❏ Equally, talking about “they” (“They won't let me” or “They
don't tell me,” see Chapter 6) gives the same impression.
“All travel is, after all, a journey in time and in mind. Like many
people I believe that physical landscapes are a mirror of, or
perhaps a key into, our inner landscape, It wasn’t simply chance
or good luck that brought us to Chile. The silent messages from
the images on the hillside and those unearthed from the desert
had assured me of that.”
Brian Keenan, Between Extremes
Gregory Bateson pointed out that in the processes of learning,
change, and communication there is a natural hierarchy. The
rules for changing something on one level are different to
those for changing on a lower level. Changing something on a
lower level could, but would not necessarily, affect the higher
levels. However, changing something on the higher levels
would always change things on the lower levels.
For example, if I want to influence my own or someone
else’s behavior, I would need to make an intervention at least
at the level of capability. So if someone says that they can’t
do something (at the level of behavior), and I respond at the
level of behavior by saying something like “Do it this way,” I
may have fixed the issue but that is all—no learning or no
cure will have taken place. To effect lasting change I would
need to intervene at a higher level, which might be to show
the person how to do what it is they can’t do (at the level of
capability) or to challenge their beliefs about what they are
capable of.
Businesses so often make the mistake of attempting to
resolve an issue by taking action to deal directly with a deficit,
for example loss of a customer prompts costcutting exercises,
shortage of business triggers skills training, and so on. We need
to learn to shift levels so that we intervene at a different and
higher level than the one on which the issue presents itself.
Such is the nature of NLP.
There is a natural hierarchy of
changeALIGN YOURSELF: NEUROLOGICAL LEVELS OF CHANGE 221