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

CAPABILITIES

Forward-thinking leaders

recognize and celebrate unique

talent

For companies the same principles apply to values as to

beliefs. They only function if they are indeed the values of the

employees and management of the organization, if the covert

and overt values are the same. An agreed and meaningful set

of values provides a code of practice for how to go about the

business. Having this leads to a culture of autonomy and

ownership, where employees take initiatives and decisions

and maintain a company style and set of principles. This way

of leading a business is vital to release the creativity and

innovation of all the people in the business and those who

deal with that business. Those companies who are what Peter

Senge calls “transparent,” meaning that whatever point of

contact you have with the company the same values shine

through, are those that attract customers, suppliers,

collaborators, venture capitalists, and contractors who want to

do business with them. Transparency communicates certainty,

to which most people are irresistibly attracted.

Taking time out to clarify purpose, mission, beliefs and

values, and subsequently a code of practice for all employees

has to be one of the best investments a startup company can

make. It is also a sound foundation for established companies

that have lost their way and want to inject new life into the

business.

Capabilities are increasingly becoming known as

competencies. They are resources you have available in the

form of skills or qualities, such as sensitivity, adaptability,

flexibility, outcome thinking.

Many organisations are paying increasing attention to

competency-based training and development. It is important to

recognize that this is only one of the levels of change. What we

can learn to do through modeling is to recognize unique

capabilities, not only those that happen to be on a company’s

appraisal list. No matter how comprehensive this list, it can only

serve to box people into predefined categories. The

opportunity for forward-thinking leaders is to recognize and

celebrate everyone’s unique talents. More than that, it is a

characteristic of leaders that they can and do recognize the

unique qualities of the people who work for and with them as

well as the people with whom they do business outside the

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