200 Part III: Opening the Toolkit
Instead of being tough on yourself when you recognise a less-effective strat-
egy, set yourself what we call a ‘well-formed outcome’ for an area of your life
in which you want to raise your game. Chapter 4 shows how you can easily
create such an outcome when you break the task down into smaller steps. If
you want to learn something especially fast, find someone who already does it
and hang out with them to discover their strategy (as we describe in the ear-
lier section, ‘The Eyes Have It: Recognising Another’s Strategy’.
Acquiring new capabilities
Chapter 11 explains the NLP Logical Levels Model, which enables you to
examine the structure of your experience in the following different ways:
✓ Identity
✓ Values and beliefs
✓ Capabilities and skills
✓ Behaviour
✓ Environment
Your strategies relate to the capabilities and skills level, but may also involve
making changes at the other levels too. Imagine that you want to improve
your strategies by acquiring new skills: in the example of the higher-earning
colleague mentioned in the preceding section, you can discover how they
built and maintain a rapport with the boss. They may have a very good strat-
egy for keeping their boss apprised of progress on their projects, which you
can take on board by talking to the boss of your progress each week and
gaining stronger visibility.
Kay always worked in an office where she felt safe and was confident of her
abilities. When she decided to set up in business for herself, she discov-
ered that she had to develop a whole raft of new behaviours: she had to
find out how to ‘network’ in order to spread the word of her new venture.
Unfortunately, she went to networking meetings and came away without
having achieved anything concrete. She was too vague about her objectives
and thought only that she was going to meet new people who may prove
useful in her business.
Kay realised that she needed to develop new strategies in order to connect
effectively with new people. She achieved this objective by observing her
friend Lindsay, who was very successful at introducing herself and making
connections with new people. Kay started to adopt Lindsay’s strategies
(outlines of which are listed below, along with how Kay used each step) and
began to make successful, new contacts.
