What is a strategy? Why elicit a strategy in NLP?

The NLP or Neuro Linguistic Programming definition of a strategy is “a specific syntax of internal and external human experience that consistently produces a specific outcome”. In easy to understand terms, a strategy is the steps that you take to produce certain behaviour.

In life, at work or in your own business you have a strategy for everything. You have a strategy for learning new material at work, you have a strategy for playing football on the weekend, you have a strategy for being happy, and you have a strategy for anything such as wealth, relaxation, motivation, marketing, procrastination, eating, or buying. In fact everything you do each and every day of your life has a strategy.

In NLP a strategy is elicited so that it can be used to improve outcomes/behaviour and in other cases a strategy can be modified to get rid of behaviour you do not want or serve you in some way. When eliciting a strategy various questions are asked to determine internal and external modalities such as visual, auditory, kinesthetic, or auditory digital.

As an example, you may want to determine someone’s buying strategy. In asking questions you will determine initially whether they see something (visual), hear something (auditory), feeling something (kinesthetic) or saying something to themselves (auditory digital). A buying strategy may result in the following modalities: a person is purchasing a new pair of running shoes and initially they see the shoes in the store window (visual), then they picture them on their feet (visual) and that picture gives them a good feeling (kinesthetic). In further questioning it is elicited that they know the shoes were the right ones and the price was right (auditory digital). The modalities of this buying strategy are visual, visual, kinesthetic and auditory digital. If this strategy was resulting in impulse buying then additional steps could be placed into the strategy to prevent the unwanted behaviour of impulse purchasing.

In summary a strategy are the steps you take to produce certain behaviour or achieve specific outcomes. In NLP a strategy is only changed when the existing strategy is not producing the most effective behaviour. Are there any strategies you would like to change? 

NLP and the Hierarchy of Ideas

In any communication, language (words) consists of 7%, tonality being 38% and 55% related to your physiology. Generally, the language you use is unconscious as you don’t think about the words that are coming out of your mouth. 

It is important that you learn to use language in such a way that it is in your conscious awareness and produces the kind of response that you really want. One way of using language more effectively to produce desired results is to apply the hierarchy of ideas. The hierarchy of ideas is all about moving from the abstract to the specific in language.

Abstract or vague language is all about getting the big picture of an idea or situation. It is like getting the vision. In NLP, the use of such language is known as “chunking up” and questions asked include: “what is this an example of…?”, “for what purpose…?” or “what is your intention…?’. Chunking up or abstract language is useful for negotiation as negotiation is essentially the process of gaining agreement and agreement is only possible by being abstract. By using vague language with someone you can identify motivating or deep needs of that person. 

Specific or detailed language is known as “chunking down” or getting to the details or distinction of a situation. Common questions asked to chunk down include: “what are examples of this…?”, or “what specifically…?” For example, if you were feeling overwhelmed in a certain situation, by asking yourself “what specifically am I overwhelmed about…?” will help you to find a solution to the source of being overwhelmed.

By using the hierarchy of ideas either chunking up (vague or abstract) or chunking down (specific) will assist you to use language that will produce the desired results or outcomes you want to achieve. By understanding the use of abstract to specific language will enable you to use these to match/mirror others and communicate more effectively in any given situation. 

Do you have behavioural flexibility?

Behavioural flexibility is the ability to be able to change your behaviour if you are not achieving the intended result or outcome. As an example, if you are communicating with a colleague about a work matter and if they look puzzled then for some reason what you are communicating is not being understood. So what should be done? You need to change your behaviour so that the other person can understand what you are saying or talking about.

Behavioural flexibility requires you to have the ability to notice whether your communication is understand through sensory acuity. Sensory acuity is about noticing minute changes that occurs in the other person’s physiology and that those changes have meaning. Minute changes occur in someone’s skin colour, skin tonus, breathing rate and location, lower lip size and eyes being focused/defocused or pupil dilated to undilated.  Other important changes include the other person’s voice tonality such as tone, tempo timbre or volume.

By having sensory acuity enables you to be a more effective communicator. By noticing changes you can then be flexible in your behaviour to produce better results.

To illustrate behavioural flexibility the following situation occurred at Albany Airport in July of this year : 

A business person arrived at Albany airport from Perth. After waiting at the carousel for over 15 minutes and most of the people had left the terminal he realised his luggage was missing. He went to the baggage claim area and said very fast “I am here on business and need my luggage for an important business meeting, I want to know where my bags are?” Baggage handler said “Hello (talking slowly)”. Again the businessman repeated himself and the baggage claim officer just said “Hello and yes?” The coin then dropped with the business person that his communication was not being conveyed to the baggage handler. So he slowed down his speech and said “G’day mate, how has your day been?” Handler said “not bad”. The business person then proceeded to mention that his luggage had not arrived and he required some assistance. This time the baggage handler mentioned he could help him.  By realising that his communication was not getting through, the passenger from Perth talked slower and “copied” the other person’s communication style, which resulted in achieving the outcome he desired.

In this real life example, the business person noticed through sensory acuity that his communication was not achieving the intended result. He changed his communication style and matched/mirrored the style of the baggage handler. By having behaviour flexibility he was able to produce the intended result of learning the location of his bags.