154 Leading with NLP
the same mind-set home to his family. He had to win argu-
ments and if he did not get his own way then he would sulk.
Arguments were there to win or lose, not to discover more.
His children had to excel at school and sports, and if they did
not, he would lecture them on how important it was to win, to
come first. ‘There is only one place worth having,’ he would
say, ‘and that’s first. If you’re not first, you’re nowhere.’
When we looked at his way of representing his work, he
either had a mental picture of himself first, close, bright,
high up and smiling (and felt good about it), or nowhere,
lost in the dark. That picture made him feel really bad, so he
worked hard to keep it at bay.
If you imagine life like this then it makes sense to try des-
perately to win at all costs, so we worked together initially on
creating a space between these two representations, so there
were some other ways to be besides ‘up front and happy’ or
‘lost in the dark’. John also began to question his belief that
life was a zero sum game, like international money markets.
Our beliefs set the rules of the games we play and we can
change the game by changing our beliefs. Generative learn-
ing takes us out of the trap of playing the same game,
endlessly circling the Monopoly board, bankrupt.
Games without end have rules, the most important being
that you have to play under existing rules. Whenever you
hear these phrases become suspicious:
‘Only certain people can participate.’
‘There have to be winners and losers.’
‘Time is running out – we must have a result.’
‘The rules cannot be changed.’
The opposite of a game without end is a meta game. Metais a
Greek word meaning ‘above’ or ‘beyond’. Meta games have
rules for changing the rules and you can make every game
into a meta game if you question your assumptions. When-
ever you meet a situation where what you are doing is
inadequate, change the existing rules or formulate new
ones. Leaders do this. It may mean questioning rules at work