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

Managing the inner team

Shortcut to “pulling yourself together”

can act as arbitrator to our own emotions.

A way to think about this conflict is to imagine that we do

have parts, each one with its own identity and characteristics.

Imagine that you have an inner team and each part is a player

in that team. If the parts are communicating with each other

and in harmony, then we have a state of coherence; you are in

rapport with yourself. If some of the parts are at odds with

each other and not communicating effectively, then you have

incongruence and the accompanying stress.

For example, have you ever felt that a part of you felt

obliged to do what you had been asked to do, but another part

felt that you were violating what is important to you? And then

again, have you ever felt that everything about you was saying

“yes” to a conclusion you had reached and a plan you had set

yourself and that the motivation to carry out that plan was

unstoppable? These are examples of what it is like to be

without coherence and what it can be like to have it.

These parts often communicate with us through physical

symptoms. For instance, you might get a sharp pain above

the eyes whenever you think about a particular decision. The

part that is giving you the pain might be the part that lacks

the courage to say “yes” to the decision you are considering.

By learning to communicate with these inner parts, we learn

what they want to tell us; we learn to listen to the wisdom of

our own body. By listening to these parts we are learning to

listen to our unconscious mind. And by learning how to

coach these parts to communicate and work together in

harmony, we increasingly create a state of coherence within

ourselves.

You must have heard the advice (often given somewhat

aggressively) to “pull yourself together.” The outcome of the

advice, if not the style with which it is given, is sound. To

resolve conflict we do need to pull ourselves together, as we

do to achieve a state of rapport and resourcefulness. The

question is how. By modeling those people who are skilled at

resolving their inner and consequently their outer conflict, we

find that they have a structure for pulling themselves together.

These are the steps to follow:

330 NLP AT WORK