by Tom Hoobyar
This chapter is about connecting the dots—building on what you’ve learned about yourself and others—to help you further enhance communication and connections.
Chronicle: High Points of the Journey So Far
We’ve covered a lot of ground together so let’s quickly open our mental files so we can easily connect previous concepts with new ones. Because you’re already familiar with the content, the following refreshers appear as suggestions.
• Work from the inside out. First, notice what’s happening with you. Use your NLP tools, especially sub-modalities, to change your emotional reactions and improve your personal experience.
• When you’re comfortable and congruent, consider what’s happening with others around you. Set your intent to focus on being interested, not interesting.
• To signal that you are safe, use your body language and slightly extended eye contact to show that you’re open and interested.
• To understand what someone really means and how it is in their world, use the Meta Model to fill in gaps left by linguistic shorthand.
• Pay particular attention to other people’s nonverbal communications and subtly mirror one or two of these behaviors by matching their posture, gestures, rate of speech, or tone of voice.
• Notice people’s language, because it will reveal their preferred meta-programs and representational channel, their relationship to time, and their beliefs—all of which give you insight into their worlds.
• When you hear a belief from someone, explore the related meta-outcomes and consider how that belief may be empowering or limiting that person.
Because you’ve been practicing these behaviors, you’ve learned even more about yourself—and others. This chapter will help you take your skills to the next level and support you in making connections with others and being understood.
It may surprise you to learn that getting people to “buy in”—to move them from resisting—to listening and considering what you say actually doesn’t depend so much on what you tell them. It’s more about what you get them to tell you—and what goes on in their brains during that process.
A book called Just Listen beautifully illustrates this phenomena. The author, Mark Goulston, is a psychiatrist who teaches hostage negotiation to many different government agencies. He’s used to dealing with people under tremendous stress. He says that the most important part of communicating with somebody else is the quality of your listening skills—not what you say.
So, the way you and your message are received isn’t really influenced so much by your haircut, what you wear, or the firmness of your handshake. It’s based on how the other person feels when they’re with you. It’s based on how safe, interesting, and felt they feel—and how you helped them feel that way. Sound familiar?
Physical Connection:
How Touch Enhances Connections and Impact
Touch is one way you can influence a person’s experience of being with you and their recollection of that connection. Because we talked about the power of touch in earlier chapters, you may recall that waitresses, petition signature collectors, and basketball teams that use appropriate touch enjoy improved results. Touch will, without question, enhance your ability to warm up even casual connections.
For example, research has shown that babies don’t thrive if they’re not touched and cuddled when they’re infants; their brains will not develop well and they won’t gain the weight that they need to. In fact, the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine has carried out more than one hundred studies and found evidence of the significant effects of touch—including faster growth of premature babies, reduced pain, decreased autoimmune disease symptoms, lowered glucose levels in children with diabetes, and improved immune systems in people with cancer. All these benefits—just from a nurse’s touch!
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital is one of a number of leading health centers in the United States that now use healing touch therapy. Their director said, “Research has demonstrated that patients who receive healing touch experience accelerated wound healing, relaxation, pain relief, and general comfort.”
In addition to these details about research and touch, I’d like to share a personal example of how touch left an impression on me. You may recall that in my first meeting with my wife, she repeatedly touched my arm at the café and said, “Tom, it was just the funniest thing.” All these years later, I can still feel that spot on my arm.
When I was thinking about that gift, I realized that my father was like my wife in the way he used touch. He was an immigrant from Assyria, who moved to the States to enjoy greater safety and religious freedom. He was a big strong farm boy, who went to UCLA and played football; later he became a preacher, and ultimately, because he was a truly talented tenor, he became a professional singer.
I grew up in the Los Angeles area right after World War II and noticed that my dad was always throwing his arm around people and hugging them. At that time, men here didn’t really do that. I remember noticing that his friends and associates seemed kind of uncomfortable when my dad would embrace them, so I asked my mom about it and she explained, “American men aren’t used to being as demonstrative as your father is.”
But here’s the thing. Everybody loved my dad, everybody. They just lit up when he came in. Because he gave people his full attention, he had an ability to make each one feel very special. In addition to being brilliant and talented, he was the kindest man I ever met. He brought heart to everything he did—and one of the ways he showed his heart was to touch people. People around him felt the way I feel when I’m around my wife.
So, what’s this have to do with you and why should you care?
Here’s my experience. I love my dad and I adore my wife, but I don’t think that they’re really more magical than the rest of us. Well, maybe a little bit because they had this instinct for touching people and making kinesthetic contact. But it’s touch itself that’s really magical.
