Hear And Now
An innovative listening technique may be the key to improving communication.
Stuart Kirk used to rely on facts, logic and reason when he was
talking to someone. That's understandable--he's a trained
mathematician and statistician, and worked as a corporate
information technology director before founding Taconic Woods
Consulting, a one-person Yorktown Heights, New York, leadership and
communications training firm.
But Kirk says of his former ways, "I don't think it
worked very well at all." Now when he sits down to speak with
a client or business associate, he thinks less about facts and
logic and more about hypnotic language and using words or gestures
as anchors. This works a lot better, he says, especially when it
comes to creating a sympathetic mood with others. And, says Kirk,
"the ability to sit down with somebody and establish rapport
quickly and easily makes a tremendous difference to your presence
in a meeting."
Kirk's new techniques--and the arcane terminology used to
describe them--came from a self-improvement and communication
discipline called neuro-linguistic programming, or NLP. The concept
was developed 25 years ago to help psychotherapists. Since then,
it's been applied as an agent of personal change, most notably
by motivational speaker Tony Robbins. Now, however, NLP is
filtering into business, where it's presented as a solution to
many managerial problems.
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NLP's promise that it can help people improve their rapport
with others is especially attractive to salespeople, who are among
its biggest fans. But NLP also helps people better interview job
candidates, negotiate contracts, run meetings and motivate
employees, says John Emerick Jr., a former NLP trainer and author
of Be the Person You Want to Be: Harness the Power of
Neuro-Linguistic Programming to Reach Your Potential
(Prima).
Companies such as Reuters, American Express and Sony have
trained salespeople, customer service representatives and others in
NLP, according to Rachel Hott, co-director of the NLP Center of New
York in New York City. "That's one of the great things
about NLP," she says. "It's very easy to apply in [a
business environment]."
Mark Henricks is an Austin, Texas, writer specializing in
business topics.
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