NLP At Work : The Difference That Makes the Difference in Business

Generating commitment

come from as it had no markings by which it could have been

identified. There was no question of keeping the horse—it must

belong to someone.

My father decided to lead it home. He mounted the horse

and led it to the road and simply trusted the instinct of the horse

to lead itself towards its home. He only intervened when the

horse left the road to eat grass or to walk into a field. On these

occasions my father would firmly guide it back to the road.

In this way the horse was soon returned to its owner. The

owner was very surprised to see his horse once more and asked

my father, “How did you know the horse came from here and

belonged to us?”

My father replied, “I didn’t know, the horse knew! All I did

was to keep him on the road.”

This story illustrates not only the way Milton Erickson worked

with his clients, but also the way most NLP is conducted today.

By providing guidance only where needed, NLP respects the

fact that everyone has all the resources they need to solve

their problems. Given the space and encouragement to use

these resources, you are more likely to find solutions that are

congruent with who you are. These solutions are therefore

much more likely to be ones to which you are committed and

which therefore will work to produce the outcome you want.

When presented with a metaphor we make our own unique

interpretation of it in a way that makes sense to us. Most

significantly, it is our unconscious mind that makes sense of it

and so metaphors bypass conscious resistance and embrace

our unconscious. If you are faced with someone who will not

intellectually consider what you are saying, try telling them a

story, a parable for what you want them to learn.

A director of a company facing closure was confronted with the

unenviable task of announcing to one of the divisions that they

had to lose half of their workforce in the following two years.

This meant making 2,000 people redundant. Everyone was

apprehensive and tense. Rumors of the cutbacks had already

spread throughout the site and it seemed unlikely that the

employees would be willing to listen to what the director had to

say, let alone participate in the implementation of the cutbacks.

126 NLP AT WORK