98 Part II: Winning Friends and Influencing People
Manager: (Betty) ‘I can’t see your point of view about your appraisal’ (visual).
Employee: (Bill) ‘Well, can we talk about it further?’ (auditory).
Betty: ‘It’s perfectly clear to me – just black and white’ (visual).
Bill: ‘If you would discuss it, it may be more harmonious around
here’ (auditory).
Betty: ‘Just have a closer look. I’m sure you’ll get a better perspective’
(visual).
Bill: ‘You never listen, do you? End of conversation’ (auditory).
Betty, the manager, stays with visual language, and the employee, Bill, is
stuck in auditory mode: they’re disconnected and not making progress.
Here’s how a third person – maybe Bob from human resources or another
department – can help to shift the dispute:
- Bob sums up the situation in visual mode to Betty and auditory
mode to Bill. The conversation goes something like:
‘So, Betty, it looks like you have a clear picture of the situation (visual).
And Bill, you’ve still got some important questions to talk through (audi-
tory).’ (Heads nod in agreement.)
- Then Bob shifts into the third system (kinaesthetic), which is neu-
tral ground for both arguing parties.
‘You both want to get this moving and off the agenda. So how about we
all kick around the stumbling blocks for an hour in my office, reshape the
problem, and finally put it to bed.’
One of our colleagues, Helen, was a touch sceptical about the language dif-
ferences when she first became curious about NLP. Yet she experienced one
of those wonderful light-bulb moments when she first discovered her own
representational systems and decided to play with them at home before trying
them out in her business life. She noticed how her husband, Peter, sometimes
switched off and seemed uninterested when she wanted to talk about impor-
tant decisions at home. She wondered whether changing the words she used
would have any effect.
Helen says that: ‘I’d be ready to talk to him about pretty major issues such
as which schools the girls should go to or whether we should go ahead and
spend thousands of pounds on redesigning the kitchen, and all I’d get was
a cursory “Yup, fine” or “No, not now.” I realised that having a strong kin-
aesthetic preference, I often began a conversation with: “Peter, how do you
feel about XYZ?” I also noticed that he used plenty of visual language. So I
thought I’d give it a go and ask him: “Peter, how do you see XYZ?” The differ-
ence, when I began playing with it and slipping more visual words into the
conversation, was quite staggering. The change was so easy to make and, hey
presto, I got his attention. It was almost magical!’
