114 Leading with NLP
scratch every time. All numbers can be added and subtracted
in the same way. Drive one car and you can drive any car like
it. Use a key in one lock and you can open any similar door.
Generalizations are habits of thought. They make the world
safer, less ambiguous, more predictable. But generalizations
can be limiting when we learn the wrong lesson or try to
shape the future in the image of the past. We get stuck when
we always try to explain our present experience by our past
experience. You can tell you are generalizing when you hear
yourself say words like ‘all’, every’, ‘none’, ‘nobody’.
Beliefs are generalizations about the past projected onto
the present and future to shape it in the image of the past.
Generalizations and their associated beliefs work best with
inanimate objects – things that do not change much. People,
on the other hand, do change. One person is not like an-
other and the same person may change drastically as a result
of some powerful experience or simply as they grow older.
Generalizations need updating.
When we generalize from incomplete or unrepresentative
experience, we form mental models that make the wrong
predictions, but because beliefs act as self-fulfilling prophe-
cies it is hard to find out, because we are less open to counter
examples. A few years ago, I worked with a junior manager
in a paper company. He has two assistants but was loath to
delegate work, particularly anything important. As a conse-
quence, he was always overworked and his assistants were
underworked. He did not see how he had arranged it like
this and he complained bitterly. Several of his assistants had
quit because they did not feel challenged and valued in their
job. When they quit, it reinforced the manager’s view that
the assistants were poor quality, so he was quite right not to
delegate. Why did he not delegate? He used to, but a couple
of large projects he had turned over to his assistants had
turned out badly. He told me that he then decided that ‘del-
egation wasn’t working’, an interesting ambiguity in
meaning, and kept all the important work to himself. ‘If you
want something done well,’ he would say, ‘you have to do it
yourself.’ He was determined, as he put it, ‘not to make the