Leading with NLP

Change and Challenge 173

antipathy towards each other affects your team and your de-
partment, and maybe the whole business. This fourth
position is a more objective view, uncoloured by personal
feelings, and this can be valuable.
You can never come to a completelyobjective view, however,
because you are always part of some system and you cannot
take a view outside yourself, for there would be no self to
take the view. You can be ‘objective’ only by defining the sys-
tem you are outside.
Finally there is a fifth perspective: one that goes through
time. The first four perspectives make up a snapshot of one
moment in time. To gain the best understanding you want to
see how they change over time, track the ramifications into the
future and also perhaps understand how the situation built up
in the first place by tracing the threads back into the past.
You cannot get the last two perspectives without the first
three. You must know your own mind and you must know
the other person’s position and the relationships between
them, before you can see them in context and through time.
Take as many perspectives as you need to understand a sit-
uation. When analysing a business problem, look at the
perspectives of different stakeholders – customers, senior
management, middle managers, strategic partners, suppliers
and competitors. Exactly which perspectives you take will
depend on the problem you are considering.

First

position

Second

position

Third

position

Fourth

position

Fifth

position