If you mastered observing people using NLP or any other methodology, how would it improve your life?
As a live and online NLP course seller, I spend a great deal of time researching what courses are out there by my competitors. You see an overwhelming number of communication courses.
It is never about observation.
Most dominant are courses on writing marketing content, whether it’s your “brand story” or your “emails that convert,” the magical click funnels that will launch in 100K months.
Then there are the spoken communication courses on giving the best TEDx talk, the art of negotiation, selling, etc.
When you think about it, in so many ways, the courses are pretty self-centered. Why? They aren’t about listening or observing.
Communication Courses & Observing People Using NLP
The brilliant thing about NLP is that it is more “all-encompassing” as a tool. It teaches how to:
- Verbally communicate
- Non-verbally communicate
- Strategically communicate
- Observe non-verbal communication
- Observe verbal communication
- Read eye movements
How to Improve Your Observation Skills Using NLP
There are many ways to improve your observation skills using NLP. In this article, I will teach four.
1 Observing Emotional State Shifts
Even without a course on reading human emotions, you can observe when someone switches from one emotional state to another. This is much easier than understanding what someone is feeling and why they are feeling it. That’s the advanced class.
Your communication using NLP will take leaps forward if you just observe changing emotions. It will help you spot someone’s response to their internal environment (emotions and thoughts) and external environment (behavior by themselves and others).
You could pay attention to changes in:
- Breathing
- Color and skin tone
- Shine
- Tension
- Pupil dilation, gaze, eye movement
- Fidgeting
- Gesturing
- Lower lip size
Etc.
2 Observing Congruence, Incongruence, Unresourcefulness, Resourcefulness, Negative, and Positive Emotions
Very similar to this is observing whether someone’s state shifts are positive and forward motion or not. If you assume that the meaning of your communication is the response that you get, it allows you to understand the effects of your communication and behavior.
When you verbally and non-verbally communicate, another person gets an internal state as a result. Even this zoomed-out level of understanding allows you to understand how your communication is experienced and allows you to adjust course.
3 Observing Rapport Using NLP
Even babies copy your smile when they feel connected to you. One of the first things a person learns in NLP training is building rapport.
When people feel connected and trust each other, they automatically start to copy each other.
There are different ways:
- Physically
- Copying body language
- Breathing
- Quality of someone’s voice (speed, tonality, pitch)
- Representation system (see below)
- Behavior
- Etc.
If you can observe others being in rapport or someone being in rapport with you, it helps you understand the level of comfort that is experienced. It informs you, for instance, what questions you can ask, get agreement, willingness for someone to share, etc.
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4 Observing Representational Systems
Representational systems are the senses:
- Visual
- Auditory
- Kinesthetic
- Olfactory and gustatory
Observing people using NLP because easy if we understand that:
- Prefer one system over the other
- One system is more developed than the other
- Need one system to access our ability to use the other (for example, you need to see a beach to know what warm sand feels like)
- Get a glimpse if we internally experience something visually, auditory, or kinesthetically.
How can you tell someone is using the visual system?
- They use visual words (predicates): see, look, bright, focus, dark, shady, colorful, etc.
- They tend to look up to the left, right, and in the middle. NLP also teaches you how to read eye movements. You can tell how someone uses their brain by the direction their eyes move.
- Visual people often tend to speak quite fast.
How can you tell someone is auditory?
- They use auditory predicates: talk, listen, quiet, loud, resonate, tone, rings true.
- They tend to move their eyes side to side a lot.
- They tend to pay closer attention to the quality of their voice.
How can you tell someone is kinesthetic?
- They tend to use kinesthetic predicates: feel, touch, soft, rough, grasp, push, cold, hot, etc.
- They tend to look down and to your left (their right) a lot.
- Often they speak slower.
5 Exercises Putting the Above NLP Observation Skills into Practice
Exercise 1: Shifting Your Attention
When you communicate between 0 and 100% in a conversation, how much time do you spend observing someone?
In a personal or professional conversation today, increase the amount by 20-30%. Pick only one or two observation skills to start developing rather than all of them at once.
Exercise 2: Observe then Communicate
In a personal or professional conversation today, first spend a few minutes observing someone. Then communicate back.
Again, develop only one or two observation skill sets at a time. I believe NLP can best be learned one bite at a time rather than all at once. The toolset of NLP is just too large.
Exercise 3: Asking Questions
If someone reveals a preferred representational system, do one of the following:
- Start speaking back in the same system.
- Ask questions about what they are seeing, hearing, smelling, or tasting to get a better idea about their preferred world.
Exercise 4: Observing TV
Watch an interview on TV (tip: court TV) and observe people using NLP.
Exercise 5: Observing Yourself
Find a video recording of yourself (or make one) and observe your own communication.
What did you learn about observing people using NLP?
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Conclusion
Sometimes people like to overcomplicate learning new communication skills. But it is often in its absolute simplicity, adopting a few new skills, that we start to reap the benefits right now. Oberving people using NLP can be easy. These observations using NLP are something to master over time, and you will notice it will change the way you work and live forever.
