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

Perception

the press survive? What stories would they print? Can you

imagine how different the headlines would be?

How often are you party to the following kinds of

situations?

Jim was explaining how he saw his future and the sort of

obstacles he wanted to overcome. Jane listened to him for a

while and then said, “You know, Jim, what you really ought to

do is to leave this job and move into sales, you’d be much more

suited to that.”

“But that isn’t really what I want to do, Jane.”

“You may not think it is,” replied Jane, “but believe me I

know it’s the right move for you.”

Jim sat back and folded his arms. He disagreed.

Diane could not understand why staff were complaining about

the new appraisal scheme. She was a member of the human

resource development team who were instrumental in its

design. The design involved managers rating their team

members on a scale of I to 5, 1 being “subject to disciplinary

action” and 5 meaning, more or less, “the sun shines out of

every orifice.” The staff were very unhappy about the form,

particularly the rating system. Diane found all these complaints

very frustrating and considered the staff to be “difficult.”

Both of these illustrate what can happen when someone

doesn't presuppose “each person is unique” to be true and

consequently doesn’t value others’ “maps of the world.” This

means we all have our unique perception of the world, the way

things are, the way people behave, our own experience. And

that perception is only a view of those things, an

interpretation. It's not an exact representation of reality. Just

like a map is only a representation of a territory, highlighting

some features, ignoring others, so your personal experience

leads you to highlight some features and ignore others.

Accepting this presupposition means that you respect

difference.

“Difference is the difference that makes the difference.”

Gregory Bateson

242 NLP AT WORK