll practice and master. If we’re going to be really good with other people, we need to rewire ourselves so that we don’t let our judgments, opinions, or beliefs, our dissonance or uneasiness, take the attention away from the other person.
If we don’t have peace of mind, if we’re not comfortable with ourselves, if we’re feeling the slightest bit insecure or incongruent, guess what happens? The other person begins to feel insecure. They feel like we’re uneasy—so they get uneasy. They get distrustful.
Managing your inner state is important. What you learned about yourself from the discovery activities in the last few chapters will contribute to positive preconditioning that will enable you to be even better company.
Discovery Activity:
Identifying Ways Other People Are Good Company
When you look inside your own mind and your own memories now, think of the people whom you consider good company, people that you like being around and who make you feel good.
When I think of the most entertaining people I know, I think of the life-of-the-party types. But they’re not the people who make me feel good. Frankly, they make me feel kind of inadequate. The people who make me feel good are the people who are at peace inside and who seem to genuinely be interested in me and to care about me. Is that true for you, too?
When you think about the qualities of companionship that attract you, that make you feel safe, make you feel valuable, you get a really good idea about the qualities that you want to build in yourself.
So, right now, think of someone you like being around, someone that, when you’re with them, you feel good. What is it about them that contributes to these good feelings? Make note of special traits, behaviors, or ways of being.
Now think of another person who’s good company for you. What are their special traits, behaviors, or ways of being? Compare this list to the first one you made (earlier in this chapter) so you have a robust list of desired behaviors that you want to include as you make changes to your patterns. Note any that are qualities you want to build or strengthen in yourself. Keep in mind that you can repeat this process whenever you notice yourself enjoying someone’s company, or witness someone who’s masterful at building rapport and relationships.
When you compare these discoveries with the list you made a few minutes ago. you’ll notice items on the list that echo something you already identified. These repeated things might be the ones offering the greatest leverage to make a significant change. Also note any new traits or behaviors that you’d like to integrate into how you interact with others.
An Inside Job: How to Help Other People Feel Safe
We said earlier that making the other person feel safe is key to creating a connection. To accomplish this, you must control your own incongruence, nervousness, or feelings of insecurity. That’s not about other people; that’s an inside job.
Some of us, who have an issue with doing this, talk about being shy. When, in fact, it’s the way we’re thinking that makes us shy. That shyness is going to set off an alert in other people’s brains because it’s going to make them very uneasy. Basically, it communicates that we’re so self-involved that we’re not really paying attention. We’re nervous, our eyes are darting around, we’re shifting our weight or fidgeting, you get the picture. These behaviors are not conducive to comfort. To make someone else comfortable, we have to be comfortable within ourselves. This inside work must be done before we can put someone at ease when interacting with us.
The interesting thing is, one way to get comfortable is to focus on the other person instead of on you. Instead of being stuck, you stay in first position, but you focus on the other person from within your first position. You operate from an intention to make the other person feel safe.
Not Just Imitation:
How Mirroring and Matching Help You Make Connections
Here’s how you do that. You use your second position to sense how they’re doing and you allow yourself to subtly match someone’s physical movements, doing what they do with their body. Although the content and quality of conversations can determine how our bodies match or mismatch each other, the way our bodies, gestures, and tones match or mismatch can influence the actual conversation.
The difference between matching and mimicking is that mimicking is really overt and it can tick people off or make them very suspicious. If someone experiences your mirroring as mimicking, it’ll create dissonance, not harmony. What you really want to do is subtly match the way they’re seated, the position of their hands, how fast they’re talking, or their rate of breathing.
An Example: Natural Rapport in Action
Here’s a story about natural rapport from my early NLP training. I walked into the room after a break and discovered that the chairs had been rearranged. I looked at the room and saw pairs of chairs that had been placed back-to-back. I noticed that a lady I’d been seated near earlier was now sitting in one chair and a friend of mine was standing near her, and he invited me to sit in the other chair. As I began to sit in the open chair with my back to Ruth, she said, “We have to talk.”
Her tone was intentionally a bit nasty, knowing that it’s a rare man who could hear those words from a woman without getting a little chill down his spine. I felt a little uneasy and asked, “What’s this about?” She laughed and said she was just kidding me.
Then the instructor directed us to have a conversation with each other, without seeing each other, simply sitting back-to-back. He told us to have a discussion about anything and that we were supposed to agree with each other. That’s all we needed to do.
As the observer, Steve, who was the third person in our group, was told to just watch us and notice whatever he noticed. They didn’t give us any information about what to expect at all, so we began a conversation—what a nice day it was, how much we were enjoying the training, how interesting some of these discoveries were, and so forth.
This went on for a while and then the instructor stopped us and said, “Okay, now I would like you to have a conversation where you disagree.” So I decided to get even with Ruth and started immediately by saying, “Well, I think women have way too many rights in this society. It was a lot better when they were just stuck in the bedroom.”
Ruth was a ship’s captain in a fishing fleet, a very, very smart, tough woman. I knew this comment would send her up like a rocket. So she came back at me and we had a pretty lively conversation for a few minutes. Then the trainer interrupted us again.
He told us to turn our chairs around and face him. Next, instead of asking us anything, he asked the assigned observers to share what they noticed, and it was amazing. One after another, the observers said that when the partners were having an agreeable conversation, no matter how we had been sitting when the exercise began, our posture actually changed and mirrored the person whose back was to us. Steve reported that Ruth and I not only had our legs crossed the same way and our heads tilted in the same direction, but we were also gesturing in synchrony.
When you hear something two or three times, you may think it’s a coincidence, but we were hearing the same remarks a couple dozen time
s. All the observers were saying the same thing. It was really strange to me. I had no personal awareness of this, since I was sitting with my back to Ruth, and I wasn’t watching the other pairs.
Then the instructor asked what happened when the partners were engaged in a conversation where they disagreed. You’re probably not surprised at the punch line. We went completely out of sync with each other. In no case, and there were probably two dozen pairs of chairs doing this particular experiment, were the parties matching up. Even if they were in synchrony earlier, the mirroring disappeared. Body positions were more closed, and different from one another. Their gestures and facial expressions were out of tune with each other.
This experience was really instructive and I recommend that you notice how these indicators of harmony and discord are at work as you experience or observe conversations that are agreeable—and those that are more conflict-oriented. The process of being in or out of synchrony with someone is called “Mirroring” in NLP.
So, like the story I just shared, when we really want to be in rapport with somebody, we naturally mirror and match them. This is not complicated. You don’t have to remember too many things here. You have to have an intention to be in rapport with another person. How do you do that? A great way is to be very curious about their emotional state and “try on” whatever you imagine that to be.
As you get into synchrony with them in terms of their body language, you’ll notice there are space requirements. You don’t want to crowd people and you don’t want to be too far away, either. You’re probably aware that people from different cultures have different space requirements. I’m half Irish and half Assyrian. So the Assyrian part of me would want to get right up in someone’s face, where I can smell someone’s breath; that’s the Middle Eastern way. The Irish part of me would lean toward the traditional European way, which favors more distance.