Since I’ve adopted my wife’s habit of touching others, I’ve substantially warmed up my relationships in my family and among casual acquaintances. I will pat somebody on the shoulder or touch their arm when I’m saying something—particularly when greeting them, complimenting them, or saying good-bye. It appears to be more than acceptable; it seems to deepen our connection.
This new habit of touching has also made me feel more at home with other people. I feel more relaxed because I’ve had contact with them. I feel like we’re more in the groove with each other. I end up joking with people more than I used to, even when I’m waiting in line with complete strangers. Because of touch, I end up making more human-level contacts, instead of connections that are limited to my role in a particular situation.
So, if you haven’t experimented with touch already, make a commitment to do it in your next two or three interactions. You can do it quietly, a little bit at a time, so nobody needs to notice anything, until you’re comfortable reaching out to others even more. Try to increase the number of times that you touch the people around you. It can be as demonstrative and frequent as the ways my wife or my dad used touch, or it can be just a quick friendly pat, but give it a try.
As you know, NLP calls these touches anchors. Anchors, when you do it this way, just as it happened with my wife and me, are kind of little reminders that you were there. Our skin is chock full of nerves, so touching and being touched definitely brings us closer to each other. Again, these kinds of anchors are completely subliminal and completely unconscious, so using the power of touch will just leave people with the impression that you’re warmer or more relaxed or more outgoing. Not bad, right?
Oxygen Mask First: How Managing Your
Inner State Keeps the Focus on Others
It’s impossible to overstate the importance of paying attention to and managing your inner state. It’s like putting your own oxygen mask on first, right?
I confess, doing this didn’t come easily to me. As I told you, I’m a big
guy, I move kind of fast, and I’ve got a deep voice, so these qualities were an asset when I was in the military. And I had developed a habit of being a bit blustery and domineering. Then, while studying NLP, I became aware of the way I came across to people and I wanted to change that.
So one of the things that I did during the NLP workshops was to learn how I could enter a room and not be noticed. I wanted not to be distracting in any way—so I wanted to enter the room without people noticing my arrival.
I practiced on a class of fifty NLP students that I was coaching. Any time I’d been out of the room, I’d pause—and before I entered the classroom, I would consciously check on and attend to my inner state. I’d put my virtual oxygen mask on. I would purposely calm myself down, center myself—then open the door and slip in. I graded myself by how many heads turned. And when I was able to do this so that the only person who looked up was the one nearest the door, I figured I’d gotten this part mastered. I could slip in like an expert high diver who enters the water with only the slightest ripple.
For you, managing your inner state might mean bringing your energy up, rather than quieting it down. If, for example, you tend to be a tentative or shy person, you might want to amp up your energy. The way to do that, of course, is to think about the other person. Imagine them feeling a lot like you do. After all, few of us get enough attention. Each of us is out there pretty much on our own, playing and fulfilling our different roles.
Nobody really expects that we’re going to pay attention to them. So before you meet somebody, imagine in your mind, “I’m going to meet somebody wonderful. I don’t know anything about them and this is going to be a game. I’m going to enjoy learning as much as possible about them without it feeling like they’ve just been in the third-degree hot seat.”
Your goal and your intention in meeting somebody are really what drive the experience. After all, if you know what you want from the meeting and how you want that process to feel, you have a clear and worthwhile focus. In this case, getting to know the other person is your goal. This really frees you from worrying if you have something in your teeth, if your fly is zipped, or if you’re making a good first impression. Believe me, if you’re genuinely interested in the other person and it shows, you will have their attention. They will enjoy being around you.
So once you’re under control, take care to avoid a common pitfall of persuading. When people try to persuade other people—when they get into selling, urging, encouraging, and arguing—all of those behaviors make the other person feel pushed. What’s lacking from most social interactions where a person feels pressured is the opportunity to exhale, to just relax and ease into being with people.
Think of the people whom you enjoy being around. Are they pushy? Needy? Narcissistic? Or are they calm, relaxed, centered in themselves, and genuinely interested in you? Just think about that. Your intent is to help the other person feel safe, relaxed, and at home with you. So, instead of accelerating the energy, you want to step back a little to give them some psychological air, and if you feel like you’re picking up too much speed, “zoom out” and briefly visit third position to assess how the interaction is going.
Your ability to use a person’s name in conversation, to use extended eye contact and touch, and to match their nonverbals and their language are charmers. Once the other person feels safe and felt, you can show more interest in them in terms of asking them questions about what they do, what they like, what would it be like if they could do, have, or be something different, and what that will do for them; then listen and just let the other person run with it. As they do, they’ll give you more information about themselves—and you can ask more follow-up questions.
People who are busy with their stories and their talk about “me, me, me” are the ones who give the impression of being insecure. They often turn others off because they don’t seem to be interested in anyone but themselves. People who try to be interesting (and I was guilty of this in the past) are probably insecure. People who are self-assured are interested. That’s the big difference. To be genuinely interested in someone else allows you to feel self-assured. It gives you information and it creates the impression that you are self-assured, open, and safe.
