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

We need to be an “empty

vessel”

There is only learning

This totally defeats the objective of modeling, which, in the

first instance, is to elicit the structure of the subject’s

experience. It is not to change that structure or to advise or

coach the subject to change, just to unpack the structure of

how they do what they do. But to do this we have to be able

to accept (receive) unconditionally what the other person

does. And to determine if what we have elicited fits with the

subject’s experience of how they do what they do, we need to

be able to give feedback completely nonjudgmentally.

That might sound straightforward, but doing so requires

immense skill. It requires that we be totally objective in how

we do this—that we accept what others do without influencing

it with our own thoughts about what is right and wrong. We

need to be an “empty vessel” in which we can learn what is

new to us. We need to be able to recognize and, more than

that, accept difference.

Our beliefs influence our capacity for feedback. A belief that is

fundamental to our ability to give and receive feedback

constructively is there is no failure only feedback, or to put it in

other words,there is only learning. If you truly believe this, the

ability to learn from feedback will be second nature to you. It

will be fundamental to your existence as a learner in this

world.

There are other beliefs that support our ability to give and

receive feedback. The first is that everyone’s perception is their

truth. We only have perception and each person’s perception

is unique to them. It may be similar to that of other people; it

may be significantly different. That does not make it right or

wrong, it just makes it true for them. By accepting a perception

from someone else we are accepting that part of ourselves as

they experience it. We are also contributing to the self-esteem

of the giver of the feedback in acknowledging their map of the

world. If we do not accept their feedback, we do not accept

that part of who they are and therefore we are not fully

accepting them as a person.

338 NLP AT WORK

Beliefs that support feedback