48 Leading with NLP
your leadership credentials
Leaders are realists, they are inspired by what they want, but
they also have a grasp of what is happening all around them.
Leaders who do not pace current reality become idealists,
fired by what should happen, but mostly ineffectual in mak-
ing the changes they want, because they do not accept the
present. Again the Chinese proverb comes to mind: ‘Gain
power by accepting reality.’
Do this now at the start of your leadership journey by
extending yourself the courtesy of pacing yourself. Find out
what is true for you now. This means building a leadership
cv listing all your present skills and resources.
We will do this using a descriptive framework known as
‘neurological levels’, developed by the NLP trainer Robert
Dilts from the work of Gregory Bateson.^2 There are four lev-
els: environment; behaviour and the associated skills; beliefs
and values; and finally identity.
The first level is the environment: the where and when of
our lives, the places and the people – your surroundings,
fixtures, fittings, office, technology and everyone you work
with. In a wider sense, the environment means the context,
the whole situation. The environment makes a context as
pieces make up a system – they form a unique figuration that
either helps you or limits you.
The second level is behaviour: what you do, all your
actions and the associated skills. Some skills we take for
granted – reading writing, thinking and talking, for exam-
ple. Once upon a time we put a great deal of effort into
learning these, but now they form the background to our
lives. We have many other skills that we do not appreciate
because we take them for granted. Some we learned for-
mally, for example mathematics, music, teaching, typing and
driving a car. This level also includes personal qualities,
for example optimism, determination, rapport, decision-
making, coaching and flexibility. These are all skills, ways of
using our minds that produce these results.