COMMUNICATING PROFESSIONALLY

Most people are not able to communicate professionally and do not communicate professionally. First of all they do not know how to do such, how to make the distinctions described in the first eight articles of this series. Knowing alone, however, is not sufficient, a person must be able to execute the qualities of high level professional communication. The most difficult part comes when you and I attempt to communicate and to use the distinctions that we know. Of course, that’s where training comes in.

What does unprofessional communication look or sound like? It can take many different forms. Mostly it is communication that is sloppy, vague, and imprecise. Or it could be highly biased, prejudiced, and full of unsubstantiated assumptions. Another aspect of unprofessional communication involves the cognitive distortions that’s characteristics of childish thinking— over-generalizing, all-or-nothing thinking, exaggerating, personalizing, awfulizing, etc.

What NLP did in creating its Communication Model was integrate multiple sources of insights about communication (Korzybski, Miller, Chomsky), skills demonstrated by expert communicators (Perls, Satir, and Erickson), structural formats from linguistics (Transformational Grammar) as well as from systems and anthropology (Bateson). The result was the NLP Communication Model which focuses on both verbal and non-verbal communication.

As a result, with the Meta-Model of Language, you have a set of distinctions and questions for flushing out communication that is sloppy, vague, and imprecise. With the Meta-Programs Model and the Meta-State Model, you can flush out communications which are highly biased, prejudiced, and full of unsubstantiated assumptions. These models also enable us to update the childish thinking (characterized by the Cognitive Distortions).

All of that is very useful in cleaning up language and communication making it more precise. And yet, even that is not enough. We have to do more to truly communicate professionally. What we need to be able to do is to communicate our truths from a place of authenticity. For that we have to move beyond the NLP Communication Model. We have to move beyond merely what we say to what we are as we communicate. We have to move to more than our state— we have to move to our character.

To achieve that, what we have done in Neuro-Semantics with the Meta-States Model is to access our highest value and Being states so that we operate from a commitment to truth and honesty. We source this from Maslow’s work about Being psychology that involves moving into the being values. These are the values that make us authentically human and compassionate. Maslow

wrote about this in Toward a Psychology of Being (1965) and described it as “self-actualization.” In other words, to communicate at the highest and most professional level requires moving to the Being values and developing the kind of character who can and does communicate authentically.

For that we use many of the models which came out of modeling the self-actualization research of Abraham Maslow— the Unleashing Model, the Crucible Model, the Self-Actualization Quadrants Model, the Inside-Out Persuasion Model, and the “Getting Real” Model. Real communication is more, much more, than just words and non-verbal expressions— it is an expression of a person’s character, heart, and spirit. Now you know why we have developed the Self-Actualization Psychology Diploma and eight training workshops on self-actualization.

Post Script NLP Trainer Dianne Lowther has sent out the following notice about an article that presented the NLP Communication Model in a positive way. Check it out:

https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/18203/nlp-and-sales--part-1--communication---an- interesting-paradox