Learning NLP for the Workplace
Why should you learn NLP? Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) has become a mainstay since its inception in the 1970s. A buzzword in the arena of alternative therapy it’s a discipline that has a wealth of evidence and merit supporting its practice.
Why has it become so popular and what can it do for you?
Personally and professionally it can help reshape your thought processes, behavioural patterns, and increase the likelihood of desired outcomes. It can also be successful in treating phobias and anxiety disorders so has become widespread in its applications.
What is NLP?
Developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder NLP was created from the belief that thought patterns and behaviours of individuals who are successful could be appropriated and self-taught by those who were less so.
Based on perception, communication, and behavioural techniques NLP allows people to more easily change their thoughts and subsequent actions.
As we acknowledge at Tricres, “With great power comes great responsibility”. NLP is indeed a powerful tool. With the right intent, it’s a diverse application that can enhance and positively affect life in all aspects.
Process and React
NLP inherently processes all experiences as positive. So that even a perceived failure has merit and provides useful guidance for future actions. When something unexpected happens there are lessons to be learned that will influence behaviours and thoughts going forward. Every experience is technically beneficial.
It’s how we react to the experiences in life that create meaningful manifestations. This psychological approach helps followers of this discipline learn and grow. It creates a positive and more proactive attitude to those bumps in the road of life.
Today NLP is used in a wide array of fields. These include therapy, counselling, business, sports, the military, education, and even sectors like medicine and law.
How does NLP work?
It begins with the assumption that we all have a mental mindset or ‘map’ of our reality. By using our senses we process information allowing the body and mind to influence each other. NLP believes that we all have a primary representational system, that is how we most often use one sense more than others to display or represent our experiences.
One of the fundamentals is if we can understand how someone performs a task successfully it can be replicated by others following the same process. Our thoughts affect our behaviours. So if we can influence our behaviours by changing our thought patterns and eradicate negative self talk, looking at the things we can control it can add up to powerful changes in what we do and how we act.
Change the Way You Think
By changing the way you think, how you focus, and how you feel you can ultimately change your life. Energy goes towards where you are focussing whether it’s personally or professionally related.
Think about that when you ask yourself if you’re just a recipient of bad luck, bad timing, and being stuck in a rut. It takes action to make change. NLP will help modify behaviours that can empower instead of relentlessly repeating unproductive patterns that haven’t gotten you anywhere.
NLP is action-oriented making it highly compatible in a coaching setting. So it stands to reason that if you are looking to make changes in life, professionally or personally, choosing to make active changes and reprogramming your thoughts is going to help you overcome limiting beliefs.
How can learning NLP help in business?
If improved business communication, relationship-building, creativity and future planning are anything to go by, then NLP can help enormously.
Enhancing personal performance in many fields that are business related, NLP offers a solid basis for successful influence and negotiation. It can also improve rapport-building, goal setting, and remove those inhibitions that stop us from getting out of our comfort zones.
In a business context, NLP can improve staff communication and create better management. Better management improves morale and productivity!
It can help alleviate anxiety with public speaking which will aid training and presentations in various contexts.
As an instruction manual for the mind, NLP will aid advanced communication. This is beneficial for our self-talk and with others.
Some core ways NLP can be incorporated into business include:
HELPING YOU USE THE SAME LANGUAGE AS YOUR CLIENT
By understanding your client’s preferred representational system you can better mirror and communicate back in a way that better resonates with them. It is far more effective for helping them understand that you get them and their needs too. By establishing this fundamental building block you can forge a healthy and probably more trustworthy relationship, a valuable commodity in business.
USING A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE
By being an objective observer of ourselves we can also overcome fears and anxieties that crop up naturally in certain situations. Things like public speaking or a pitch. Getting out of your own head can calm nerves and give you a better eye for seeing things as they really are and therefore more focussed.
SWITCHING OUT YOUR LIMITING BELIEFS
Identifying your limiting beliefs and learning how to overcome them is perhaps the most important use of NLP. Thoughts and beliefs that hold you back and are not constructive, unsupportive and all around negative will continue to do so until you change up your lexicon and start visualising positive or desired outcomes.
Beyond benefiting your business, NLP will improve other relationships in your life, and improve mental health. It can accelerate your own levels of satisfaction and happiness when you begin to understand the impact of life-enhancing communication skills.
Have a look at our comprehensive brochure about our upcoming 7-Day NLP course running from April 27 – May 3, 2022 that will teach you these skills from a business bias.
For more information feel free to contact us at hello@tricres.com if you have further questions after investigating our brochure!