So, when you’re talking with people, in addition to the questions you learned in Chapter 5, you want to ask questions that get at how they feel or think about something, as well as what they’ve done in the past or might like to have happen in the future. As they answer, they begin to feel known by you. And as they become known by you, they’ll be more comfortable and will share even more of themselves with you. Cool, right?
Rules of the Road:
Quick Tips to Navigate Uncharted Territory
Before we explore challenging and sometimes difficult situations, where persuading may feel more like negotiating, here are a few simple rules to keep in mind.
1. Don’t interrupt. When somebody starts talking, let them go. Be mindful to keep the flow going and manage any desire to think “out loud.”
2. Don’t ever contradict. If they say something that you feel you ethically have to take issue with, a better way of doing this is to agree with their viewpoint—say, “That’s an interesting viewpoint. I understand that, and I wonder if this would also be possible, or if this has any interest or validity for you.” (Since I’ve been able to adopt the attitude that whatever anyone says is interesting and fits in with their world, I find I no longer feel compelled to contradict or correct them.)
A long time ago, I read about something Thomas Jefferson said he learned from Benjamin Franklin: “Never take issue with another man. If you prove him wrong, you’ve made an enemy for life, and if he proves you wrong he’ll think you a fool.” Thomas Jefferson said that Ben Franklin was the best-loved man in the colonies because he was the least argumentative. Interesting, isn’t it? And it’s kind of a little nod to the principles of NLP.
3. Avoid using the words but, why, and phrases starting with you. Replacing the word but with and usually encourages discussion. Here’s the reason: when you use the word but in a sentence, its job is to negate everything that went before that. You can say, “I understand where you’re coming from, but I feel differently.” As soon as you say the word but, it means everything that went before that is a lie; it negates a whole part of your statement. People know this and still many people use it—letting it negatively impact their rapport and their message.
Because why is also a word that often makes people feel challenged or even attacked, it can undermine the feelings of safety and comfort that you’ve worked so hard to create. Think about it. “Why do you do that? Why did you wear that? Why do you think that?” Why doesn’t support feelings of rapport. If you must use it, if there’s no other way to ask about something specific, then soften it by saying, “I wonder why that’s so. What do you think?” Much better words to use are who, what, when, where, and how.
Imagine that someone (even you?) has an issue that sounds like this: “Why does this keep happening to me?” or “Why do I always get the short end of the stick?” To answer this question, the unconscious mind has to agree that the person always gets the short end of the stick; so it will produce a reason, even if it’s not true. “Why” means there’s no dispute, so the mind will make up a reason, which further cements the feeling or belief.
Although I discovered that “why” questions were good to ask when I was doing product development—“Why does this thing keep blowing up?”—I discovered that it’s definitely not useful in building relationships. So I trained myself to substitute “How come?” for “Why?” and I recommend that you play with this or find an alternative that works for you.
Starting a sentence with the word you is less black-and-white in its effect. You can use you in conversation easily. “You have a great tan. I’ll bet you had a great time on vacation.” The problem is when you start with the word you, it can sound accusatory. “You always do this. You did that.” Unless it’s a compliment, there are very fe
w sentences beginning with the word you that are going to put people at ease.
4. Get the other person’s name and repeat it so you can remember it; then use it during your conversation.
5. Parrot the other person. All you need to do when they say something is repeat the last two or three words as a question. For instance, if somebody says, “I’m really tired today,” all you have to say is “Tired?” and that will invite them to go on and explain more about what made them so tired. Were they out late? Did they run a marathon? Are they having trouble sleeping? Parroting invites them to give you more of a glimpse into their world.
You might imagine that simply repeating someone’s words will make the other person feel mimicked. Yet, if you do repeat their words back to them, without any interpretation, they’ll really feel heard. You can also do this in a conversational way. If, for example, I said to someone, “How’s your day going?” and they said, “Oh, don’t ask,” then I would say, “Okay, now I’ve got to ask. How’s your day been? What made you say that?”
6. Dig deeper. If you’re pretty comfortable with the person, you can even just say, “Because?” or “And that was because?” and see what they tell you. These are nice ways of saying “why?” and it leads them to give you more of a story. What you want is to avoid questions that have a yes-or-no answer.
7. Open the door to possibility. If somebody says, “Oh, I couldn’t do that,” say “Oh, I know it’s too hard, it’s almost unthinkable, but I’m wondering, what would it be like if you could?” The underlying sense of that phrase is “I agree with you. I’m not disagreeing with you. I agree with you that you can’t, but I’m curious. I wonder what would it be like if you could.”