David was a renowned chatterer in his department. This was OK
to a point, but in recent months he had been beginning to disrupt
his colleagues’ concentration and work. His manager had spoken
to him on a number of occasions about the need to let others get
on with their work, but this had had little or no effect. As a
desperate measure the manager had now instructed existing and
new employees to the department not to speak to David during
peak work times. Not to be deterred, David now often left the
department to chat to people from other departments who met at
the coffee machine. Sometimes he went to reception where he
chatted with the receptionists. Managers from other departments
started to complain. David’s manager called him into her office
on each occasion and spent several hours talking and seeking to
coach David on the effect of his behavior.The metamessage that the manager was potentially giving to
David was, “Each time you disrupt others’ work I will spend
time with you—in fact more time than I spend with anyone
else in the department.” Without realizing it, the manager was
playing right into David’s hands (although he was not
consciously aware of this) by giving him even more talk time
than he was managing to get for himself.I hope that you have experienced the company of someone
who believed in you totally, someone who believed that no
matter what you did you would always win through OK. It
would not have mattered what that person said to you or how
they said it, because through it all their belief would
communicate itself to you in the form of the metamessage,
“You have the ability to succeed in whatever you do.” When I
worked in ICL I had a manager that believed in me in this way.
He gave me projects that I did not know how to do when I
started them, but I learned the skills and the belief in myself
as I worked my way through them.
Conversely, you may have experienced the company of
someone who did not believe in you, someone who believed
that you either did things for ulterior motives or were just
lucky when you did succeed, and who seemed always to be
waiting for your next mistake. Even if those people did praise
or encourage you, if they did not believe in you and what you148 NLP AT WORK