Managing through Human Patterns and Value Systems

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Neuro-Linguistic Programming is an ocean of soft skills and to experience its potential one has to explore its depths. The power of NLP lies in its application. It can be very effectively put to use in all areas of human excellence and in programming for success.

We all know success in life is an outcome of building effective relationships. To achieve this success we need to poses skills for working through the human patterns effectively. NLP provides us with skills for understanding the patterns of people and working through them. It thus provides us effective methods to work with people around us.

 Understanding the patterning of people goes a long way in management and our day to day personal interactions with people. In business operations understanding the patterns of employees through NLP helps in building rapport within the teams and also in defining the right job roles. This ultimately results in increased productivity through an environment of trust and understanding. A system implemented to study the beliefs and values of employees can provide the Human Resource function, an altogether different approach for defining the right roles for their employees. Sales and customer care services departments can actually bring about a radical change in the approach of the employees towards their customers. Dealing with customers by understanding their value systems and patterns makes the entire transaction absolutely satisfying. You could actually hire people with values in line with the requirement of the job. They could then be provided the requisite skills for understanding the patterns of the customers and build a great rapport by ‘talking their language.’ We are all aware of the fact that each satisfied customer is a major contributor to the organization’s growth.

Congruence in beliefs and values is the key to achieve excellence. We can actually evaluate the beliefs and values that one holds. A few changes can then be made to bring about a complete difference in the behavior patterns, which would be in line with the aspirations of the individuals. This also goes a long way in impacting a personality and our performance parameters. For instance, if ‘success’ and ‘rejection’ are priority pleasure and pain values of an achiever it would surely result in a disaster. To succeed one has to go through tough rejections. Thus rejection should not be a priority pain value. Organizations could actually do a study of the value systems of the employees and check for congruence viz. the values of the organization and effect change if required. This alignment of values is the best solution for organizations wanting to grow. Very often motivational training programmes do not have a long-term impact. It is because only the behavior changes and the values and beliefs remain the way they were. This results in an incongruent approach in employees.

Effective man-management also includes understanding the patterns of the way people think. This results in a strong rapport. Most of the time, it happens unconsciously. The essence of rapport lies in the presupposition of Neuro-Linguistic Programming that each person is unique. People are unique in the way they process thoughts. Thinking patterns are the way in which people access internal resources, which are conditioned or programmed over the years. However, once these patterns are known, we can adapt them for some time and run them to achieve the desired outcome. NLP provides us the skills to decipher these patterns.

Thinking patterns essentially operate through our five senses, i.e., visual, auditory, feeling, smell, and taste. This can be easily understood by saying the word ‘coffee.’ For some people this word would generate a picture of a cup of steaming hot coffee, they essentially belong to the visual category. For a certain category of people, the taste or smell of coffee gets activated thus their olfactory or the gustatory sense is predominant. For the rest, it could either generate the sound of cups and saucer or sound of coffee being poured in a cup or for the others a refreshing feeling or any other sensation that the coffee could give. They belong to auditory and kinesthetic or the feeling type respectively. Interestingly the linguistic patterns, which people use, are also in line with the thinking patterns. Let’s look at an example of an expression sited as under:

• This idea looks good
• This idea sounds good
• This idea feels good

All our experiences are stored in the form of our senses. The resulting language which people use to describe them, match with the sense that is predominant within the person. This explains the fact why people use different words in languages. Interestingly, people use the same type of word patterns while interpreting their experience in different languages.

Thinking patterns and the values form the basis of all relationships. A healthy respect for each other’s values and beliefs are the foundations of great relationships. Only skills do not result in long-term relationships. The use of skills alone is a highly manipulative process. Love and compassion nurture growth in relationships. There is no point in trying to manipulate through skills only. Understanding people is complex and is made simple through Neuro-Linguistic Programming. When you add love and compassion to these skills, it becomes the most effective way to be successful in life.